Junior Mesa's "do your best nicholas" Lyrics Meaning Explained: Heartbreak's Pep Talk

"do your best nicholas" is about asking for a sign, getting no reply, and coaching yourself through the silence. The narrator promises to cry, then predicts recovery in exactly 40 hours. By the end they're talking about themselves in the third person, like a friend on the phone. Under the heartbreak, the song is a pep talk.

Send the text. Watch it sit there. Now try being nice to yourself about it, which is the hard part, and the only part "do your best nicholas" really cares about. The song sketches the outline of a heartbreak, a question nobody answers, and then spends its short life cheering on the person left holding the phone, exactly the way the title already does.

It starts mid-thought, with "And still I wonder," as if we walked in on someone who's been chewing on this for a while. Then comes the confession.

The grammar is a little crooked, and the crookedness is honest. They didn't "get no reply." They "asked to no reply," like the question went out into an empty room and just hung there. And look at what they asked for. Not an answer, not a yes, not a date. A sign. That's the lowest possible bar, a hint, a crumb, and it still didn't come.

There's nothing to touch anywhere in this song. No phone, no bedroom, no hands. The whole thing happens inside one head, which is exactly where you live the night you're left on read.

The next line is "And so ill cry," written without the apostrophe. You can hear it as "I'll cry" or as feeling ill, and the lyric never picks. Either way, notice that the crying is only promised. It's on the schedule. Then the schedule gets very specific.

Forty. Not "a couple days," not "eventually." Forty hours, like they actually sat down and did the math. (Which, for the record, is a little under two days. Enough time to sleep on it twice and eat at least one sad cereal dinner.) It's sweet and a bit funny, and it gives the game away. Someone truly crushed doesn't forecast their recovery to the hour. Someone trying to talk themselves down does. The "might" keeps it gentle, a hope instead of a guarantee, but the instinct is already to look past the hurt.

The line I keep coming back to closes the first half: "You should get to know me soon." Remember, nobody replied. And yet the narrator is the one extending the invitation, leaving the door propped open on their side. It's shy and a little bold at once, the kind of thing you'd say out loud to an empty room to see if you believe it.

The second half pulls a neat trick.

The "I" steps out of the frame and narrates itself in third person. "A hopeless lover" is a character now, someone you can root for from a distance. And that distance changes everything about how the narrator talks. Before, the verbs were wonder, ask, cry, wait. After, they're try, use, make it out. Stepping outside yourself turns out to be the brave move, the way it's always easier to give a friend good advice than to take your own.

Who the "dirty mind" is stays open. You could read it as the other person, someone the narrator worries will judge them or think the worst, and they're asking for mercy. That reading works. I hear it as the narrator's own head, though, the one spiraling at 1 a.m., being asked to go easy for once. "Please be kind" makes the most sense said inward.

Then comes the line that proves this is a pep talk.

Powers. Like a cartoon hero, like a kid tying a towel around their neck. It's a goofy, lovely word to reach for when you're sad, and it echoes "And so ill cry" almost perfectly. Same opening, same missing apostrophe, totally different ending. The first half's plan was to cry. The second half's plan is to try. One letter apart, and the whole mood lifts.

"I'll try to make it out" carries the same hopeful wobble. Out of what? The night, the feeling, the head the song has been trapped in. It doesn't promise escape. It promises effort, which is all the title ever asked for.

The last line holds up a hand: "Don't you get to falling now." It could be aimed at the person who never replied, a soft warning not to start caring just as the narrator is getting free. Or it's aimed back at the self, a reminder not to tumble right back in. It works best as both, a narrator who wants to be wanted and wants to be okay, saying careful to everyone in earshot.

So back to that text sitting unanswered. The song never gets its reply, and it stops waiting for one. What it gets instead is a voice deciding, quietly and on a 40-hour timer, to show up for itself. Whether "nicholas" is the singer, the listener, or some friend who isn't named, the title lands on whoever needs it most that night, and that's the real sign the narrator was asking for.

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