Hey, let’s talk about our feelings.
The feeling of being forgotten – by a friend, by a colleague, by a past partner, by a current partner, or by your very own self.
It’s a feeling we’ve all grown accustomed to in our ailing world which demands isolation. For those of us enduring forced solitude under the suffocating grey clouds of winter, we are doubly accustomed to this. That is why we welcome the lightness Dawn Somek uses to express this ‘forgotten’ feeling in her latest single, “One day”.
Relying on a simple arrangement of her rich and velvety voice over a free, acoustic guitar accompaniment, the heaviness of the ‘forgotten’ feeling is infused with color, rhythm, energy and most importantly, hope. Balancing the heavy and the light is nothing new for Somek. “Bring me all of them, the whole spectrum of emotions,” she writes when describing herself. The whole spectrum is exactly what we get in this track. A deeply felt existential crisis but balanced with a perspective that feels full, whole and wide.
Although there are qualities in Somek’s voice that threaten to break our little Tonehearts (what is it about a specific vocal tone that can do that???), there is also great optimism. It’s almost as if we can imagine her singing the emotive lyrics with a delicate, subtle smile. It’s a smile we carry when listening to the song, and it’s a smile we’d like to see on all the Tonemiller’s faces as we enter this new, confusing, hopefully-more-hopeful new year.
Best listened to while: brewing your morning coffee on a particularly rainy, bleh day (or on your way to Starbucks, we don’t judge, just get your morning cup of Joe)
Listen for this moment: 00:59 the beautiful, gentle harmonization over the lyrics, “What about me?”