Forever is a Feeling (2025) review

Photo courtesy of Ralph_PH / Wikimedia Commons

Lucy Dacus releases a new album about love, commitment, and self-acceptance.

Lucy Dacus's fourth studio album, Forever is a Feeling (2025), was released to the public this past Friday, Mar. 28. Spanning 13 songs over 43 minutes, the album is a confessional exploration of the liminal, emotional space created by a sturdy, romantic relationship. 

Inspired by her relationship with musician and fellow boygenius bandmate Julien Baker, Dacus catalogues the journey of confronting and expressing feelings for someone who is not just a close friend but also someone Dacus works with professionally. By the album’s ending track, “Lost Time,” though, Dacus is confronted with the problem that every moment they did not spend together is “a crying shame / It’s a crime / A waste of space,” and ultimately “lost time.” 

True to form, Dacus’s writing in this album is marked by her narrative style. This is especially apparent in the opening lines of “Limerence,” which read, “Natalie’s explaining limerence between taking hits from a blunt, / high as a kite / While Rodney’s playing GTA, I swear, why is he so good at this / game.” 

In her writing, she balances the concrete with the conceptual, confronting the emotional state of limerence— “a state of involuntary obsession with another person. The experience of limerence is different from love or lust in that it is based on the uncertainty that the person you desire, called the ‘limerent object’ in the literature, also desires you,” in the casual and physical space of an evening hangout with friends. It feels appropriate for the song’s place in the album’s almost plot-like structuring, as Dacus continues to doubt their feelings for Baker and whether she should act on them. 

Through songs like this, Dacus creates trust between the listener and the artist, which feels essential to an album trying to declare that Dacus had “done it” and found “the one,” which, to some listeners, can feel lofty and idealistic. She sidesteps this reflexive cynicism from her audience, however, in her “confession-like” prose, which at times returns to religious allusions/imagery (common across Dacus’s discography as a whole, especially exploring how it shapes her perception of her own queerness). 

From “Bullseye” (featuring the lovely Hozier), this longevity, but also the acknowledgment that relationships are prone to endings, is addressed in the lines “In many European cities, there’s a bridge / Where lovers put locks on the rails / And throw their keys into the river beneath / We were two such suckers / But the metal weighs down the bearings and the city has to cut / the bolts / If our spell wore off, maybe it’s all their fault.” This lets the listener know that Dacus is not wanton in her declaration that forever is a feeling; she acknowledges the reality of relationships ending but makes light of it here.  

In making the end of their relationship something to joke about, Dacus captures the cliché that percolates around the album but is never directly stated: when you know, you know. Moreover, in later songs, which occur after the relationship between Dacus and Baker has been established, the idea of forever as a feeling takes on a new, counterintuitive light.

The tenth track, “Best Guess,” encapsulates what Dacus means by the album’s declaration of forever— not just as some intuitive quality of a romantic relationship but also as an active choice. In this song, Dacus describes the subject as her “best guess at the future,” saying she is willing to make bets that this one lasts, not just because Dacus feels some metaphoric, faraway notion of it but because Dacus refuses to have it any other way. “If this doesn’t work out / I would lose my mind,” she writes, confessing, “And after a while / I will be fine / But I don’t wanna be fine / I want you, you.” 

Here, the meaning of the album’s title is transformed, and “forever” becomes not just a feeling but an active decision both parties make in the relationship. This album is an honest and tender exploration of a love that feels final. It surely stands out in its portrayal of not just love and relationships, but, specifically, queer love and relationships. Dacus addresses the struggles of accepting and embracing a queer identity, especially as someone from a conservative religious background, with the struggles inherent to entering and maintaining any relationship— regardless of the people involved. 

This is an album with such strength in its individual songs and their smaller vignettes, while coalescing into a project with a very narrative and natural flow between songs. I have already listened through the album seven times since its release, and I am certain I will listen through it many more times to come.