Stay Away

Koryn Hawthorne's “Stay Away” is a song about breaking from a harmful relationship. The opening verse describes the same smile that turned into “an evil grin,” and the same hands that held her but “tried to drown me in a pool of sin.” The lips that kissed her “cursed my life, told me lies,” and she admits her mother warned her about it.

The refrain is a message to herself: “Stay away.” The parenthetical lines turn it into a prayer, “If you really love me, then you'll help me stay away from any love that ain't from above.” The second verse reads as a conversation: when the relationship was declared over, God said it was just beginning, and she knows in his love he would never send someone who is cold. She asks why she would entertain anything that is not real love. The bridge repeats “run away, run away” with a driving beat, ending with the plain statement, “It ain't real love.” The song measures love against what comes from God, and treats leaving as an act of obedience and self-respect. It is aimed at listeners who find it hard to walk away.

God being love is 1 John 4:8. Staying off the path of the wicked is Proverbs 4:14-15, and his word lighting the path is Psalm 119:105.