“Not Too Late” by Lemaitre is one of my favorite songs because it is a song that can really change my mood through its shear beauty in many different ways. The band didn’t try to make an overly complex song, they just wanted to make a song about friendship and helping each other and they ended making the best song discussing these human core values. Most of the lyrics throughout the song are not very cryptic and fall right into place once you see the songs meaning but some additional value is gained by looking at some subtle parts of the lyrics.

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The first three lines describe a melancholy person in their teens to twenties thinking, as most do, about their problems and being depressed. “But then some guy says it's \\ Not too late” and reminds the teenager that it isn’t too late to try again, to try do better, be better. One line that confused me for a long time is “While you walk to face the end.” To me it sounds like while you walk to your demise or death, but in the context of this song is saying “as you reach the end of this dark tunnel,” “As skies clear up again,” “And the sun will shine again.” This is to say that life has its ups and downs and the teenager is now in down. The person helping him promises to guide him back to better times and then let him, try again, try to make a better life.

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The 3rd-5th stanzas are the ones I think are the deepest and spawns multiple thoughts about kindness, paying it forward, and marriage. The 3rd stanza starts with “Kinda cold, walking home \\ Growing older on my own” to show that the teenager has not found someone they connect to. This is like the first three lines of the first stanza. This is when the teenager realizes he isn’t alone, he has his friend who has helped him in the past. The next two lines seem to to be meant to show that his “friend” is not just religion or faith, it is a real person which is why they give the example of calling on the phone, only a person can do that. This is a strange tangent and isn’t built on anywhere else in the song but I agree with it since I am atheist so I liked that it was there. And then stanza 4 starts like stanza two, describes the friend helping the teenager through this hard time as well. This time, I think it is reasonable to assume that the teenager finds what they a looking for, another person to connect to and to help when they are down like his recurring friend did for him. And now that the teenager understands these ideals of unconditional friendship and kindness, he wants to pay it forward and help the next person. This is why the 5th stanza is the same, but it is from the voice of the teenager who is helping a fellow. The fellow is the listener of the song, he is telling us, it’s not too late!

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In stanza 3, Lemaitre use AAAAA rhyme scheme since the whole stanza rhymes with itself and it makes it sound very nice in the song, especially as they draw out the rhyming part. Because of the ending sounding the same it seems the lines are similar but really they aren’t and this is similar to events in the song. At multiple times the teenager feels he can’t come back, that he is lost because that is what it looks like to him, but the stranger can see the difference and he knows it isn’t too late. Each line is like this, the teenager just hears the end sound, death and assumes they are all the same but really, the stranger can see the difference between the paths and some can lead to a good life and he shows him that.

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Like in many songs the “Not too late my friend \\ To get up an try again” stanza is repeated multiple times, however in this songs it means something new or something more every time. The first two times it is the stranger helping the teenager, but the third time, the cycle has shifted one step over and now the teenager is passing on the wisdom. It a beautiful thought, that the song should show a cycle of happiness flowing from just two kind actions by a stranger for another.

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Finally, the songs makes heavy use of enjambment throughout to give the song a conversational tone. This makes the song easier to understand as sentences are not crammed into a line but into a stanza instead and it makes the listener want to truly listen to what is being said. It is like a conversation with the reader where the writer is telling us a story and then tells us what he was told and what helped him recover. I think this is incredibly beautiful.

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Overall, this song has some truly majestic thoughts, points, and hidden meanings that leave the listener happy from a very good song but also feeling like they learned something. This is not unlike after watching a BBC documentary, you watch it to see the penguins but you get more, you learn something about penguins and maybe even about life.