Portair and Joy Williams channel the slow, painful end of a relationship into “Loved By You,” a haunting, soul-stirring indie folk duet from Portair’s forthcoming debut album ‘Gathering Dust’ that finds devastating beauty in the moment love remains after its warmth is gone.
Stream: “Loved By You” – Portair & Joy Williams
I’ve lost the feeling of how to be loved by you…
* * *
Portair opens his latest song with a gut-wrenching confession: He can no longer feel the love he once knew.
It’s still there, but the warmth has gone out of it. The distance has already settled in; the scars have already formed. What remains is the terrible clarity of knowing that wanting someone and being able to stay with them are no longer the same thing.
That fracture gets a devastating voice on “Loved By You,” a spellbinding indie folk duet with Joy Williams that aches with the contradiction between wanting a life together and knowing it has reached its end. Gentle, heartfelt, and dreamlike, the song carries enormous emotional weight in the lightest of touches – breathtaking in its intimacy, and utterly disarming in the way it lets love, loss, and the first flicker of starting over exist side by side.
I’ve lost the feeling
of how to be loved by you
It’s put me into the
dark and you out of the blue
It’s been the longest
sudden change of pace
Slow to build and quick to break
Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “Loved By You,” the haunting new song from Portair and Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Joy Williams. The Australian-born, Berlin-based Portair – the solo project of songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Drew Southwell – has spent the past six years carving out his own corner of alternative music, moving fluidly between intimate indie folk, atmospheric electronics, and cinematic soundscapes. After four EPs, collaborations with artists including VÉRITÉ, WYNNE, and Emily James, and years spent composing and performing across continents, his first full-length album has been a long time coming.
Gathering Dust, out December 4, marks Portair’s proper debut album, and “Loved By You” is already its eighth single, following a steady stream of releases dating back to October 2025. For Southwell, the record is about accumulation: The feelings, conversations, and former selves we leave unattended until their weight becomes impossible to ignore. “Loved By You” arrives at one of those reckoning points – the moment when all that emotional buildup finally demands an answer.
I’ve lost the feeling of how to be loved by you
I’ve found myself in a place where I don’t want you
And all the life before it dies comes rushing in
And it breaks me to know that I’m done with it
I’ve lost the feeling of how to be loved by you
“‘Loved by You’ came from exploring the feeling of losing the ability to be loved by someone whilst fighting the push and pull of figuring out whether to stay or to leave,” Portair tells Atwood Magazine. That dilemma began outside Southwell himself, in another person’s experience, before opening a door into memories of his own. It also made the song’s duet structure essential; one voice could name the rupture, but two could inhabit it.
“‘Loved By You’ started from a very specific, very unglamorous feeling that was shared with me from a friend’s personal experience a few years ago – realizing you’ve forgotten how to receive love from someone you’re still standing in front of,” he recalls. “Having gone through the same thing myself at a time, and once I had experienced that image, I knew the song needed a second voice in it, not just harmonies but a real second perspective, and Joy was the person I thought of immediately.”
The song begins with Portair alone, his guitar surrounded by faint, glinting atmospherics that give the opening an almost suspended quality. His voice arrives dreamy and radiant, yet there is a piercing ache running straight through it. He hardly needs to raise it. The restraint makes every word land harder.
The first verse immediately traces the emotional whiplash of a relationship coming apart from the inside. Its opening line – “I’ve lost the feeling of how to be loved by you” – names the rupture with devastating simplicity. Love has not necessarily disappeared; what has vanished is Portair’s ability to receive it, leaving him cut off from the warmth that once made the relationship recognizable. “It’s put me into the dark and you out of the blue” leaves the two lovers stranded in different emotional worlds, while “It’s been the longest sudden change of pace / Slow to build and quick to break” captures the cruel imbalance of an ending that can take months or years to arrive and still seem to happen all at once. Portair compresses an entire unraveling into those contradictions: The love took time to build, the distance gathered gradually, and yet the moment of recognition cuts cleanly through everything that came before it.
