Premiere: The Tenderness, Turmoil, and Lilting Beauty of Wes Reeve’s Debut “Honey, I”

A beautiful song aglow with majestic baroque influence, Wes Reeve’s moody folk-pop debut “Honey, I” struggles to maneuver the throes of everyday living.
Stream: “Honey, I” – Wes Reeve


We contain multitudes. Anxiety, bliss, self-doubt, pride, hope, love, envy: All these and more exist within our beings in no defined form, coalescing and guiding our every day. Some of us manage to find our perfect balance within the chaos, but for so many others, life is a series of crests and trophs, ups and downs, highs and lows. “I never thought we’d be here in the end,” sings a forlorn Wes Reeve in her passionate debut single, a song that reels from those very vivid highs and lows along life’s bumpy road. “Every time you smile there’s a crack and I can understand I was once a broken man.” A beautiful song aglow with majestic baroque influence, Wes Reeve’s moody folk-pop debut “Honey, I” struggles to maneuver the throes of everyday living.

Honey, I - Wes Reeve
Honey, I – Wes Reeve
Honey I
Never wanted to see you like this
I never wanted to see you go
all the way out of your head again
Honey
I never wanted to see you like this
I never wanted to see you go
out of your head again

Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering the music video for Wes Reeve’s debut single “Honey, I,” co-directed and shot by Ramin Shakibaei alongside the artist herself. A young singer/songwriter from Los Angeles, Wes Reeve debuted just last month and has already eclipsed 90,000 Spotify streams (thanks to a few key placements on popular playlists, and more).

Buoyant and shimmering, “Honey, I” deserves this well-earned attention. The lilting folk-pop song is subtle and sweet, breathtaking and poignant in its rendering of emotional turbulence and strain. Reeve’s voice is soft, yet strong behind an arrangement built off classical guitar and piano, vocal layering, violin, cello, trombone, and more.

It’s a wonderful smorgasbord of sounds culminating in a heartfelt rendering of tenderness in turmoil.

“‘Honey, I’ is about the mind changing good things into bad things,” Reeve tells Atwood Magazine. “You’re in a beautiful meadow where the sun is shining and there are butterflies landing on your shoulders and wolves letting you pet them, and then suddenly, without warning, it’s pouring with rain, the butterflies are gone and the wolves are bearing their teeth at you. A stranger looking into the meadow will say that he saw you create the storm.”

Honey, I - Wes Reeve still
Honey, I – Wes Reeve still


And I
Never thought we’d be here in the end
Every time you smile there’s
a crack and I can understand

I was once a broken man
And I
Sometimes hear the song that’s in your head
Listen to me baby don’t forget
That you will always have my love, my love

The music video perfectly captures this contrast of identities, providing for us a moving visual that complements Reeve’s baroque musical influences with forest scenery and a quasi-mystical imagery. “The ‘Honey, I’ music video shows two versions of the same girl, a higher self and lower self,” Reeve explains. “The higher self is the angel, complete and balanced at all times, almost cold, watching disappointedly as the earthly lower self struggles to find peace. The earthly girl can’t control her mind and so turns all the good things she comes across into haunting, frightening versions of what they were without noticing what she’s doing, but there’s something beautiful about her humanity. The music video was inspired by The Tale of Princess Kaguya.”

Wes Reeve music still 2019
Wes Reeve’s “Honey, I” music video

Wes Reeve describes her music as “written through stream of consciousness,” through a world inside her head. Pulling inspiration as much from film, fiction, Disney, and Studio Ghibli as she does from real life, her work blends the boundaries between existence and fantasy – while managing to nevertheless deliver a palpable message about life and being. Building songs through alternative, uncommon instrumentations around her incredibly evocative voice, Reeve has, early on, managed to stand out amongst a dense field of competitors.

Stream Wes Reeve’s debut single “Honey, I” exclusively on Atwood Magazine, and stay tuned for more from this promising up-and-comer in the months to come.

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Watch: “Honey, I” – Wes Reeve

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Honey, I - Wes Reeve

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