Belfast singer/songwriter Gareth Dunlop opens up about grief, numbness, and love’s lasting ache in “Wish I Couldn’t Feel a Thing,” a soul-stirring, breathtakingly beautiful alt-R&B reverie that burns through heartbreak with raw vocal force and a spellbinding chorus that chooses feeling over surrender.
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Stream: “Wish I Couldn’t Feel a Thing” – Gareth Dunlop
Though I know that love’s worth the suffering, sometimes I wish that I couldn’t feel a thing…
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The heart has a survival instinct all its own.
It builds armor out of memory, turns grief into muscle, and imagines numbness as shelter when pain becomes too heavy to hold. Gareth Dunlop’s achingly human “Wish I Couldn’t Feel a Thing” lives inside that impossible bargain: The knowledge that love is worth every scar, and the exhausted wish to be spared the proof.
As soul-stirring as it is breathtakingly beautiful, “Wish I Couldn’t Feel a Thing” burns bright from inside the wound, a soulful eruption of heartbreak, heat, and hard-won catharsis. Released June 12th, the Belfast singer/songwriter’s latest single surges with deep alt-R&B energy, channeling the kind of bold, body-shaking emotion that artists like Jack Garratt, Chet Faker, and James Blake transform into living, breathing soundscapes. It’s seductive and genre-bending, intimate and enormous – a multicolored flare of feeling from an artist who knows exactly how much power can live inside pain.
Colder than steel, harder than granite
Tough as nails and bulletproof
Ironclad in the face of sadness
Maybe then my heart wouldn’t break in two
Void of all its mournful memories
Wouldn’t miss the ones no longer here
Not a word for the seething anger
Oh to live a life without the tears
For Dunlop, that scale comes from years spent building songs from the ground up. Born and raised in Belfast, he left school at 16 to play cover gigs around town, eventually carving a path as a singer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and writer whose music has been heard across television, film, sport, and advertising campaigns. He has produced Foy Vance, written songs recorded by Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, T.I., and John Oates, and toured with the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Van Morrison, Snow Patrol, and Stereophonics – and yet, “Wish I Couldn’t Feel a Thing” still feels rooted in the most personal of places: One voice trying to understand what grief asks of the body.
“There’s no softening what this song is about,” Dunlop tells Atwood Magazine. “We’ve all had moments in life when we wish we couldn’t feel a thing. I know I’ve had more than a few. Putting the song together in the studio was kind of challenging because we wanted to capture the raw emotion of it while still adding new textures and ornamentations that wouldn’t distract from the lyric. We sweated over every part that went down against the vocal until we all agreed that nothing was taking away from the song.”
“When I was writing the words and melody, I could hear the harmonies in my head. I knew the melody would lend itself to more voices. Getting the chance to go down into the belly of the historic Titanic Pump House in Belfast with the band to record a live version was a moment I won’t forget. It’s a cavernous space with so much history. The echoes of our voices bouncing around felt like there were 50 of us singing and not just five.”
Though I know that sorrow’s love’s souvenir
A bitter memento that says love was here
Though I know that love’s worth the suffering
Sometimes I wish
That I couldn’t feel a thing
Wish I couldn’t feel a thing
That pursuit of space shows in the song’s unusual architecture. Dunlop first imagined “Wish I Couldn’t Feel a Thing” as guitar and voice, until a loose banjo line opened a new path in the studio; from there came fretless bass slides, half-finished electric guitar phrases, and drums that arrive only after the song has already said its piece. Those choices leave the track untethered, as if each sound is circling the wound without pinning it down.
That care is palpable. “Wish I Couldn’t Feel a Thing” doesn’t dress heartbreak up in easy resolution; it lets the ache flood the room, then builds around it with pulsing textures, aching harmonies, and a vocal performance that sounds like it’s being pulled straight from the chest. Dunlop sings from the impossible center of grief, where numbness starts to look like mercy and feeling becomes its own kind of torment: “Colder than steel, harder than granite / Tough as nails and bulletproof / Ironclad in the face of sadness / Maybe then my heart wouldn’t break in two.”
The song’s most devastating truth arrives in its refrain: “Though I know that sorrow is love’s souvenir / A bitter memento that says love was here / Though I know that love’s worth the suffering / Sometimes I wish / That I couldn’t feel a thing.” It’s a brutal, beautiful contradiction – the knowledge that pain proves love mattered, and the very human desire to be spared from that proof. Dunlop lets that tension ring, swell, and echo until “Wish I Couldn’t Feel a Thing” becomes a full-bodied reckoning with the cost of having a heart.
