New Find: Kathleen’s “The Longest Year” Is A Serious Mood
Kathleen made waves earlier this year with “Pure Imagination,” her major label debut single via Let Me Know/Warner Records, and continues to build momentum with “The Longest Year.” Calling this song a mood is something of an understatement. The newcomer captures our collective 2020-fatigue with disarming acuity. “I close my eyes and relive every moment,” she sings breathily on a verse. “100 sleepless nights, enough to make the comedians cry… Oh it’s been the longest year of our lives.” Amen.
What inspired the song? “I was sitting at my keyboard noodling on a chord progression and scrolling through Instagram,” Kathleen explains. “[There was] Trump—MAGA red everywhere in my feed. There were a few posts about it and then right below it, a post about how much of the Great Barrier Reef had been officially pronounced dead. The dissonance and surreality of the two events struck me so hard. It took me almost two years to finish the song, during which so many other events unfolded.”
“Shootings, refugees, more ecological crisis, etc. all peppered in between pictures of my friend’s new dog or ads for a food delivery services to help you with your very busy life,” the Colorado-raised artist continues. “I couldn’t wrap my mind around the strange chaos at the heart of it all, and still can’t. The only thing I could make sense of is that all of us are exhausted.” Watch the striking video for “The Longest Year” below. It was a zero-waste production created with the help of friends and found materials.
Do you love the song? Let us know below, or by hitting us up on Facebook and Twitter!
