TALIA Layers Love and Loss in “Lilac”

Georgia-raised, Brooklyn-based songwriter, producer, filmmaker, TALIA, helps us indulge in that burning cyclical desire to leave everything behind. It can happen when you’re heart broken, overworked, overwhelmed, and underpaid. TALIA sums all these feelings up in her new single, “lilac”.

Written and produced with Joep Le Blanc, TALIA sets the mood with an elegant yet weightless instrumental build up, the singer asks for a moment as she feels herself becoming unbalanced. “Getting dizzy / can’t stop moving / can we slow down / guess that’s wishful, wishful thinking,” she sings.

TALIA can feel the walls caving in on her. Rather, she’s ready to “smash my phone against the wall” and go where nobody can reach or recognize her in an effort to be free from her pain. She sings about releasing that which has been bringing her down. She urges that person to let her go, “forget you knew me at all” and find peace as she enters a journey of isolation.

Accompanying the chorus, an arrangement of guitars puts pressure on TALIA’s adventure into the unknown. She sings “picturing your face in the back of my brain,” as if to signify pushing old memories into the back of the mental cabinet.

As the chorus repeats for the third time, we hear additional guitars layered onto melancholic lyrics: “Never satisfied guess that I’m the one to blame.” TALIA unwillingly takes responsibility for not being enough for the person that she’s ready to distance herself from. In the song’s last 30 seconds, we’re invited to a calm and serendipitous lull of strings. Here, it may be safe to imagine that TALIA has found the tranquility and rest she was looking for. It is the perfect outro to a well-earned moment of escape.

“Lilac” is a gift to the senses, bringing together those who have fought the good fight and are more than ready for their fists to loosen their grip.