Jane Willson Some songs are dialogs. Others are stories. Many, many of them, are complex
metaphors, real poems (that we not always completely understand). “Two of Us” is a letter. An intimate, heartfelt letter to someone who is no longer living, but remains intensely present.
Written and performed by English singer and songwriter Louis Tomlinson, “Two of Us” couldn’t be more personal, for it was composed following the untimely death of Tomlinson’s mother, Johannah Deakin – who passed away from leukemia, in 2016, at the very young age of 43.
What is the Louis Tomlinson Two of Us Lyrics Meaning?
The “song-letter” opens with a statement about how it feels to be so close and yet so far away from this mother who died, and how he even calls a phone (he knows nobody can answer) just to hear her voice and leave a message, in order to comfort himself.
It then moves along to his profound sorrow, to vivid memories of the day in which
his mother died, the sense that someone took her from him and how desperate it still feels.
In a deeply honest and confessional way (with a feeling that everyone who has lost someone will relate to), he says he would have preferred to have died himself, rather than watching his mom go – acknowledging, though, right away, that she wouldn’t agree and that her advice to him, long before her death, had been to go on and be strong.
As the song continues, Tomlinson then talks about the many lessons his mother left behind for him, the fact that they are deeply connected through body and soul, and the promise he now makes to live by his mom’s best wishes and plans for him, and to make her proud, so to speak, by being his best version of himself.
“Two of us” evolves as a declaration of love and devotion by a son to his mother, in
some points as a confession, in others as a pledge, but always as a truthful and
an emotional piece of music.
Finally ending on an extremely moving note, the son promises to live for the two of them, hoping that, in the end, somehow, they will be together again.
Interesting Facts About Song and Artist:
Louis Tomlinson first became famous as a member of the boy band “One Direction” – an opportunity he got after being eliminated, as a solo competitor, from “The X-Factor” (a high-profile, British, TV music competition).
Tomlinson was born on December 24 (Christmas Eve), of 1991, and his surname was actually taken from his stepfather (his biological father was named Troy Austin, and separated from his mother when he was very young).
A member of the famous boy band “One Direction” from 2011 to 2015, Tomlinson debut as a solo artist happened in 2016, with the single “Just Hold On”.
Louis Tomlinson was very close to his mother and her first-born son. After separating from his father, she married again two times and had other six children. Louis was the only one from her first marriage, though.
