There’s this fleeting feeling that life attaches to it, some may call it entropy, it is more apparent and felt when connected to the things we love and the process of seeing those things go away eventually, this phenomenon brings a Nelly Furtado lyric to mind “Flames to dust, lovers to friends, why do all good things come to an end”. Ilaye seeks to capture and vocalize this very relatable experience through her single ‘Binoculars’.
The song dreads a finality of things. ‘The vision is blinding but I don’t want to wake up from this dream” There is a beginning and an inevitable end to even the best of things, and Ilaye dreads the eventual outcome of something beautiful withering. “Sweet turns to sour and new turns to old, he gave her a white rose and boarded his ship, and I saw a tear roll down to her cheek, with my binoculars” She takes the role of a viewer in this process, seeing and then documenting her observations captured from her binoculars.
Growing up, the kind of affection (between lovers or friends) that I witnessed and was exposed to was temporary and fickle and very short. And it is not any different now. I had a year(2018) full of short friendships and short romance and I decided to write about it and record it because I feel like that’s about to change. So technically, the song is a tribute to that type of situation. – Ilaye
On first listen, it felt like one of those indie songs that got me through my teens, and I was curious to know if there was intentionality from Ilaye to this regard.
In the grand scheme of things, what type of music do you believe you make?
I believe I make the type of music a listener would have to be patient with. The type you’d have to wait till the end of the song to fully understand. Because I think it’s almost like a book or a story being sung. I believe I make the type of music that’s for everyone, but most especially for people who are terribly taciturn but feel a million things at a time.
I don’t believe in genres. I believe genres like everything else is a social construct. I believe music has no kind or division, it’s just music. But since genres exist in the eye of our cosmos, I’d say I make alternative/indie music.
Turns out there was. And the song begs its listener for a type of pure and driven connection that nudges you to find that emotional tether within. Again, I had to ask;
How would you like your listeners to connect to your music?
By grasping the first deep emotion they feel when they listen and letting that fill up their lungs with each line like long steady breaths. Hopefully, at the end of the music, they feel lighter than they did before. Or heavier, but less alone.
This is Ilaye’s third single and we can only expect it to get better from here for the silky sounding songstress. Stream Binoculars here:
[…] I first heard your first single “Binoculars,” it reminded me of alt-rock/folk music, it was filled with emotion and took me on a journey, how […]