Tougher than a sledgehammer
Undisturbed, forever numb
Empty of the lonely echoes
Maybe then my heart wouldn’t come undone
Unburdened by it’s wishful thinking
I would have never known a broken dream
Give me nothing but an empty vessel
Give me life without the pain it brings
Though I know that sorrow is love’s souvenir
A bitter memento that says love was here
Though I know that love’s worth the suffering
Sometimes I wish
In conversation, Dunlop returns again and again to the paradox at the song’s center. He recognizes numbness as fantasy rather than answer, because grief can only exist where love once lived; when asked if it is better to have loved and lost than never loved at all, his answer is immediate: “Always.” This is the deep resolve and true conviction that gives “Wish I Couldn’t Feel a Thing” its lasting force: The song aches for anesthesia, yet every harmony, every shadowed texture, every final repetition chooses tenderness over emptiness.
Atwood Magazine recently caught up with Gareth Dunlop to get closer to the artist behind “Wish I Couldn’t Feel a Thing” – where he comes from, what shaped his ear, how he learned to carry grief, and how he and his band built the song without crowding its wound. Read on as he opens up about numbness, love, Belfast, and the heart’s stubborn will to keep feeling.
Though I know that
love’s worth the suffering
Sometimes I wish
That I couldn’t feel a thing
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:: stream/purchase Wish I Couldn’t Feel a Thing here ::
:: connect with Gareth Dunlop here ::
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Stream: “Wish I Couldn’t Feel a Thing” – Gareth Dunlop
A CONVERSATION WITH GARETH DUNLOP
Atwood Magazine: Gareth, for those who are just discovering you today through this writeup, what do you want them to know about you and your music?
Gareth Dunlop: I live in Belfast in the North of Ireland with my wife Amy, our two kids Joanie and Wilson, and our dog Daisy. I’ve toured and travelled across a lot of places, but Belfast has always been home… I have a deep love affair with the place. I started making music on my first electric guitar when I was around 14… singing came a little after that, and then I started trying to write my own songs. I left school when I was 16 and started playing cover gigs around town, and eventually putting on my own shows where I could play some of my own tunes from time to time. I’ve been writing, recording, producing, and releasing music ever since.
With us being so many years into your career, can you recommend a couple deeper cuts or personal highlights from the Gareth Dunlop catalog for Atwood’s crate-digging audience to sink their teeth into?
Gareth Dunlop: I think I would have to go with the Devil Mocks Me EP, recorded back in 2011 in Nashville, TN. I got the chance to work with seven-time Grammy Award-winning producer Brent Maher along with a group of incredible musicians. The EP leans a little more into the soul side of things and feels very different to the sounds I’ve been chasing in the last couple of years. A couple of the songs from that project went on to do some crazy things… T.I. sampled “Lay It Down” for his single “King” from his 2014 album Paperwork, and “Trick of The Moonlight” turned up in an episode of House M.D.
Who are some of your musical north stars, and what are you most excited about the music you're making today?
Gareth Dunlop: I just recently got my record player back up and going and immediately reached for the stuff that inspired me when I was starting out. Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Van Morrison…I remember listening to “Blood On The Tracks” when I was 15 and it being this seminal moment in my mind… I was like, “Okay… I have to know how to do this.”
Those albums had such a profound effect on me when I was starting out… I wanted to be able to make people feel the way they made me feel. I still gravitate to those records.
I think what excites me most about the music I’m making at the moment is that I’m making it with friends… really great friends who are just as obsessed with the sonic chase as I am. We all produce music independently so when we come together on my stuff we sweat together over the smallest details. Everything feels considered from multiple angles and every part is fought for.
Earlier this year you released the utterly beautiful single, “Find Myself.” What’s the story behind this song?
Gareth Dunlop: This is a song I wrote a while back out in Nashville with the incredibly talented Seth Mosley and Madeline Edwards. I’d just met them for the first time that morning and we set about writing something together. The “first date co-writes” can be such a strange thing sometimes but that one felt like we were all shooting at the same moon from the first notions. We all had our own wells to pull from… our own experiences of being a little lost in the world…
You've shared a bit about what “Wish I Couldn't Feel a Thing” is about – the moment of grief where you wish you could just go numb, and stop feeling entirely – but I'd love to dig even deeper if you'll let me, and we can talk about what brought you there, and how you made your way back.
