‘Sometimes the hardest part of letting go is just admitting that your heart has never actually left.”
There’s a very specific emotional tension that comes with a relationship that’s over but which simply doesn’t have a proper conclusion. You can walk away, you can tell yourself you’re over it, you can fill your life with all sorts of other things and tell your friends you’re absolutely fine, and yet the feelings you were trying to leave behind will still come back. That particular limbo between pride and longing is precisely where Songs of Solomon and award winning South African vocalist CheraLee have placed their new single “Come To Your Senses”. Rather than treating the end of a relationship as a simple case of one person walking away and the other one being left behind, the song is about the emotional responsibility that two people can share in the event that they’ve allowed their pride to get the better of their feelings. The pop rock direction gives the subject a real energy and the acoustic textures are really rich and warm, lending the song a real sense of intimacy to a story which could easily have been all bitterness. What makes it such a compelling premise is the sheer contradiction of the situation; on the surface you’ve moved on, you’re all set, you’re living your life, yet the reality is you’re still in the emotional space of caring. The song is very much about the ease with which people can become adept at the art of pretending, particularly when the truth is simply too difficult to face. The line “We got good at pretending, we got worse at the truth” is a very simple way of articulating that very real contradiction. It’s a line that speaks to the very habits we develop when the truth becomes too uncomfortable to face; we avoid the difficult conversations, we defend our decisions, we go along with the appearance of things even when in reality something important is still unaddressed. Instead of it being a battle to work out who was right, “Come To Your Senses” is very much about what both of them may have lost by being so unwilling to be vulnerable. That’s what makes it so relatable, because the subject isn’t just about a failed romance; it’s about the fundamental human difficulty of admitting that pride can be a real barrier to connection.
The duet format is absolutely fundamental to the song’s nature in that it presents the relationship story from two points of view rather than as a one way confession. Song of Solomon (the musical project of Southampton based songwriter Solomon Machanick) teams up with CheraLee (award winning in country, pop, blues and rock) and the contrast in their vocals provides the bedrock of a conversation between two people who are clearly in the same emotional pickle. The significance of that conversation is that neither side is presented as having all the answers. There is something each of them has to come to terms with and there is a real sense of the gap between what they say and what they actually feel. The repeated refrain “Come to your senses, I’ll come to mine” is such an effective statement of the song’s central theme because it doesn’t place the entire onus of resolution on one person. It’s not suggesting that one person has to give in to the other’s demands whilst the other stays completely unchanged.
It’s a more interesting proposition in that it says if there is any chance of a resolution then both people have to be willing to look at themselves. That mutual responsibility is what gives the song such emotional substance beyond the simple desire to get an ex back. It actually poses the more interesting question of whether there is any chance of reconciliation when neither person is prepared to be honest about their own role in what went wrong. The driving pop rock arrangements are a huge part of the emotional impact of the song. Rather than just leave the subject to be entirely static, the music provides a real sense of momentum and urgency to the story. The full-bodied acoustic textures provide a warmer, more intimate counterpoint to the songwriting and the contrasting vocals really do reinforce the sense of two individual voices in a shared experience. The very memorable melodic approach also ensures the song sits comfortably in the pop rock sphere. What the song is all about is the tension between the music’s forward drive and the unresolved feelings at the heart of the narrative. The characters may be in the process of trying to move on but the song keeps coming back to the truth that they haven’t yet faced. That is what gives “Come to your senses” its identity.
For Solomon Machanick songwriting is all about stories of love, loss, faith and finding a way through the tough times. His influences are very much in the dark country, Americana, folk and roots rock camp. That same instinct for story-telling is being used in a very different way here with a collaboration that brings together Solomon’s songwriting and CheraLee’s vocal power and experience across the board. CheraLee has a very well-earned reputation with six Afri-Indie Awards, three South African Country Music Association Foundation Awards and three Melomaan Impala Radio Awards to her name, as well as a number of international songwriting and singer songwriter nominations. The most important thing about this release though is not the list of awards that the performers have accumulated. It is the emotional conversation that they have chosen to put at the very heart of the song. “Come To Your Senses” is the song that recognises that relationships don’t always end because the love has gone. Sometimes it’s just a breakdown in communication, resentment takes over and the need to protect your own pride becomes greater than the need to actually understand the other person. Even after the relationship has ended you can still find yourself in the same place, going back to the same places, the same memories, the same quiet moments and it’s in those moments that you’re reminded of all that’s still unspoken. The song’s plea to come back is therefore not simply a romantic one. It’s a call for honesty, for self-reflection and for the courage to face the fact that you may need to move on, and that may mean admitting that you never actually wanted to stay. The song’s greatest strength is that it doesn’t make vulnerability look like weakness. It makes vulnerability the first step in the process of mending something that may still be important to both of you. “You can’t find your way back to someone while pretending you never wanted to stay.” That is the very essence of the song. It’s the realisation that pride can be a shield against the difficult conversations that are necessary, but it can also be the very thing that keeps you from being with the person you still want to be with. It’s an energetic pop rock song with a very warm acoustic underpinning, great contrasting duet vocals and a very accessible, very relatable story. Songs of Solomon and CheraLee have delivered a collaboration that is built around a very familiar and very human experience. “Come To Your Senses” is ultimately the song about the point at which pretending becomes more of a burden than it is worth and the point at which two people have to decide if they are actually willing to meet each other with honesty rather than with pride.
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