A captivating outpouring of love and grief, Victoria Bigelow’s beautiful “Song for No One” is a dreamy and raw reckoning dwelling in the artist’s darkest depths.
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Stream: “Song for No One” – Victoria Bigelow
Few feelings come close to matching the passion and pain of love and grief, and Victoria Bigelow has plenty of both to share.
The three-time Atwood Magazine Editor’s Pick has made an impactful early career out of tapping the deepest trenches of her heart and soul, pouring herself out in songs that ache with the sting of real, lived experiences. These are expressions of self that, while being hers and hers alone, are instantly relatable to all who hear her music and feel her emotions.
Bigelow’s third release of the year is easily one of her best: A captivating outpouring of love and grief, “Song for No One” is a dreamy and raw reckoning dwelling in the artist’s darkest depths.
I want to feel how you do when you’re stoned
I’ve never been to the places you go
I take one hit and convince myself
Everyone’s bored of me
You say “it’s all in your head, baby”
Well, that’s the problem
Released December 1, 2022 via Tone Tree Music, “Song for No One” follows September’s “Oblivion” as Victoria Bigelow’s latest, and possibly her greatest, emotional unveiling. “Oblivion” itself was another breathtaking reverie: “Like a musical-emotional scar, it bleeds through captivating melodies and haunting vocal lines that send shivers down the spine,” I wrote in adding the song to my 75th Editor’s Picks. “This is the kind of gut-wrenching, soul-stirring songwriting we’ve come to cherish over the past few years as the Phoenix, Arizona-based singer/songwriter introduced herself and established her unique artistic voice.”
Taking cues from “the desert and Mazzy Star,” Victoria Bigelow’s art is at once intimate and cinematic, impressively minimalist and yet drenched in the ethereal stuff that makes dreams feel like dreams. “Song for No One” is one of her dreamiest, songs yet: A lush, warm, and definitively forlorn ensemble of mellow and moody instruments come together, with a great deal of reverb and some clever arranging, to create a space that is at once wondrous, heavy, and light.
“I want to feel how you do when you’re stoned,” Bigelow sings from the start, her voice hot on the mic while addressing a silent presence in the room. Immediately, she conveys this sense of yearning and longing to connect to worlds beyond her immediate grasp. “I’ve never been to the places you go. I take one hit and convince myself everyone’s bored of me.” Rather than find herself in a Wonderland free from care, her anxiety spikes and panic ensues. “You say ‘it’s all in your head, baby,’ well, that’s the problem.” A rosy electric guitar complements her vocal melody as glistening pianos provide background contrast.
The air is already hot with stirring emotion and dazzling sound, and Bigelow is barely 45 seconds in. She continues to lay herself on the line, addressing and admitting to the faults, fractures, and imperfections that ultimately make her human and all the more relatable to her awe-struck audience:
Sometimes I let myself get so depressed
I get angry with you, the reaction you get from me
You told me I am more fun
with a drink in my hand
So now I drink as much as I can
So, what’s the problem
As Bigelow makes clear through her evocative, stunning vocal performance, this is to be the soundtrack not only to her introspection, but also to her inner reckoning.
“A ‘song for no one’ is a song for everyone,” she tells Atwood Magazine. “About having panic attacks while stoned, wishing you could turn your brain off, always being the “problem,” and how your own neuroses (addiction, anxiety, depression) will ruin any relationship if you let the nonm. It’s also about the heartbreak you feel pushing someone away who’s seen you at your worst, and the grief associated with feeling like you’ll never feel seen again.”
I’ll set the scene now you’ve seen all I have
Up my sleeve
All the pretty and the frighteningly bad
I don’t think I’ve ever felt such a sense of relief
As the day that you turned from me
Now I’m not your problem
A non-traditional song with a non-traditional structure, “Song for No One” hits its cathartic climax in an outro-slash-chorus that finds the preceding three verses’ emotional turmoil spilling out in a frenzied, forceful, and utterly intoxicating rush. “I’ll never open myself up like this again,” Bigelow confesses, singing this mantra over and over again with devastating grace. She is accepting this pain; this bitter truth of identity and understanding, that in letting go of someone who has seen her through so much, she is also letting go a part of herself.
I’ll never open myself up like this again
Wander the streets with your memories accompaniment
I’ll never open myself up like this again
Touch someone new but I don’t feel a thing of it
I’ll never open myself up like this again
Wander the streets with your memories accompaniment
I’ll never open myself up like this again
Touch someone new but I don’t feel a thing of it
No I don’t feel a thing
No I don’t feel a thing
“A Song for No One” hits hard and leaves a lasting, unimpeachable impression. A deep, dreamily dramatic wound, it’s raw reckoning of a soul on fire; of a bleeding heart that can’t quite control itself, but is striving every day toward a place of self-love and self-acceptance.
Victoria Bigelow is, without a doubt, an artist to watch in 2023. Stream her latest heartbreaker wherever you listen to music.
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Stream: “Song for No One” – Victoria Bigelow
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