Be Like That

There are two versions of “Be Like That,” and the band knew which one was the real one.

The radio edit came out of The Better Life in 2000 with the production turned all the way up — power chords, polish, the wall of guitars built to sound massive on a car stereo. The acoustic version strips all of that off. It is one man and a guitar. That is the version that matters, and the band knew it.

The song is about lives that didn’t get lived. A father who wished he’d chosen art over the practical thing. A girl who dreams of being somewhere else, anywhere else. And a narrator who watches both of them and wonders what his own other life would have looked like. Three daydreams, side by side.

“He spends his life rollin’ dice.”

Brad Arnold sings it differently with nothing to hide behind. The big version covers the cracks. The acoustic version leaves them in. You hear a man who sounds like he is dreaming about escape too, not just describing the people who are. The massive arrangement was built to fill a room. What it loses is the thing the song is actually about — one person, alone, watching imagination turn into a prison.

I discovered the acoustic version on a late-night radio program that specialized in stripping songs down to their bones. The DJ introduced it as “the song 3 Doors Down actually wanted to release.” I don’t know if that’s true, but it felt true. It felt like hearing a confession that had been dressed up for church.

We all carry lives we didn’t choose and paths we didn’t take. The big version of this song plays them loud enough that you can’t hear yourself think. The quiet one doesn’t let you off that easy.

That is the version for the nights you lie awake wondering where those paths went.