What Daisy Jones & The Six’s ‘Look at Us Now (Honeycomb)’ Lyrics Really Mean

Songs from the 11-track album will appear throughout the series, which debuted on March 3, but “Look at Us Now (Honeycomb)” stands out in opening and closing episodes. Like in the book, though Reid’s version is just called “Honeycomb,” this is the first song Daisy (Keough) and The Six, led by frontman Billy Dunne (Claflin), work on together, which leads to their game-changing partnership, musical and otherwise. However, when she joins the band in the studio in episode 3, Billy is shocked to learn she’s altered some of his lyrics. For example, she changed the hook from, “I know we can get it all back,” to “We can make a good thing bad.” He recoils.

After all, the song comes from a personal place for Billy. He’s trying to make right after abusing drugs, cheating on his wife Camila, and spiraling so badly that he missed the birth of their daughter to check into rehab. His “Honeycomb” is a vow to his family, and also to himself, that he can be a better man. Perhaps it’s even proof that he already is. (Hence the line, “Look at us now.”)

But the music industry is hard to please, and Billy’s lovey-dovey demo bored record executives. Producer Teddy Price knew when Daisy overheard the demo in his office that he had to bring her in to shake things up. To be clear, she loves the song, but she doesn’t buy Billy’s plain message. “It’s about starting a new life, Daisy, it’s about redemption…from letting people down,” he tells her as they argue in the recording booth.

Unconvinced, she presses, “So, you let somebody down, right? And now you’re saying everything’s fine, look at us now, everything’s in the past…I don’t believe it. It doesn’t sound honest and it sounds simple. And I don’t know you very well; you don’t seem simple to me.”

So, she complicates the lyrics to add some tension and turbulence to Billy’s very linear narrative. But what he sees isn’t just a swapping of words; it’s a disturbance in his journey of healing. Little does he know, Daisy will only continue to take over his life from here, and he’ll do the same to her.

The resulting song begins as a mellow rock ballad but picks up speed, blossoming into rock-pop territory. Guitars go wailing while Billy and Daisy belt in crisp harmonies. And honestly, it’s pretty catchy. “Oh, we can make a good thing bad” has been echoing in my head for a whole week prior to writing this story. Claflin even told ELLE.com that this is one of his favorite songs to record for the show.

“Look at Us Now (Honeycomb)” was written by Blake Mills, Jason Boesal, Stephony Smith, Jonathan Rice, and Marcus Mumford, which can explain its folk-rock influences. (Mills himself has collaborated with a number of artists including Fiona Apple, Alabama Shakes, Rolling Stones, Jay-Z, and Phoebe Bridgers.) Accompanying Keough and Claflin were Mills and Madison Cunningham on guitar and background vocals; Tyler Chester on electric piano, organ, and synth; Pino Palladino on bass; Abe Rounds on drums; and Matt Chamberlain on percussion.

Still, creating the song in real life was a challenge considering its emotional significance to both Daisy and Billy. As the series progresses, Billy doesn’t want to include the song on set lists and resists putting it on the album, though he’s overruled, because of the temptation it represents for him. In the finale, at the band’s last show, Daisy sings the song directly to Billy a cappella in front of the audience, leading him to run offstage and make right with his wife, Camila, instead of pursue a reckless affair with Daisy. “This is a love song,” Daisy says before performing it for the last time.

“‘Honeycomb’ was the hardest one because that’s the song that breaks them and has to be this huge hit song,” executive producer and co-showrunner Scott Neustatder tells ELLE.com. “And you have to believe that it hit number one and was this unbelievable song of the summer. So I feel like we went back and forth a couple times…And then eventually they submitted this song and it had that amazing chorus and that hook that kind of gets into your head.”

Then there was another hurdle: writing Billy’s loved-up original demo of the “Honeycomb.” “There was a version before that’s simpler, that is a happier song, is more optimistic. So they had to then write the lyrics to the Billy version,” Neustadter recalls. The collaborative process was a testament to both teams’ “really amazing communication”— and Neustatder admits, “the show doesn’t work otherwise.”

Readers will notice that the lyrics are different from those in Reid’s novel. Though she didn’t write out the full lyrics to “Honeycomb,” characters mention lines in the story, like: “One day things will quiet down / We’ll pick it all up and move town / We’ll walk through the switchgrass down to the rocks / And the kids will come around.” And the refrain, which Daisy changed based on her interpretation, was originally: “Will the life we want wait for us? / Will we live to see the lights coming off the bay? / Will you hold me, will you hold me, will you hold me until that day?”

As Neustatder previously told ELLE.com that Reid and the team wanted to give the songwriting team some freedom. “What we didn’t do is, we didn’t want to give them the lyrics to the book because we were dealing with these unbelievable songwriters,” he said. “And Taylor was like, ‘I don’t want them to be handcuffed to my work. Let them write the songs themselves.’ So all of the songs play the same narrative functions in the show that they do in the book, but the lyrics are different.”

The recorded version uses less specific phrasing and focuses more on the tumult than Billy’s good intentions. As present-day Billy recalls in the series, “Come to think of it, we never did my version.” But it’s an impressive song, and it foreshadows his and Daisy’s long and winding saga ahead.

Read the full lyrics below.

I don’t know who I am
Baby, baby, baby,
Do you know who you are?
Is it out of our hands?
Tell me, tell me, tell me,
How we made it this far?

Did we unravel a long time ago?
Is there too much that we don’t want to know?
I wish it was easy, but it isn’t so

Oh, we could make a good thing bad
Oh, we could make a good thing bad

Now where do we stand?
Baby, baby, baby,
No one knows who you are
And if this was your plan,
Tell me tell me why
You’ve been crying in the dark

We unraveled a long time ago
We lost and we couldn’t let it go
I wish it was easy, but it isn’t so
So baby,

Oh, we could make a good thing bad
Oh, we could make a good thing bad
Oh, we could make a good thing bad
Oh, we could make a good thing bad

How did we get here?
How do we get out?
We used to be something to see
But, baby, look at us now
Baby, look at us now
This thing we been doin’
Ain’t working out
Why can’t you just admit it to me?

Oh baby, look at us now
Oh, baby, look at us now
Oh baby, look at us now
Oh baby, look at us now
Oh baby, look at us now

How did we get here?
How do we get out?
This thing we been doin’
Ain’t working out
Oh,

How did we get here?
How do we get out?
We used to be something to see
Oh, baby, look at us now
Baby, look at us now
This thing we been doin’
Ain’t working out
Why can’t you just admit it to me?
Baby, look at us now
Baby, look at us now
Oh, we could make a good thing bad
Oh, we could make a good thing bad

This story has been updated.

Erica Gonzales is the Senior Culture Editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage on TV, movies, music, books, and more. She was previously an editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com. There is a 75 percent chance she’s listening to Lorde right now.