[written the week before our content hiatus, so all time related comments are a week out of date]

Spotify is witchcraft created by money demons who have set out to ruin the music industry. Bold words I know, but despite that it occasionally does me favors (much like the real devil). Somehow through searching for new releases to cover on AuraLink Spotify’s release radar algorithm has picked up on the fact that I hunt for small artists, so it’s not uncommon for me to get exceedingly small artists in my feed now. It’s actually really cool for me as a small artist myself to see the algorithm pushing these artists with sub 1k monthly listeners to me, because with the sheer amount of music being uploaded daily it’s 1 in a million that these are the artists it hands to me over any larger artist within the same genre space. With that said though, this is probably the craziest find yet.

It’s currently 12:40am on Friday as I write the intro to this article, and Spotify has just served me when you had me you ran by Me As A Girl and Helena Gao. The latter of those two is someone touting nearly 40k monthly listeners and a catalog spanning from 2020 till present, but the former? The former has a grand total of 1 release that came out 40 minutes ago, and 126 monthly listeners. Its been a very long time since I’ve been this ground level on something I know is going to get big, but here we are. With my tangent about the insanity of me even knowing about this song out of the way let’s talk about it, because when you had me you ran away is a sonically fascinating track. It’s fast, it’s choppy, it’s dainty and light, and it’s endlessly interesting in the way it paints this experimental fusion of pop and drum and bass with glitch pop sound cues and design.

I love a good atmospheric soundscape, and this song starts us off with a wonderfully sparse one. It sets the tone in such a way that when the drums and vocals come in it feels like a rapid increase in pace as if the racing thoughts just came rushing in. Rushing thoughts aren’t exactly out of line with the lyrical content of the song as it bounces around talk of old love rearing it’s head when it really shouldn’t after it’s already been grieved. It’s solemn or bitter subject matter paired to swift but light drum and bass or jungle drums positioned almost as a background element with the bass. The structure of the instrumental is super unique in that it almost hinges on it’s sudden percussive or synth elements popping in and out in rapid succession, but instead of it being done in a maximalist or abrasive manor as it would be by the conventions of genres like hyperpop or complextro every single element here feels like part of a fleeting thought passing by. The swelling bass stabs halfway through the song feel like pangs of anger amidst the general contemplation of the piece fueled by the longing but thoughtful arpeggios carried through the whole piece.

I love music that has a level of authenticity in it’s emotion, and theres something about this song that just feels raw and unapologetic in it’s nature. The tone of the vocals contributes to this overarching feel that envelops the listener through a whirlpool of feelings and the constant high pace of it all mirrors that of a racing pulse amidst trying to make sense of all those prior mentioned feelings. To put it simply, it’s completely gorgeous, and it’s still completely beyond me how it managed to be served to me on a silver platter on this random Friday night at the end of November. I hope others have had the same experience, because I just know someone needs to hear this song right now, and even if they don’t I know someone else would just be excited to find it this early.

Addendum

I’ve said a lot a admittedly very conceptual thoughts and concepts within this article, so in an attempt to make it all a bit less pretentious, I want to draw attention to something outside the song entirely, but the copyright line of all things. The currently only release under Me As A Girl is under the copyright of Me As A Label. It’s very silly, and as dumb as it may make me sound it did actually make me chuckle