“I wanted to start at the most honest point instead of working up to it,” Portair explains. “That line isn’t about falling out of love – it’s about losing the ability to feel love that’s actually being offered to you, which is a much lonelier and more confusing place to be. Starting there meant there was nowhere to hide for the rest of the song. Everything after has to answer to that first line.”
Williams first enters beneath him in the chorus, her harmony barely disturbing the air around his lead. The lyric sharpens the song’s emotional break: “I’ve found myself in a place where I don’t want you” is painful precisely because it arrives after so much history, while “all the life before it dies comes rushing in” captures the flood of memory that accompanies the moment of letting go. Portair is not simply mourning what the relationship has become; he is being overtaken by everything it once was, even as he admits, “it breaks me to know that I’m done with it.”
Then the arrangement shifts perspective. She takes the second verse herself – “I hear the shake in my voice as I open up / What we became, it was too much and not enough” – bringing a different grain of hurt into the same unraveling relationship.
I hear the shake in my voice
as I open up (ooh, ooh)
What we became, it was too much
and not enough (ooh, ooh)
These are the hardest words I have to say
There’s nothing left to make me stay
I’ve lost the feeling of how to be loved by you
I never dreamed that I’d wind up not wanting you
And all the light before it dies comes rushing in
There’s no need to keep on trying when
I’ve lost the feeling of how to be loved by you
By the next chorus, Williams has moved into the foreground while Portair folds underneath her. That exchange is central to the song’s beauty and brutality: Neither voice owns the story for long. They trade places, support one another, and gradually blur the boundary between whose goodbye we are hearing.
Then the arrangement opens wide. Strings surge into the foreground in a sweeping instrumental passage, rising with orchestral grandeur and giving all that contained grief a suddenly enormous scale. For a few breathtaking moments, the music seems to carry what the singers themselves can no longer hold.
And then nearly everything disappears.
Portair and Williams are left together over muted piano chords, their voices suspended in a sparse final passage that lands with haunting grace. The ending leaves the pain intact and surrounds it with beauty. Even as the relationship reaches its end, the song refuses to strip it of meaning.
The vocal choreography makes their chemistry apparent before either artist explains it: They listen to one another as closely as they sing.
“Working with Joy on this was one of those rare collaborations where everything just clicked,” Portair says. “We were introduced through a mutual friend and she understood the song’s heart immediately, and that shows in every part she brought to it. I’m incredibly honored to have her on the record.”
If Portair’s writing begins with the person who has reached the end, Williams – best known for her work as half of the acclaimed indie folk band The Civil Wars – brings particular weight to the act of finally saying so aloud.
“Drew is a good soul, and I’m so glad our paths crossed,” she says. “Working on ‘Loved By You’ together felt like diving into an age-old question so many of us have asked in relationships before: ‘Do I stay or do I go?’ Sometimes the instinct comes quickly. Other times, the answer to that question can slowly, painfully emerge over time. And then what? You try to sort out what you really need, what to share, and when to share it with this person you’ve loved. It’s never the right time. But, telling the truth – like this song- is loving…even when it leaves the sting of ‘I cannot do this anymore.’”
That honesty is what makes “Loved By You” hit so hard. There is no villain here, no explosive betrayal to make the ending easier to understand. Portair and Williams instead sit with a harder truth: Two people can still care deeply for one another and reach a point where staying asks them to abandon too much of themselves. The song gives that recognition space to hurt, but it also lets leaving become an act of self-preservation – especially in its final turn toward, “I wanted us but I need to be wanted too / And I’m watching myself begin again.”
“I hope listeners feel less alone in that specific, hard-to-name feeling of losing your footing with someone you love,” Portair shares. “For me, making it was a way to better understand my friends’ experiences and my own. Writing it and then hearing Joy’s perspective inside it actually clarified things I hadn’t fully worked out myself. Putting it out now feels like handing over something that many people can hopefully relate to.”
