‘Everything Is Peaceful Love’ by Bon Iver - Lyrics & Meaning

Arriving as the vibrant lead single from Bon Iver's unexpected fifth studio album, SABLE, fABLE, which serves as a continuation of the narrative of 2024's SABLE EP, ‘Everything Is Peaceful Love’ is the most joyful offering we've heard from Justin Vernon's project.

It starkly juxtaposes the pared-down, isolated ambience of SABLE, which found Bon Iver delving into a pain-filled and tumultuous past, with ’Everything Is Peaceful Love’ exploring the exuberant, untethered jubilance that accompanies falling in love. Rather aptly, ‘Everything Is Peaceful Love’ dropped on Valentine's Day 2025.

While SABLE featured Justin Vernon's vocals in their most lucid form, ‘Everything Is Peaceful Love’ is a return to the layered, modulated style that we've come to expect from Bon Iver. While on past projects such as i,i and 22, A Million, these vocal techniques and electronic textures were used to enhance the enigma of Bon Iver, on ‘Everything Is Peaceful Love‘, the layering is incorporated as a means of elevating the sense of euphoria and celebration that pervades the track.

The SABLE tracks were largely acoustic, featuring little more than a noodling guitar and Vernon's crisp voice, while ‘Everything Is Peaceful Love’ is propelled by a galvanising drum pattern, symbolising the narrator's gradual progression from introspection and loneliness towards a more exhilarated and outward-facing state of being.

“Don't and go too fast, mama
I'm steady on a rock trippin'
I'll tell you that I'm not slippin'
But tell me not a thing rippin'
Let's say that there will be lippin'
I'm standing on top blinkin'
I'd tell ya that I don't know
But yer favored now by fifty
And I'm right at home”

Throughout ‘Everything Is Peaceful Love’, the ‘high’ the protagonist feels as a result of falling in love is described as being akin to that of taking drugs, with Vernon crooning about how he's “trippin”. In the hook, he references climbing a tree, which could be a veiled reference to smoking marijuana, which is often called “trees”.

The playful feel of this verse is accentuated by the casual, light-hearted language Vernon opts for, such as “lippin” and “blinkin”. Endearingly, he concludes by suggesting that, in finding this person, he has now at long last made his way “home”.

“Damn, if I'm not climbing up a tree right now
And everything is peaceful love
And right in me
And I know that we may go and change someday
I couldn't rightly say
That's for parting days”

Aside from the potential marijuana reference of “climbing up a tree”, this imagery conjures up the child-like activity of clambering up trees for no reason other than to have fun. This is the spirit of ‘Everything Is Peaceful Love’, with Bon Iver moved to adopt a more playful outlook, compared to the intense sobriety of his other work.

“What I went and thought about
All in one day
Is simply in-divisible?
As we go our separate ways
Have you already spoken?
Did I hear you say?
Did I already hear you say?
When you're gone
That's a long, old weight of mine”

Here, Bon Iver frames the relationship as being indivisible, but underlines it is still fresh at this point, with Vernon describing the couple going “our separate ways”. The narrator seemingly yearns to be combined in a more permanent, irreversible manner.

“And damn, if I'm not climbing up a tree right now
And every little thing is love
And right with me
And how am I to know that someday you might change the road?
I caught an offering
That's a burning ring”

In this iteration of the hook, we get the slight adjustment in the final lyrics, with Justin Vernon appearing to equate his infatuation to that of worshiping a deity and devoting a sacrificial “offering”. The “burning ring”, of course, could be another nod to drug use.

“Is it just coming or going?
Or will it hang around?
For a long, long time
Well, I've had too much
And not nearly enough
'Cause I'm afraid with that love
And then they make me this way
I, I'll just go ahead away!
On the loose
The opposite of fools!
I will run the table all through
'Cause I still don't know the truth”

The visceral, oxymoronic lyric, “Well, I've had too much / And not nearly enough”, conveys the sense of feeling overwhelmingly intoxicated by his newfound love, yet still seeking more. In classic Bon Iver fashion, the specific meaning behind the second half of this verse is somewhat obscure, but the enthused, energetic exclamations nonetheless add to the swelling feeling of glee and happiness.

“Don't and go too fast, mama
I'm steady on a rock trippin'
I'll tell you that I'm not slippin'
But tell me not a thing rippin'
Let's say that there will be lippin'
I'm standing on top blinkin'
I'd tell ya that I don't know
But yer favored now by fifty
And I'm right at home

-

Damn, if I'm not climbing up a tree right now
And everything is peaceful love
And right in me
And I know that we may go and change someday
I couldn't rightly say
That's for parting days

-

What I went and thought about
All in one day
Is simply in-divisible?
As we go our separate ways
Have you already spoken?
Did I hear you say?
Did I already hear you say?
When you're gone
That's a long, old weight of mine

-

And damn, if I'm not climbing up a tree right now
And every little thing is love
And right with me
And how am I to know that someday you might change the road?
I caught an offering
That's a burning ring

-

Is it just coming or going?
Or will it hang around?
For a long, long time
Well, I've had too much
And not nearly enough
'Cause I'm afraid with that love
And then they make me this way
I, I'll just go ahead away!
On the loose
The opposite of fools!
I will run the table all through
'Cause I still don't know the truth

-

But damn, if I'm not climbing up a tree right now
And everything is peaceful love
And right in me
And I know that someday you may change someway
I couldn't rightly say
That's for parting ways”

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