“I Got Soul, but I’m Not a Soldier”

A tough week, the perfect song lyric, and one not-so-beautiful scream cry

Jun 09, 2026

It’s been a while since I “scream cried.” You know those moments when you’re crying so hard you can barely breathe but somehow find the inner spirit to roar while you’re doing it? The moment is fleeting, but it’s also life-altering. For me, these moments usually coincide with a song that plays in exactly the moment it needs to, like the universe knew what you needed right then and right there. Today, that song presented itself, and my tear-stained, crinkled face roared like a lion as I screamed in the solitude of my car on the way home from the hospital in Beaufort, South Carolina. Because it has been a week, let me tell you.

I was going 50 over the new bridge (that’s what we call it only because it’s newer than the other bridge, not because it’s actually new), and The Killers had come on the radio. Specifically, “All These Things That I’ve Done.” It’s a song you can easily sing along to on any given day, but it has a lot of twists and turns that move through the entirety of the production.

Then you get to 1:08, and the song shifts in a way I still forget, even after listening to it a thousand and one times.

Brandon Flowers starts to sing, almost chant, “I got soul, but I’m not a soldier.”

As a chorus, with what sounds like a room full of emotional friends, he repeats this line ten times. With each repetition, the strength of the lyric grows and the weight of its meaning intensifies.

And in this moment, a song gives me a reminder I need.

None of us are meant to carry the weight that is sometimes placed by the ton upon our shoulders. We are all compassionate souls who can fight only so much before the battle gets the best of us.

And today, when this song filled every available space around me in my vehicle, Brandon Flowers caused me to scream cry in a way I didn’t know was physically possible. I screamed so loudly and so intensely alongside this room of imaginary people that I felt my throat pop.

At a time when I needed it most, music saved me from shutting down and shutting out, as it always does.

So, if you need a good scream cry today, get in your car and put The Killers’ “All These Things That I’ve Done” on full volume. I promise it brings a miracle aftereffect that you never saw coming.