Drowning in heartbreak and sorrow, Shana Halligan’s mournful ballad “Hurricane” delivers a seductive mix of dark pop and sultry jazz.
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Just as a violent wind storm can send homes skyward and rip trees from the earth, love and loss, betrayal and deception can turn our worlds upside down. We are slaves to our hearts; when they ache, our whole beings ache with them. Drowning in heartbreak and sorrow, Shana Halligan’s mournful ballad “Hurricane” delivers a seductive mix of dark pop and sultry jazz that will send even the most stoic souls into a melancholic spiral.
Mmm still smell you on my leg
And in my shame
Your dirty deed rubbed off on me
My need for aches and pains
One drip a day, straight to my vein
One lie a night, begs me to stay
Hold on, tomorrow
Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering the music video for “Hurricane,” the latest single from Shana Halligan. Most recently seen on this year’s (2018) Season 14 of The Voice, Shana Halligan is a Los Angeles-based solo artist and former lead singer of trip-hop duo Bitter:Sweet (a collaboration with producer Kiran Shahani), whose uniquely blended music sold over 500 thousand records in the mid-aughts.
Halligan brings the same mesmerizing musicality of that former project to her solo work, flexing her powerfully evocative vocal muscles around smooth, haunting jazz-influenced melodies and bluesy chord progressions that pulse with longing and a feverish, ill-fated lust.
Who’s the one to love me when you’re gone?
Who’s the one to bury all of us?
It’s me
“This is one of those songs that just came out in moments and wrote itself,” Shana Halligan tells Atwood Magazine. “A dear friend had come over very broken after discovering that his significant other/baby mama had been involved in numerous affairs. I completely identified with his pain since I had experienced similar hurt in my past relationships, and the song literally poured out of me as if I were reliving my own personal story. I worked with a producer from Italy who was familiar with my previous work in Bitter:Sweet and together, we created a hauntingly dark, modern evolution of that sound, for this. “
Oooh your scent commands my fate
My body caves, I’m weak
Another dose is all I need
To numb me from my brain
One drink a day makes it okay
One family down
Yet you’re still around
No more, tomorrow
Overflowing with vivid emotions, the song’s music fits the mood like Cinderella’s glass slipper: It’s a beautiful match as Halligan invites us all to be swept up in the fraught turmoil of the worst possible breach of trust. “Who’s the one to love me when you’re gone? Who’s the one to bury all of us?” Halligan sings in the chorus, tensions rising fast. “It’s me,” she concludes, turning inward and searching for solace within herself, rather than someone or something else.
As torrential a downpour as “Hurricane” appears to be, the song is as emotionally turbulent as it is sensually thrilling. Halligan’s verse lyrics might as well come straight out of a smut novel; her words undulate with unresolved desire, an overwhelming hunger she can only hope to control. She sings of this (sex?) drive directly in her derisive final verse:
You know me but
Not all of me but
Enough to keep you sane
A hurricane blows
While I sew my oats
Oh damn I thought you came
Swept up in the pageantry of a most magnificent pain, Shana Halligan surrenders her body and mind, throwing herself into an ether where she can once again be vulnerable and feel love. It’s a safe space far away from her ex-lover, the catalyst for her madness. Here, she dwells and lets go, embracing the hurricane that has, in a sense, set her free.
Stream “Hurricane” exclusively on Atwood Magazine! Those in the San Francisco area can catch Shana Halligan performing at The Great Northern on 4/27 with Rob Garza of Thievery Corporation.
Watch: “Hurricane” – Shana Halligan
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