That confrontation reaches beyond “Loved By You.” For Portair, the song captures a crucial part of Gathering Dust’s larger emotional language: What happens when everything left unresolved finally has to be faced.
“It sets the emotional tone for the record, I think,” he says. “Direct, a little unresolved, and attempting to be as honest as possible. If Gathering Dust is about what accumulates when you don’t deal with something, ‘Loved By You’ is the moment you finally look directly at one of those things. It’s a fair preview of both the sound and the emotion of the rest of the record.”
“Loved By You” leaves its deepest bruise in the recognition that love can endure even when a relationship cannot.
Sometimes the end arrives long before anyone finds the words for it, gathering slowly in the spaces where affection can no longer repair what has worn away. Portair and Williams make that realization breathtakingly beautiful – and, by the final note, leave just enough room for the person walking away to imagine who they might become next.
With Gathering Dust arriving December 4, “Loved By You” offers a piercing glimpse into a debut album built around everything that accumulates when life is left unresolved. Stream the song exclusively below, and read on as Portair takes Atwood Magazine inside the record’s long road to release, the instincts guiding his music today, the story behind “Loved By You,” and the collaboration that gave one of his most affecting songs its second voice.
By the end, “I’ve lost the feeling of how to be loved by you” no longer sounds like a confession. It sounds like goodbye.
I’ve lost the feeling of how to be loved by you
I wanted us but I need to be wanted too
And all the life before it dies comes rushing in
And I’m watching myself begin again
I’ve lost the feeling of how to be loved by you
I’ve lost the feeling of how to be loved by you
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:: stream/purchase Loved By You here ::
:: connect with Portair here ::
:: stream/purchase Gathering Dust here ::
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Stream: “Loved By You” – Portair & Joy Williams
A CONVERSATION WITH PORTAIR
Atwood Magazine: For those who are just discovering Portair today, what do you want them to know about you and your music?
Portair (Drew Southwell): I make alternative/indie music that sometimes ventures more into acoustic indie/folk and other times more cinematic with some electronic elements. I write from personal experiences or the experiences of people around me. I try not to over-polish my productions, preferring to accept the imperfections and hope the music resonates with people. I love coffee and breakfast and exploring different parts of the world and spending time around good people. Anyone that knows me knows I’m never in the same place for very long, but that’s also getting a bit tiring recently, and I’m craving some more calm and peace in my life. That’s something I try to protect strongly.
With us being so many years into your career, can you recommend a couple deeper cuts or personal highlights from the Portair catalog for Atwood’s crate-digging audience to sink their teeth into?
Portair: One of my older releases is called “Starring,” which I play live. It never streamed very well, but it always gets such a great response live. “I Didn’t Love You” is another one that’s very important to me. I actually wrote that one in a dream, which is the only time that’s ever happened. I woke up with the chorus in my head and immediately recorded it. It also didn’t really go anywhere that I’d hope, but it’s a special song nonetheless.
Who are some of your musical north stars, and what are you most excited about the music you're making now?
Portair: I really love artists like Olafur Arnalds and Ry X. I think what they both do in terms of a live performance is just beautiful and inspiring. As for what excites me, now I’m at a point where I feel like I trust my instincts more than I used to, so I’m chasing feeling first and worrying about genre second. That’s part of why Gathering Dust sounds the way it does.
You've released several EPs over the years, but Gathering Dust will be your debut album. Why did this feel like the right body of work for your first full-length?
Portair: EPs let me test ideas in smaller doses, but Gathering Dust needed the space of a full album because it’s not one mood, I feel like it’s more of a story. I’d been sitting on songs that only made sense next to each other, and I didn’t want to force them into another short-form release just to get them out faster. This felt like the first time I had a complete story to tell rather than a handful of good songs, and that’s the the thing that made it feel right for me. The opening song ‘Salt Water’ was one I wrote with a friend in 2020. It feels like it finally has a home a year later.
What does the title Gathering Dust mean to you, and how does it reflect the album's emotional or musical world?
