Not Sorry For Loving You Lyrics – Epic: The Musical

Song Overview

Personal Review

Not Sorry For Loving You slips onto the stage like a bittersweet tide, pairing gentle nylon-guitar arpeggios with cinematic strings. The lyrics move between confession and confrontation, as Calypso clings to Odysseus while waves of regret crash beneath her words. One vivid snapshot: a lonely nymph, voice trembling, sings “I’m angry and tired and restless and sad,” yet refuses to apologise for feeling too deeply.

Song Meaning and Annotations

The song opens with Calypso’s hushed lament—

“Someone arrived today / They said they're taking you away”

Her refrain—“I’m not sorry for loving you”—is delivered over a swelling ensemble, suggesting defiance wrapped in heartbreak. The vocal layering echoes Greek chorus tradition, giving divine weight to personal anguish.

Odysseus answers softly, grounding the mythic with mortal tenderness. His single declaration—“I love you / But not in the way that you want me to”—shifts the song’s colour from longing to resigned clarity, tilting the key upward by a semitone to brighten the emotional palette before plunging back into minor shadows.

The composition fuses folk-pop delicacy with orchestral muscle, a hallmark of EPIC: The Vengeance Saga. Harp glissandi brush against low cello drones, while distant choirs sigh like wind over Ogygia.

Rivera-Herrans wrote the piece overnight after a bout of creative insomnia, reportedly inspired by an Uncle Iroh video about lost friendships . That urgency bleeds into the final mix—raw yet meticulously orchestrated.

Verse Highlights

Verse 1

Calypso sketches a century of isolation. Her phrasing leans on falling iambs, each descent echoing the weight of time.

Chorus

“But I’m not sorry for loving you”

The chorus repeats four times; each cycle adds choir harmonies and rhythmic hand-claps, turning apology into anthem.

Detailed Annotations

On the lonely isle of Ogygia, Not Sorry For Loving You (from EPIC: The Musical by Jorge Rivera-Herrans) stages its heartbreak like a last sunset: Calypso pleads, Odysseus listens, and the sea wind already smells of departure. Hermes has brought Zeus’s decree—Odysseus must sail home—so this song becomes Calypso’s final argument for love and an unflinching portrait of obsession, power, and grief beneath the shimmering strings.

Scene & Setting

Someone arrived today
They said they're taking you away.

The “someone” is Hermes, messenger and divine courier. His arrival confirms what Odysseus has long prayed for: freedom from a gilded captivity. The phrase “taking you away” betrays Calypso’s possessive framing—Odysseus is being stolen rather than released. Her next line underscores isolation:

You're unlike anyone I have ever known
'Cause you're all I've ever known.

Banished here as a child for Atlas’s rebellion, she has had centuries with nothing but sky and sun. When Odysseus washed ashore seven years ago, she seized him like the lone seashell on an empty beach.

Power Dynamics

And if I pushed you
Or if I came on too strong
Or if I ambushed you
For that, I'll say I was wrong.

Each if softens the accusation, a textbook half-apology that gaslights the captive. In Love in Paradise we watched her flirtation bulldoze Odysseus’s grief for Penelope; here she downplays imprisonment as mere clumsiness. The ensemble—only Calypso and Odysseus’s blended voices—echoes her refrain, an auditory reminder that she controls every chorus on the island.

Yet Calypso’s remorse stops at the threshold of desire:

But I'm not sorry for loving you.

Love, to her, is self-justifying. Audience sympathy wobbles: is this genuine devotion birthed from centuries of solitude, or manipulation cloaked in melody? The annotations argue both—true feeling expressed through coercive means.

Odysseus Speaks

Calypso—
Let me speak.

This is the first time in the musical Odysseus addresses her by name. The interruption flips their island hierarchy: the mortal finally claims narrative space. Still, Calypso hushes him, insisting on her life story.

I spent my whole life here
Was cast away when I was young…

The violin progression beneath these lines mirrors the lament motif from Puppeteer, subtly linking Calypso’s abandonment to Circe’s victims and to the broader theme of godly fallout on mortal lives.

Psychology of Loneliness

I'm angry and tired and restless and sad
I'm stuck in the moments I swore that we had.

Seven years of captive companionship blur memory: Calypso replays selective scenes, convinced they were mutual. Odysseus—depressed, yearning for Ithaca—experienced those same days as a sentence. Her wish:

I wish you would chase me
Or try to embrace me
For once, I wish you would lie and say 
I love you.

Desperation peaks in the plea for a lie. She values an imagined romance over truth, illustrating how isolation distorts need into entitlement.

The Answer

I love you.
…But not in the way that you want me to.

Odysseus offers compassion without capitulation—familial, not romantic. It is the gentlest boundary he can draw. The ensemble falls silent on Calypso’s anguished reply:

Why in the world won't you love me too?

This unanswered question hangs over the final chords, emphasizing that some loves remain unreciprocated no matter how many centuries ache behind them.

