After this year we’ve all had, we all need some sonic empowerment. As Daniel Brockman notes in his annual Year in Pop piece for Vanyaland, 2016 was a strange and rather disappointing year for music, one that’s leaving us a bit disenfranchised over what possibly lies ahead. But this discomfort and trepidation wasn’t just limited to music; from celebrity and iconic deaths to elections and societal tension and a mounting sense of dread and anxiety, 2016 was a year we probably won’t look back upon too fondly. More than a few folk will be shouting “eff ’16” when the ball drops on New Year’s Eve next weekend.
We need a clean break. And we’ll take it while we’re listening to ZOË’s new single “Life After You”.
The vibrant, lush pop track, which we are premiering this morning on Vanyaland, is actually about a friendship that needed to come to a end. We hope ZOË excuses us for aligning it with 2016, but we’re all eager for this dreadful year to reach its conclusion as well.
“It was causing me more pain than pleasure,” ZOË tells us of the friendship in question, of which we are relating to quite intensely, “but I am a person who will give someone chance after chance if I love them. However, while the song stemmed from frustration at myself for not being able to cut the chord, it also ended up encompassing a lot of other relationships I’ve had in my life — romantic and otherwise — which made writing it incredibly therapeutic! I have been feeling really great lately because I feel as though my life has essentially lead up to the release of this song. That might be a weird thing to say, but it’s such a surreal feeling to finally be able to share my art with people after years and years of working, and on such a grand scale as the internet.”
We feel that, ZOË, we feel that.
“Life After You” was produced by Moritz Braun — who ZOË calls “one of the most talented creators I have ever had the pleasure of working with” — and we feel like it predicts big things to come from the young songwriter.
And while we all hope 2017 brings about new changes and a restoration of the good times, it will definitely bring about a new start for ZOË, who has concluded her studies at Berklee College of Music and will relocate to Los Angeles in the new year to pursue music.
With new life comes new changes, and we can all only hope things will all work out for all of us.