A gentle ray of soft pop sunshine, Maeve Steele’s new song “slow down” is a sweet summery soundtrack to rest, relaxation, and reseting.
Stream: “Slow Down” – Maeve Steele
Gliding on wings of tender acoustic warmth, Maeve Steele’s new single is a reminder that we don’t have to be “on” all the time: We can step back and take time out for ourselves, and we’ll be better for it. A gentle ray of soft pop sunshine, “slow down” is a sweet summery soundtrack to rest, relaxation, and resetting.
Maybe we’ll just take a walk
Let phrases fall around the block
I just wanna get lost on our own time
I’m a little sad things end like that
the weight of time is swelling up inside
Levys bout to break and it’s waves that i can’t hide
and it’s all coming like a soft summer breeze,
the winds are turning colors getting me bittersweet
I’m trying to listen what it whispers to me
Let it slow, I know it all goes
Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “slow down,” Maeve Steele’s second single of 2022 following February’s grooving “Tycho.” Hailing from the Bay Area and now based in Los Angeles, Maeve Steele has proved herself an emotive and intimately expressive singer/songwriter over the past three years. Her 2020 debut EP Barefoot remains an excellent introduction to her lilting, left-of-center indie pop sensibilities, although every song she releases seems to inhabit its own world of sound, color, and feeling. The synth-soaked “Shimmer,” released last August, is a perfect example of this singular nature in action.
We all want the same things, but this world keeps on changing…
“slow down” represents a particularly tender moment of repose for Steele. A light song built off a sweetly strummed acoustic guitar pattern, with piano and xylophone adding further contours, Steele’s latest offering finds her basking in a moment of introspective rumination and reverie. “Maybe we’ll just take a walk, let phrases fall around the block,” she sings at the outset. “I just wanna get lost on our own time… I’m a little sad things end like that, the weight of time is swelling up inside, Levys bout to break and it’s waves that I can’t hide.”
“I’m singing to myself as much as anyone else in that song,” Steele explains. “There’s a lot of things in life we can’t control, and as I’m entering adulthood and watching everyone I love get older, I have to remind myself to step back and be present because the moments seem to go by faster and faster every day.”
Lost in her own daydream, Steele takes on the grandeur and vastness of a single moment in time. The song’s chorus is a gateway to that escape:
Do you think we could open up
I’m trying to find answers like I’m trying to find love
Do you think we could
Slow it all down
Waves keep crashing and the world turns around
“I wrote ‘Slow Down’ almost two years ago when I was bored in my childhood bedroom,” Steele tells Atwood Magazine. “I definitely felt a bit lost, a bit scared about the future. I had just graduated college and was about to move to LA. In the last two years, I think I’ve gotten some answers about myself, I’ve fallen in love, but I’m still looking for those things in different ways. It’s fun for the song to mean something different to current me than it did to the version of myself that wrote it. I like to think I was writing some of the things I was looking for into existence. It’s served as a good reminder to myself; it’s okay to slow down and take an extra beat to think about what I actually want.”
“My favorite aspect of the song is the chime sound in the background. It’s from a pipe xylophone that was found under my parents bed when I was home for Christmas. I took a voice memo of me whacking at it and I love that it made it into the final thing. This song was written out of boredom in my bedroom during a time surrounded by family, so it’s cool to have a sonic representation of that.”
I’m used to fast, I’m good at ease
I’m trying to be vulnerable if you’ll let me
I just wanna hear all your stories
You’ve got a past, and nothings free
its all a little harder than i thought it’d be
But I don’t wanna go baby slow it down the old way
and it’s all coming like a soft summer breeze,
the winds are turning colors getting me bittersweet
I’m trying to listen what it whispers to me
Let it flow, let it slow, it all goes
Out everywhere May 13, “slow down” is a vessel of reflection and an invitation to breathe. Steele’s stirring voice and her relaxed, moody instrumental work foster a space for all to dwell in our own depths; to find our own peace in the often chaotic waves of everyday life. Stream “slow down” exclusively on Atwood Magazine!
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Stream: “Slow Down” – Maeve Steele
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