Gareth Dunlop: It’s a tough thing to try and talk about and articulate in any way that sounds like I know what I’m talking about… I’ve learned enough about myself over the years to know that I have a hard time letting go. Letting go of people, relationships, jobs, pets, instruments, time…
I think I play things on repeat in my head too much… maybe that’s a universal thing and we all do it just as much as each other.
The song is one big contradiction… I don’t think anyone would ever want to feel nothing and I know I wouldn’t. But it’s been in those moments of grief where I’d give anything to turn my brain off for while and come back to it rested to try and hold it again. I don’t know who said it originally but it kind of sums it up better than I ever could – grief doesn’t get lighter over time, we just get better at carrying it.
With the benefit of hindsight, what do you think being numb – or the fantasy of feeling nothing – would have granted? What is the true benefit of that, if any at all?
Gareth Dunlop: I don’t think there is any benefit. Grief is one of those wild rides that can only happen if you truly loved and adored what’s no longer there. There’s a beauty in it that says it was all worth it.
I love the metaphors you employ, even from the onset – “cooler than steel, harder than granite, tough as nails and bulletproof.” Simple, yet deeply evocative. One you knew your subject matter, what was your experience like actually writing this song?
Gareth Dunlop: I had the melody in my head first… for weeks humming it around the house and singing bits of it into my phone so I didn’t lose it. I didn’t know what to write about until I did… it’s still a mystery to me how songs get written. I think the melody spoke to the feeling and then I started thinking about all the people no longer here and how devastating those thoughts can be. It was really hard to write in an emotional sense. I think that’s what probably pushed the lyric into space of “I wish I wasn’t thinking about this right now.”
I think in many ways, “Wish I Couldn't Feel a Thing” invites a familiar question: Is it better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all? – albeit from a different angle. What's your answer to that timeless, poignant question?
Gareth Dunlop: Always.
This song is soft, yet loses none of that sweet folk heat or cinematic energy that you've brought to so much of your catalog. What was your vision for this song, sonically, and how did you go about bringing that vision to life in studio?
Gareth Dunlop: My first thought in the studio was that the song should probably live as just a guitar and vocal… Every other idea I had just felt like it might get in the way too much and take away from the intimacy I was hoping for. It wasn’t until my guitarist Pete picked up a banjo “I think as a bit of a joke” and started playing some really loose lines… for what ever reason that seemed to kick open a door into a room I hadn’t even thought about. It led us to trying to find these little unstructured oddities that never repeat…they come and go as the track keeps pushing forward. Fretless bass thats slides its way in and back out, banjo that answers the melody but never always, electric guitar parts that creep under the main acoustic but never finish their lines… and drums that only come in once the song is over.
I don’t know why it works for me… I think it just makes the whole thing feel untethered in a good way.
What do you hope listeners take away from “Wish I Couldn't Feel a Thing,” and what have you taken away from creating it and now putting it out?
Gareth Dunlop: If people can see a part of their own journey in the song then I’d be over the moon. Songwriting for me has always been about dissecting and trying to make sense of the big themes in life. If people hear my take on some of those things and can relate then it’s been more than worth making it and putting it out.
It’s always daunting putting music out into the world… and especially a song like this. I think my biggest takeaway from writing it and putting it out there is that grief can feel so isolating and lonely… but it’s something we all feel and will feel. It’s another thing we all have in common.
In the spirit of paying it forward, who are you listening to these days that you would recommend to our readers?
Gareth Dunlop: A good buddy of mine, Kevin Dailey, has a few projects out under the name “Garden Friend.” Insane writing, musicianship and production. Check out his 2022 EP, Beulah.
I was a little late to the Adrianne Lenker party but now I’m not leaving… her 2024 album Bright Future has been on constant rotation. And lastly check out a band from my neck of the woods called Vera. I don’t think they’ve been together long, but they’ve been releasing some absolute banging singles over the last while! Check out their tune “Lo-Fi.”
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:: stream/purchase Wish I Couldn’t Feel a Thing here ::
:: connect with Gareth Dunlop here ::
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Stream: “Wish I Couldn’t Feel a Thing” – Gareth Dunlop
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