Arcade Fire released its third studio album, The Suburbs, on August 3, 2010. A meditation on how the liminal nature of suburbs fosters alienation, hyperconformity, ostracization, and boredom, it enjoyed a rare cascade of both commercial and critical success, ultimately winning the Grammy for Album of the Year.

It also happened to be about The Woodlands. And not in an abstract sense.

Frontmen Win and Will Butler spent part of their early lives in the rapidly expanding Houston suburb, which they explicitly drew from and discussed when conceptualizing the album, its accompanying videos, and the eventual tour. (Of course, it included a stop in The Woodlands.)

Win was accused in 2022 of sexual misconduct, with four fans bringing allegations that included sexual assault; Arcade Fire makes for difficult listening now. But having grown up in The Woodlands myself, I also can’t entirely dismiss just how eerily accurate The Suburbs is to the whole coming-of-age experience there, especially if you’re an artsy weirdo who feels out of alignment with your environment’s suffocating social expectations. I compiled a few choice lyrics that best illustrate what life there was like.

“You never trust a millionaire / Quoting the sermon on the mount…. Do you think your righteousness / Can pay the interest on your debt? / I have my doubts about it.”

—“City with No Children”

When I was a kid, The Woodlands was the sort of place where the first thing you’d be asked upon meeting someone new was what church you went to. This way, they could immediately discern important information like your religion and social class in the middle and high school hallways. Attending a megachurch with a pastor who drove a luxury car and resided in a gated community put you at the top of the hierarchy, because it probably meant you were of the Prosperity Gospel set, wielding your faith as a mechanism for acquiring great wealth and status. And we all know that money and material goods were Jesus’s priorities in the New Testament.

It’s got to be in there somewhere, right? Was it in the Parable of the Widow’s Mite? Or the simile about the camel and the eye of the needle? Wait, how about the story of the vendors using the temple as a marketplace? Look, there’s probably an exact passage about how the size of one’s coffers scales with one’s virtue. Just trust the rich guy at the pulpit who said so, OK? (And make sure to give him a generous donation on your way out.)

“They heard me singing and they told me to stop / Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock.”

—"Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)”

“Pretentious things,” meaning the arts, because if you’re not working toward a degree in STEM, business, or law (boys only) or education (girls only), then you’re wasting your time on the frivolous and useless. Plenty of kids had amazing parents and were able to go on to glorious careers in whatever they pleased, but local schools and youth groups were big fans of pigeonholing us into convenient stereotypes; getting to know us as individuals required too much effort and responsibility. And any signs of deviation from what the majority demographics declare desirable are to be squashed, if not outright punished, posthaste.

“They’re screaming at us, ‘We don’t need your kind.’”

—“Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)”

In 2017, a Woodlands High School student received anti-Black death threats and slurs from a classmate over Snapchat. Conroe ISD responded by changing the bully’s schedule and telling the victim she could transfer to another school if she preferred. 

“And I know these crumbs they sold me / They’re never gonna last.”

“Oh, I've read a little Bible / You see what you want to see / Oh, we know the culture war / We don't know what it’s for, but / We’ve lived your Southern strategy / You know it’s never gonna last / So keep that shit in the past.”

“The dominos they never fell / But bodies they still burn / Throw my hand into the fire / But still I never learn.”

“You want it? / You got it, here’s your culture war. / You want it? / Now you’ve got it, so tell me what’s it for.”

—“Culture War”

In fifth grade, I went to my school counselor to talk to her about how I was getting bullied daily. For having an “ugly” face, for dressing “wrong,” for being “sensitive” (that’s what we used to call autistic girls back in the day), and for enjoying the books and topics and movies that preteen girls weren’t supposed to like. I just wanted to be left alone with my reading and video games and small but loving group of friends. So, could she please help?

She sat me down and gently told me that if I stopped being “weird,” then the other kids would stop. They only did it because I gave them a reason to, she said. But when I followed her instructions, they doubled down instead. How dare a freak like me attempt to be “normal?”

You can’t fix a problem like this when you’re not the true source. It’s a reaping without a sowing.

That’s exactly what a culture war is: People who believe that others not being carbon copies of themselves and asking for peaceful autonomy constitutes oppression, that self-defense deserves more punishment than starting the problem in the first place. It’s a fool’s game of “Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!” followed by angry gasps, pearl clutching, and escalation when asked to cut it out and leave the victim alone. A grotesque and needless cycle that prevents humanity from blooming into its best self. The people labeled “different” don’t hold the world back. The ones hoping to craft a cultural hegemony do.

I hear The Woodlands has improved since I left for college. Maybe that’s true; maybe it isn’t. It’s difficult to know. For obvious reasons, I tend to prefer staying where I’m wanted.