Singer/songwriter Nick Folwarczny shares love’s bruises and scars on the beautifully bittersweet and dreamy “Long, Long While,” a tender and brooding folk reverie born out of raw, unfiltered, and unabating heartache.
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Stream: “Long, Long While” – Nick Folwarczny
As much as it hurts to be broken up with, I’d much rather have a clean, definitive cutoff than some long, drawn-out, ill-defined dissipation.
When you know things are over, you can move on; you can do whatever healing needs to be done, mend whatever wounds may need mending, and continue living your life. But when you don’t know where you stand and everything is in limbo, it’s as if your love life – and by extension, your whole world – is stuck; you’re in an indefinite holding pattern, waiting and weighting, with no end in sight.
And as Nick Folwarczny so poignantly expresses in his beautifully bittersweet song “Long, Long While,” that uncertainty can wear on a soul. The 19-year-old singer/songwriter shares love’s bruises and scars on his latest single, a tender and brooding folk reverie born out of raw, unfiltered, and unabating heartache.
Because he doesn’t know if things are truly over – and because of that, he’s not moving on; he’s standing still, holding onto that shred of hope that maybe – just maybe – things might work out, though we know (just from listening to this song) that they never will.
So, tell me how you’ve been
Are you still doing fine
It’s been a while since you left
I haven’t seen the sun in a long, long time
I’m waiting for you every day
But I know you won’t come home
It’s kind of funny in a way
How we don’t believe the things we know
So I’ll paint a picture
with my own two hands
With a sunset, trees and mountains
in between them
By the lake house in the summer
But the water’s cold as winter like me
Independently released March 20, 2024, “Long, Long While” is the heavy-hearted exhale of an exhausted romantic. Nick Folwarczny’s fourth career single – his first since last August’s soul-stirring “Drive Slow,” which went viral and currently sits at over 400,000 streams on Spotify – is a feverish, folk-stained dream whose enchanting acoustic guitars, gently glistening pianos, and driving drums can’t mask the aches and pains within the artist’s passionate, emotionally charged voice.
A multi-instrumentalist and producer from Columbus, Ohio, Folwarczny has introduced himself over the past two years as a heart-on-sleeve, pop-leaning folk artist a la Noah Kahan and Gregory Alan Isakov. His songwriting style is candid and confessional: He holds nothing back as he paints worlds of breathtaking feeling through gentle, dramatic acoustic instruments that shine bright in spite of any lingering darkness.
And it is that ability – to invite audiences deep into his world, bringing us face-to-face with the most vulnerable parts of his (and our own) humanity with seemingly effortless ease – that makes Folwarczny an artist worth paying very close attention to over the months and years ahead. His talents are especially potent on the intimate “Long, Long While,” a delicate eruption from his innermost, visceral depths.
But the sun hasn’t risen
In a long, long time
And in another world she’d listen
For a long, long while
She’s a ghost to her ambitions
But in the way she moves, I don’t mind
No, I don’t mind
“I fell in love with a girl during the wrong time of both of our lives,” Folwarczny tells Atwood Magazine. “She was moving out of state and I was staying put, but we made the most of what time we had. I shortly realized after she moved that she didn’t really ever reach out to me, but I always kind of waited.”
But the sun hasn’t risen
In a long, long time
And in another world she’d listen
For a long, long while
She’s a ghost to her ambitions
But in the way she moves, I don’t mind
As musically warm and wondrous as it is emotionally turbulent and tortured, “Long, Long While” feels, in many ways, like Folwarczny’s own means of processing and coming to terms with the end of his relationship; as if writing this was a way of him giving himself the permission he needed to move on, accept the inevitable, and set himself free. Self-written and mostly self-produced (with some additional production from Phin Choukas), “Long, Long While” reminds us what it feels like to love, to lose, and to long for a kind of connection you’ll never have again. It’s a reminder that not everything in life is black and white, and that no matter how hard we try, navigating those grey areas of uncertainty will be difficult and painful.
And yet, Folwarczny’s comforting melodies stand in contrast to that bitter truth; his soft, sweetly soothing delivery reassures us that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and that we’ll make it through – perhaps with a few bruises and battle scars, but we’ll make it through. “Long, Long While” comes from a dark, dark place, but the song itself is full of life and light – ready to be enjoyed on repeat all spring and summer long.
Now I’m burning all my bridges
So I can say she’s mine
And at the end of every valley
There’s an end in sight
She’s a ghost to her ambitions
But with a killer smile, I’ll die
So I’ll die
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© William Wark
© William Wark
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