Wearing your heart on your sleeve sounds like a noble and brave thing to do, a repudiation of hiding yourself away from the world and saying “Here I am. This is me and I’m proud of who I am.”
It might be scary to do, but these five artists have all done it, and in ways that will delight and enthrall you with the braveness of their lyrics and their willingness to put it out there for everyone to see.
Every single song in this set of five says something profoundly meaningful, and listening to them is an exciting, inspiring thing to do because it reminds you that there is power in being your authentic self or fighting for what you really believe in, even more so when it’s set to compelling music and propelled by an invigorating mix of passion and fury, or both.
So, yeah, hearts on sleeves are scary but they’re also amazingly liberating and if you’re looking to get inspired, take these songs for a test listen and see where all the empowering honest takes you.
I’m betting it will be somewhere awesome …
“Pressure Makes Diamonds” by Nina Nesbitt
Hailing from Scotland, singer-songwriter Nina Nesbitt is one of those gifted artists who seems to carry a whole world of emotion in her nuanced, powerful vocals.
Her emotive fullness is on full display in “Pressure Makes Diamonds”, which she describes as “about trying to navigate my way through the societal pressures I started to feel as a woman in my mid-20s”, a song which feels as heartfelt as you’ll get in a pop song.
A deliciously chilled piece of mid-fi music which stands in perfect contrast with its emotionally introspective intensity, “Pressure Makes Diamonds” is one of those songs that feel like a major confessional writ large as Nesbitt wears her heart very much on her sleeve.
The song, drawn from the artist’s upcoming album, Älskar (2 September) – according to Rockshot Mag, it means “‘to love’ in Swedish, a reflection of Nina’s half-Swedish heritage” – also comes with a very cool clip which visually brings the song even further alive, with Nesbitt playing “a host of stereotypical female characters which are all common in fiction, but which are closer to one-dimensional clichés than they are to real people.”
“Milk Teeth” by Seraphina Simone
Seraphina Simone is another artist who know her way some beautifully honest emotionality.
In her song “Milk Teeth”, the artist who grew up “between London and Los Angeles“, explores what it’s like “growing up feeling ugly and invisible” and how she pretzeled herself trying to be an “idealised [white] woman” in line with the skewed beauty standards of the day.
“Rather than questioning the system and thinking how fucked up it was that I was made to feel like I wasn’t enough because of the colour of my skin and body shape, I internalised it and made it my mission to fit in, spiralling into self-loathing and self-denial about my own heritage because of some fear of being too Other. It’s ironic that as an indie kid that scene was all about a community of awkward misfits, except all the misfits looked the same. It’s taken me a long time to unpick all that bullshit and accept myself as I am.” (SONO)
It’s a penetratingly personal look at identity, and accepting our authentic self, set to a gently lolloping track that’s both sublimely listenable pop and a treatise of self that moves with its truthfulness.
“Angry Woman” by Ashe
American singer-songwriter Ashe, who made a name for herself when her song “Moral of the Story” featured on the soundtrack for 2019 film, To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You, is another artist fighting for the truth of who she is.
It percolates with fury and passion in “Angry Woman” and that’s for good reason.
“‘Angry Woman’ is my enough is enough record,” proclaimed Ashe. “There’s always been this sense that as a woman in this world I’ve needed to ‘behave’ and ‘play nice,’ cutting off all this power and confidence that as women we should be demonstrating on a daily basis. ‘Angry Woman,’ in many ways, is about being fed up with abuse of power and that it sometimes takes a little righteous anger to make a change. Especially in today’s climate, I want to see women getting a little angry, because we should be.” (Girl.com.au)
Matched with music that surges with guitar and drum-driven beats, and accompanied by a video that plays homage to “Yoko Ono’s famous 1964 cut-piece performance in which she encouraged audience members to cut off a small piece of her clothing, which was theirs to keep”, “Angry Woman” is an affectingly intense repudiation of impossibly tone-deaf standards and a re-embrace of what it means to be a woman and especially Ashley Rae Wilson aka Ashe.
“Ruin” by Cate Canning
If you think a song called “Ruin” is going to be more than a simple light and hearty pop song, you’d be right.
Resplendent with what Line of Best Fit calls “ethereal and glistening pop”, and sung with light but emotively rich vocals by Vancouverite-turned-Londoner Canning, the intensity of “Ruin” comes from being in the throes of new love.
It’s a lovely place to be but also frighteningly overwhelming at times, and Canning captures what it’s like to be “really freaked out about dating and my life, and … figuring myself out constantly” but overawed and in the blush of being someone that seems to make sense of it all, even if there’s a sneaking fear they could also ruin it all.
The song captures the thrill and the fear so beautifully and affectingly – “You’re gonna ruin a lot of good things for me / Maybe this whole entire city by the time that I leave” – but is also “almost a love letter to this city” says the artist who says “Ruin” is “yelling at the top of your lungs!!”
“She Can Dance” by Betty Who
Yes, yes Betty Who only just appeared in Songs, songs and more songs #68, a few short weeks back but when she’s releasing pop songs as heartfelt and meaningful as her current crop of tunes, how can you not feature them?
Pretty much off the musical press this week, “She Can Dance” by the Australian-American singer-songwriter is a gorgeous declaration of keeping on, and doing it with a dance in your emphatic step, even in the face of some diabolically dark stuff.
“Couple records come and gone
Never thought it’d take this long
Sometimes I wonder who the hell I’m foolin’
Got no trophies on the shelf
Record deal went straight to hell
I swear to God I don’t know what I’m doing.”
That’s some very real, intense self-doubt and fearfulness but while Who is refreshingly honest about what it all feels like, she returns again and again in the upliftingly vibrant, and joyously danceable choruses that “she can dance”, a tenacity that acknowledges life’s harsh realities but which refuses to be weighed down or beaten down by them, leaving feeling by the end of the world that you can take on the world too, no matter how bad it gets.
SONGS, SONGS SND MORE SONGS EXTRA!
ABBA have been releasing a series of brand-new lyric videos to coincide with their Voyage revival – which is, to be fair, an extension of their 30-year-old or so revival since the world decided the world’s best pop band were cool again (pssst for huge lifelong fans like me, they never stopped being cool but anyway) – and the latest is the disco joy of “Lay All Your Love On Me”, drawn from their seventh album Super Trouper …