Grief is something that is always going to be hard to understand and articulate. Everyone deals with it in a different way, whether it’s a family member, partner or friend. Some people will cry it out, some people will keep it all in, and some people will just continually distract themselves until it all builds up. There’s no right or wrong way to deal with it, and that’s okay. CXLOE opens up about the recent grief she went through when her grandma passed away on the vulnerably charged new single ‘Cry & Drive’, and it’s a tear-jerker.
Finding her own way to process the grief, she found herself crying while driving and talking to her partner on the phone. Hearing the distress she was in, he told her to pull over and stop crying and driving. Taking a moment to really feel her emotions and then compose herself, she was inspired to capture that experience in a really vivid and beautiful way. “I’ve been feeling alone, I don’t know where to go, I’ve been looking for home, while i’m running away. On the side of the road, pulling over, you say, don’t cry and drive” she sings during the soothing hook.
This is the most stripped back we’ve heard CXLOE to date. The production is fittingly very minimalistic with a cinematic twist that plays up to the pop production of ‘Plans’ from her debut EP ‘Heavy, Pt. 1’. That polished accessibility makes the hook universally attainable for everyone to translate their own grief from and soundtrack those emotional unravellings when everything is just a little too much. Adding to the personal vulnerability of the lyrical content, she’s mixed in a voicenote from her grandma in the outro which will have you immediately tearing up.
‘Cry & Drive’ is a very beautiful song that shows CXLOE in an explicitly raw and candid light like never before while still creating a cinematic soundscape that embraces her pop roots.
CXLOE Heavy Part 1 Tour
Friday 21 May – Nightcat, Melbourne
Saturday 22 May – Big Pineapple Festival, Wombye
Friday 28 May – Friday Juice, Wollongong
Friday 4 June – The Lab, Adelaide
Saturday 5 June – Jack Rabbit Slims, Perth
Friday 11 June – Oxford Art Factory, Sydney
Sunday 13 June – The Cambridge, Newcastle