I’ve made no secret of my love for LÉON and her music in previous posts, and she’s delivered yet again with her outstanding latest single And It Breaks My Heart. This marks her third release this year – preceded by In A Strangers’ Arms (February) and Who You Lovin’ (April) – building on the momentum of her debut album’s massive success in 2019. She’s hinted at the possibility of a second album this year, but already the three singles she’s released so far tell a full story on their own – if listened to in reverse order.
So let’s start with the most recent, the beginning of the story.
And It Breaks My Heart may be one of LÉON's most gorgeous heartbreak tracks to date. She brings us into the immediate aftermath of a relationship ending – plunging directly into the gritty sadness of it all. She’s always been a master at keeping a song animated through a catchy pop beat while still imbuing it with sincere emotion, and this song showcases just that. With a symphony of violins to add colourful depth, she sings with pure melancholy about the absurd experience of losing love. Her lyrics perfectly capture the feeling immediately after a breakup of longing to say so much to a person but being unable to because the intimacy that you created together has abruptly disappeared (“Where did love go? / It’s right in your hands then it’s suddenly gone").
In a Best Fit interview she's described how she likes “using different sounds to make [her music] sound grander in different ways… Recording real strings, I wanted to go back to my first songs, which had strings on, and do everything very old school for this one.”
The result is indeed grand. She allows the emotion of the song its due drama by making the orchestrally-backed chorus feel monumental, especially thanks to the way the strings twirl upwards into it every time. The echo effect on her voice adds a constant haze of nostalgia, and as always she plays with subtle lyrical rhymes through the various vocal tics that are so uniquely hers. (You might not know she was saying “door” in the pre-chorus unless you looked up the lyrics.) This is a feature in all of her songwriting – never loaded with obvious rhymes, instead always playing through like a natural conversation or train of thought. It makes the emotion feel all the more genuine.
All said, And It Breaks Your Heart is just extremely relatable. Whether you’ve been the one to leave or the one left behind, this song will pull at your heart long after you’ve listened.
Backtracking to Who You Lovin’ gives us the next chapter of the story: we now find LÉON trying (unsuccessfully) to get her ex out of her head. The steady guitar riff holds onto the tension throughout the first verse like a metronome, perfectly reflecting how she sings about trying to “let it be” and shake the person from her thoughts: “All this time I’ve spent hurting / wondering what you think of me.” And just as she confesses that she can’t help but get carried away, the instruments take off with her into the chorus.
LÉON has described: “It was a mixture of being mad and really tired of someone, but also a strong need to be seen and feeling wanted at the same time.” This song is such a great ode to that frustration – both sassy and sad.
The only complaint I have is how short the chorus is: you’re swept up with the sudden pick-me-up of the song but don’t have time to settle in before it takes off again into the second verse. The bridge is my favourite part because of the drama of the violins: they play with such urgency, admitting the more sincere side of the singer’s desire to move on.
Finally, LÉON brings the story full circle with In A Stranger’s Arms – her stripped-back acoustic ballad about the willingness to throw yourself back in the deep end with a new person. She now sings with a bit more hindsight about what she’s gone through, not decorating her words but just telling it like it is: “They say heartbreak always hurts the worst the first time / You feel you’re gonna die, you’re blind, it’s hard to see.” She expresses bluntly the ways that a break up can affect you, from cutting your hair to taking up old habits: “I’m smoking again / know how much you hate it / but you weren’t here to tell me.”
Similar to Angie McMahon, she doesn’t romanticize how it feels to move on (“It’s not as if I wanna run right back to you / I just want time to pass so I’ll get over you") and ends the story on a perfectly bittersweet note of optimism – ready to go through it all again.
These singles have awarded LÉON the continued spotlight that she deserves, and now we await her upcoming album ---
in the meantime, happy listening! :)
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