Kathleen Edwards (born July 11, 1978 in Ottawa, Ontario) is a Canadian sing… Read Full Bio ↴Kathleen Edwards (born July 11, 1978 in Ottawa, Ontario) is a Canadian singer-songwriter and musician. Her 2003 debut album, Failer, contained the singles "Six O'Clock News" and "Hockey Skates". Her next two albums, "Back to Me" and "Asking for Flowers", both made the US Billboard 200 list and reached the top 10 of Billboard's Top Heatseekers chart. In 2006, she was nominated for a Juno Awards for Songwriter of the Year and Adult Alternative Album of the Year for her album "Back to Me". In 2012, her fourth studio album, Voyageur, became Edwards' first album to crack the top 100 and top 40 in the US, peaking at #39 on the U.S. Billboard 200 and #2 in Canada.

According to the The A Soft Place To Land Songfacts Edwards' father is Leonard Edwards, a former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. As a result she spent portions of her teenage years in Korea and Switzerland. Her blend of country, folk and pop music made her a favourite of music critics, and a rising star on radio in 2003 with her debut album, Failer, made popular by her hit singles "Six O'Clock News" and "Hockey Skates" Her style of music is sometimes placed in the music genre "alt-country".

In 1999, Edwards recorded a six-song EP entitled Building 55 and pressed 500 copies. By the fall of 2000, she was on tour across Canada managing her own gigs. In 2001 she wrote seven of the ten songs for her 2003 debut release Failer.

Edwards married musician and producer Colin Cripps in 2004. They later divorced.

In 2005, Edwards released Back to Me, which also garnered considerable critical acclaim, and led to the release of the singles "Back to Me" and "In State". The track "Summerlong" also featured on the soundtrack of the movie Elizabethtown starring Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst.

In 2006, she was nominated for Juno Awards for Songwriter of the Year and Adult Alternative Album of the Year for Back to Me.

On March 4, 2008, her new CD, Asking for Flowers, arrived to excellent reviews.

Her fourth album, Voyageur, was released on January 17, 2012.

12 Bellevue
Kathleen Edwards Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

I'm not gonna lie
Not gonna make up my mind tonight
I'm not gonna pretend
I cleared out of town so I could clear my head

I'm not gonna smile all the shit that's happened is gonna take a while
I don't want to be your friend
Just take off your clothes and get into my bed

And the press is after you
Jumping over fences just to see who's cool
And now I stand accused
I put a hole in your heart
Then I fed it to you

I'm not gonna think
About all the shit you want me to think
I'm not gonna say
Who I spent my time with yesterday
I'm not gonna choose
In the end either way I still lose

I'm not gonna
I was thinking about drinking my way through the day

Overall Meaning

The lyrics of Kathleen Edwards’s song, 12 Bellevue, convey a sense of emotional turmoil and indecision as the singer tries to process and deal with the events that have occurred in her life. The opening lines, “I’m not gonna lie, not gonna make up my mind tonight,” speak to the singer’s sense of confusion and uncertainty. She doesn’t want to rush into making any decisions and wants to take the time to clear her head. This is underscored by the lines, “I cleared out of town so I could clear my head.”

The themes of the song center around relationships, guilt, and feeling trapped. The lines, “Just take off your clothes and get into my bed,” reveal that there are feelings of intimacy and desire at play, yet the singer is also grappling with the guilt and the sense of responsibility that comes along with those feelings. She is also feeling trapped, as evidenced by the lines, “In the end either way I still lose.”

On a broader level, the lyrics of 12 Bellevue speak to the experience of processing complicated emotions and trying to navigate the complexities of romantic relationships. The singer is grappling with the consequences of her actions, and the song speaks to the difficulty of accepting responsibility and moving forward.

Line by Line Meaning

I'm not gonna lie
I am going to be honest with you

Not gonna make up my mind tonight
I don't want to make any decisions right now

I'm not gonna pretend
I won't act like everything is okay

I cleared out of town so I could clear my head
I left town to sort out my thoughts and feelings

I'm not gonna smile all the shit that's happened is gonna take a while
I won't pretend to be happy because it will take time to deal with all the bad things that have happened

I don't want to be your friend
I don't want to have a platonic relationship with you

Just take off your clothes and get into my bed
I want to have a sexual relationship with you

And the press is after you
The media is pursuing you

Jumping over fences just to see who's cool
They are going to extreme lengths to find out who is popular

And now I stand accused
I am being blamed for something

I put a hole in your heart
I hurt you emotionally

Then I fed it to you
I made things worse by reminding you of what happened

I'm not gonna think
I don't want to overthink things

About all the shit you want me to think
I won't let you control my thoughts or emotions

I'm not gonna say
I won't reveal information

Who I spent my time with yesterday
I won't disclose who I was with

I'm not gonna choose
I'm not going to make a decision