Mythic Resonance

• Calypso’s speech mirrors modern readings where her “curse” is to fall for every castaway, yet EPIC keeps it ambiguous; her longing could stem from curse or sheer loneliness.
• The absence of children in this version sidesteps Homer’s implication of sexual coercion, but annotations note that power imbalance still taints consent.
• The repeated choral line—I'm not sorry for loving you—serves as both mantra and prison bar; love becomes the very chain Odysseus seeks to escape.

Musical Texture

Electronic shimmers echo Warrior of the Mind, connecting Calypso’s inner monologue to Athena’s earlier reflections on regret. When Odysseus speaks, low strings ground the track, contrasting the airy vocal stacks that represent Calypso’s eternity.

Vocabulary of Regret

Notice the shift from hypothetical guilt—“If I pushed you”—to raw emotion—“I’m angry and tired and restless and sad.” Her rhetoric begins as damage control and ends in naked confession, revealing how quickly certainty crumbles once the leaving is real.

Cultural Echoes

Modern audiences may read Calypso’s dynamic through lenses of toxic romance and parasocial attachment. The Greek source material framed gods as capricious; EPIC: The Musical reframes that caprice as a cautionary tale about consent, agency, and the human cost of divine loneliness.

The song closes without reconciliation. Calypso’s question lingers, Odysseus quietly gathers his hope for Ithaca, and the waves begin to carry their separate destinies—hers eternally circling the same shore, his finally pointing homeward.

Song Credits

• Featured: Jorge Rivera-Herrans & Barbara Wangui
• Producer: Jorge Rivera-Herrans
• Composer/Lyricist: Jorge Rivera-Herrans
• Release Date: October 31, 2024
• Genre: Pop, Orchestral, Musical
• Instruments: Nylon guitar, harp, strings, light percussion, choir
• Label: Winion Entertainment LLC
• Mood: Yearning, Defiant
• Length: 3:36
• Track #: 31 on EPIC: The Musical
• Language: English
• Album: EPIC: The Vengeance Saga
• Music Style: Folk-pop/orchestral fusion
• Poetic Meter: Predominantly iambic
• Copyrights © ? 2024 Winion Entertainment LLC

Songs Exploring Themes of Unrequited Love

“Stay” by Rihanna featuring Mikky Ekko captures the ache of wanting someone who is already halfway out the door. Where “Stay” floats on sparse piano and reverb-laden vocals, “Not Sorry For Loving You” layers mythic choirs over strings, yet both showcase raw vulnerability in the lead vocal.

“All I Ask” by Adele pleads for one final night before a parting of ways. Adele’s sweeping belting contrasts with Wangui’s more delicate timbre, but each track hinges on a line of impossible request—Adele asks to “hold on,” Calypso begs Odysseus to “lie and say.”

“Home” from Beauty and the Beast (Broadway) depicts Belle negotiating captivity and yearning. Meanwhile, Calypso’s island prison mirrors Belle’s castle, both using waltz-like swells to underscore the conflict between love and freedom.

Questions and Answers

Why did Jorge Rivera-Herrans pair Calypso with nylon-guitar textures?

The delicate plucking evokes Mediterranean warmth and intimacy, contrasting the storm-driven orchestrations of earlier sagas.

How does Barbara Wangui’s vocal approach shape Calypso?

Her controlled vibrato and soft consonants paint Calypso as wounded rather than villainous, inviting empathy even as she manipulates Odysseus.

What narrative purpose does the song serve?

It marks Odysseus’s release from Ogygia, highlighting themes of consent and letting go while foreshadowing his continued longing for Ithaca.

Was the song popular on streaming platforms?

Yes—by June 2025 the animatic alone had surpassed 2.9 million YouTube views, and Spotify logs place it among Rivera-Herrans’s top five tracks.

Did Rivera-Herrans draw on any specific mythic texts?

He wove Book 5 of Homer’s Odyssey directly into the dialogue, while modernising Calypso’s agency by giving her first-person apology and refusal to apologise.

Awards and Chart Positions

EPIC: The Vengeance Saga, containing “Not Sorry For Loving You,” debuted with over 21 million streams in its first week according to Rivera-Herrans’s Instagram reel.

The saga reached #122 on the Billboard 200 the week of November 16, 2024.

How to Sing?

Vocal Range: Calypso spans A3 – E5; Odysseus sits around C3 – A3. Breath Control: support the sustained “ooh-ooh-ooh” bridge with diaphragmatic breaths every two bars. Tempo: 78 BPM—keep a slight rubato on confession lines, then lock to the click for each refrain. Dynamics: begin in mezzo-piano, swelling to forte on each chorus iteration. Enunciation: lean into the plosives of “pushed” and the aspirate of “hate” to sharpen emotional impact.

Fan and Media Reactions

“Not Sorry for Loving You is not a sad, relatable song… she’s a sympathetic character who did understandable things.”

“The manipulation is even stronger here—and that’s why it hits so hard.”

“I love this track. OR TRY TO EMBRACE ME!”

“Over 21 million streams in less than a week—thank you, EPIC family!”

“Calypso’s anguish is palpable, yet the harmony is downright heavenly.”