There are break-up songs; but there are also songs from the other side of the wreckage. There’s a difference, and that difference is significant. A lot of hurt songs are in the middle of a tantrum. They’re immediate and urgent and dramatic and have somebody wailing in the rain, staring out a window, or being absolutely committed to ensuring you are aware that they are going through hell. Love Keeps Burning Still takes the road less travelled.
Born in lockdown (and scheduled for release on Jason McKee‘s forthcoming double album) this is more a hushed remembrance than a cathartic scream. The personal back story is a poignant one of McKee’s 10-year relationship with Lee, who he met at Munich’s Oktoberfest and was married for five years.
What makes the song engaging isn’t so much the story of the break up as it is the bitter irony. The obsession with music which had eventually led to the collapse of their relationship also provided the medium through which the experience was processed into art. Which is obviously a very songwriter problem.
Sonically, ‘Love Keeps Burning Still’ remains remarkably sparse and measured. Piano takes pride of place, joined by sumptuous orchestration and a voice that never feels the need to push or force the emotion. Reetoxa understands something many ballads don’t know; vulnerability is much more powerful when it isn’t trying too hard to tell you what it feels.
The orchestral elements are impressive for all the obvious reasons, too. The arrangements were remotely done with an orchestra in Europe over lockdown and form a cohesive whole without ever becoming overbearing as a result. Strings that contribute, creating an emotional ebb and flow that powers the song to its close.
The result is cinematic-this is easily the kind of song that you could picture playing out over a poignant scene in some romance film that requires two people to stand looking off into the middle distance, regretting their communication failure. And while that is undeniably true, what makes ‘Love Keeps Burning Still’ ultimately compelling is that it is mature.
This is not a song for closure. This is a song that accepts that the embers of a relationship may go cold, but the emotion they produced will never fully extinguish itself. And perhaps that’s all an artist needs to be is honest enough to admit that.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for various publications around the world, the former lead writer of review blogspace Atop The Treehouse and content creator for Manila Bulletin.
