'Lucky' tells the story, in the third person, of a young Hollywood star whose life appears to with everything anyone could want — awards, , and constant public attention. The world looks at her with and insists, again and again, that she is lucky. Yet the song uses to let us, the listeners, see what the surrounding world cannot: at night she cries alone, suggesting her bright life is partly a . Beneath the cameras and the applause lies something quietly — and that is the song's real subject.