On this edition of LITM Pop Picks tracks take on sentiment and emotion in all their shades and tones. From acoustic ballads to synth-pop with darker notes, each track captures vulnerability from different perspectives. This list features GIDEON UNNA, Danielle Schroeder, Brett Gleason and more!
1. GIDEON UNNA - Modest Love
‘Modest Love’ by GIDEON UNNA and Kaley Halperin is a soft acoustic track that feels settled in its emotions. The song’s light, sentimental tone breezes past, capturing the lightness of romantic love during what feels like the honeymoon stage.
“...When I wake up in the morning, I can feel that love is real….”. The light acoustic guitar and piano melodies paint the picture of a relationship that has reached it’s natural stasis (in a way), while its trepiditious key change, though injecting a bit of uneasiness, feels grounded by the settled calm that seems to prevail through the track.
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2. Impostora - Empacar
‘Empacar’ by Impostora is a dreamy synth track with groovy elements all coelescing to build a tone. The melodies seem to pack together, layering into something solid and steady as the track progresses.
Each drop feels like a funky, unique pull towards a slightly varied experience, each element of the melody flowing with the song’s dynamic rhythm. By its last drop, the melody seems to rewind, pulling in emotions that were attempting flow past while trying create variations in the rhythm. The song builds into something bright and varied, rife with change and dynamic tugs in different directions tonally.
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3. Danielle Schroeder - The Ache of Living
‘The Ache of Living’ by Danielle Schroeder is a sentimental pop power ballad that attempts to use it sentiment to process loss in the midst of weighty responsibilities. Its tone seems resigned, as though finally acknowledging that this is the weight of life, “...the ache of living…”. Here the ache is the destablising thought that multiple feelings and truths can exist at the same time.
“...This wave of grief is making it hard to breathe as the responsibilities close in on me…”. The sentiment on the tracks lies in its acceptance of life and all its trials and allowing the feelings that create to flow through song.
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4. Fore Fader - All I Ever
‘All I Ever’ by Fore Fader layers its soft, acoustic and ambient build with expansive sentimentality. “...All I ever need…”. The song’s gorgeous, subdued rhythms only build in emotion and intensity spiralling towards an almost epic expansiveness.
The song’s calm expansiveness seem to root its emotion somewhere between vulnerability and this swell that feels settled but daunting at the same time. There’s this rhythmic spiral towards equilibrium that seems to hold a little bit of weight on the song before that expansive, liberating mood seemingly takes over. The soundscape is whole in its expansiveness, elevating itself towards something less restrictive and more freeing.
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5. Brett Gleason - Sensory Deprived
‘Sensory Deprived’ by Brett Gleason feels offbeat, unsettling and distant from sentiment and emotion. There’s this block to emotion that the song communicates through lyric and melody that feels visceral and a bit daunting.
There’s this sense of detached separation that prevails through the track, with the narrator seemingly describing this sense of depersonalisation as it flows over them. “...I can’t leave ‘cause I’m not here…”. “...I don’t know if I can define how I feel this time…”.
Every element of sound feels subdued as though it’s being played deep underwater, or in a sensory deprivation tank, with each element seemingly wrapping around itself. Detached and isolated.
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