Portair: Gathering Dust is about the things we let sit too long… feelings, conversations, versions of ourselves and what happens to them in that stillness and lost time. Dust isn’t dramatic and abrupt, it’s slow and quiet, and that’s kind of the concept of this record. It’s not an album about explosions, it’s an album about accumulation. What builds up when you don’t deal with something in the moment.
Today we're premiering “Loved By You,” a stunning collaboration with Joy Williams. What's the story behind this song?
Portair: “Loved By You” started from a very specific, very unglamorous feeling that was shared with me from a friend’s personal experience a few years ago – realizing you’ve forgotten how to receive love from someone you’re still standing in front of. Having gone through the same thing myself at a time, and once I had experienced that image, I knew the song needed a second voice in it, not just harmonies but a real second perspective, and Joy was the person I thought of immediately. What made the collaboration work was how naturally it came together. She understood exactly what the song was circling before I had to over-explain it, and that let us build something that felt like a real conversation rather than two people trading verses.
The opening line, “I’ve lost the feeling of how to be loved by you,” is devastatingly direct. Why start that way – what does that line mean to you?
Portair: I wanted to start at the most honest point instead of working up to it. That line isn’t about falling out of love – it’s about losing the ability to feel love that’s actually being offered to you, which is a much lonelier and more confusing place to be. Starting there meant there was nowhere to hide for the rest of the song. Everything after has to answer to that first line.
Joy described the song as circling that age-old relationship question: “Do I stay or do I go?” How did you both want to capture the slow, painful arrival of an answer?
Portair: We didn’t want the song to resolve too quickly, because that question never resolves quickly in real life. Musically and lyrically, we tried to let the song sit in the ambiguity instead of rushing to a decision. The tension builds gradually rather than through one big moment. The “answer,” if there is one, is more of an exhaustion than a clean conclusion, and we tried to let the arrangement mirror that… patient, a little heavier each time it comes back around.
There’s a striking tension in the lyric “what we became, it was too much and not enough.” What emotions does that line evoke for you?
Portair: That line captures the whole contradiction of the relationship in one breath. too much intensity, not enough substance; too much history, not enough resolution. It’s the feeling of being overwhelmed and unfulfilled at the same time, which I think is more common in real relationships than people admit.
You’ve said working with Joy was one of those rare collaborations where everything clicked. How do you hear her influence or personality, listening back now?
Portair: Listening back, I hear her instinct for truly understanding the song as a whole. She never oversang a moment that didn’t need it, and that feeling pulled the whole track toward something more intimate. Her personality comes through in the phrasing more than anything; there’s a warmth and directness in how she delivers a line that shaped how I sang my own parts around her. It genuinely feels like a shared performance, and I’m so grateful for how that turned out.
“Loved By You” is the latest window into Gathering Dust. How does this song help to introduce the larger album?
Portair: It sets the emotional tone for the record, I think. Direct, a little unresolved, and attempting to be as honest as possible. If Gathering Dust is about what accumulates when you don’t deal with something, “Loved By You” is the moment you finally look directly at one of those things. It’s a fair preview of both the sound and the emotion of the rest of the record.
What do you hope listeners take away from “Loved By You,” and what have you taken away from creating this music and now putting it out?
Portair: I hope listeners feel less alone in that specific, hard-to-name feeling of losing your footing with someone you love. For me, making it was a way to better understand my friends’ experiences and my own. Writing it and then hearing Joy’s perspective inside it actually clarified things I hadn’t fully worked out myself. Putting it out now feels like handing over something that many people can hopefully relate to.
In the spirit of paying it forward, who are you listening to these days that you'd recommend to our readers?
Portair: A few artists I’m loving right now: Yana (Beautiful honest indie pop), BAUGRUPPE90 (hard hitting bouncey techno/house), Vanbur (Lush cinematic movie score music)
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:: stream/purchase Loved By You here ::
:: connect with Portair here ::
:: stream/purchase Gathering Dust here ::
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Stream: “Loved By You” – Portair & Joy Williams
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