When Letting Go Feels Like the Only Way to Survive: “I Stopped Trying” by Sydney Rose & Delaney Bailey

Sydney Rose and Delaney Bailey’s “I Stopped Trying” is a heartbreak anthem for when you finally let go – not out of anger, but exhaustion.

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Stream: “I Stopped Trying” – Sydney Rose & Delaney Bailey

There’s a specific kind of ache that comes with giving your all – your softness, your patience, your overthinking 2 AM spirals – and still watching it fall apart.

“I Stopped Trying,” the hauntingly tender new single by Sydney Rose and Delaney Bailey, doesn’t wallow in that heartbreak. It drifts through it, like a quiet confession whispered through tears you’ve already cried too many times. It’s for the moments when you’re not angry anymore – just tired, burnt out from self-doubt and always hoping things will get better. It’s not about giving up on love. It’s about choosing yourself instead.

I Stopped Trying - Sydney Rose & Delaney Bailey — I Stopped Trying – Sydney Rose & Delaney Bailey

This song couldn’t feel more timely. At the end of summer – that wistful, liminal space between too much and not enough – “I Stopped Trying” lands like a truth you’ve been avoiding. So many of us carry around silent grief for the things that didn’t work, especially when we believed they would. Sydney and Delaney tap into that collective vulnerability with the kind of lyricism that makes you feel like they’ve read your diary.

“I Stopped Trying” is a standalone single released on August 29th, 2025 – but it’s already earned a permanent place in our broken hearts. For longtime fans of Sydney Rose, this track continues her signature sound: intimate, aching, and unflinchingly honest. Rose, the Georgia-born and Nashville-based indie-folk artist, has built a career on the kind of songwriting that makes you feel less alone – from her viral “Turning Page” cover to her poignant EPs and debut album, One Sided.

Delaney Bailey, her collaborator here, brings her own quiet magic. The Chicago-based indie folk singer first captured hearts with Loving & Losing and her deeply personal EP What We Leave Behind. Her voice, like Rose’s, is soft-spoken but devastating – making their pairing feel less like a collaboration and more like a conversation between two versions of the same soul.

“I Want to Be as Real and as Vulnerable as Possible”: Finding Peace in Simplicity with Sydney Rose

:: INTERVIEW ::

Musically, “I Stopped Trying” is exactly what it needs to be – nothing more, nothing less.

It opens with Sydney Rose’s familiar featherlight vocals and acoustic guitar, immediately pulling you into her world. It’s conversational, vulnerable, like she’s talking directly to you – or maybe to herself. Delaney enters seamlessly, her voice complementing Sydney’s like two parallel thoughts finally aligning.

The production is dreamy but raw: soft piano, subtle guitar, ambient vocal layers that shimmer like distant thoughts. And then comes the bridge – a brief, almost celebratory swell that tricks your ears for a second. For a moment, you think maybe this isn’t a sad song. Maybe it’s a love song. And it is. Just not the kind with a happy ending.

Lyrically, this song wrecks you slowly. The standout line, “In my own body, I’m out to get me,” captures the cruelest kind of betrayal – the kind that comes from within. It’s about the internal war of being in a relationship while constantly wondering if you’re too much, not enough, or just plain wrong. You spiral. You overthink. You bend until you forget what you looked like when you were whole.

There’s another gut-punch: “No, you can’t be what he wants.” It’s not dramatic. It’s not even bitter. It’s just the quiet realization that maybe you’ve been trying to be someone else for someone who was never really yours.

This is a song about heartbreak – but not the explosive, angry kind. It’s the heartbreak of shame, of being exhausted by your own fear of being unlovable. Of deciding that, this time, you’re not going to fight for someone who made you feel so small.

“I Stopped Trying” is for the ones who left and the ones who stayed.

For anyone who’s ever felt like they weren’t enough – this song will feel like a mirror. It unlocks the part of you that remembers how it felt to be passed over, ghosted, or simply left behind. But more than that, it’s for the moment after – when you stop chasing closure and start holding yourself.

It’s a song for late August. For writing in your journal at midnight. For the text you never sent. For the version of yourself you keep trying to fix. Play it when you need to feel seen. When you’re ready to let go. When you’re still hurting, but healing anyway.

Sydney Rose has done it again. She’s taken a deeply universal emotion and made something quietly devastating with it. Something that reminds us – gently but firmly – that we’re not alone in our fear, our shame, or our exhaustion.

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