NYC-based indie-folk artist Mae Krell has just debuted her new single “this place”, the third offering from her upcoming album (i think) i might be grown. This track sees Krell reflecting on the struggles she experienced growing up in New York City. She elaborates further:
“Growing up in New York is such a hyper specific experience. While I’ve always known it was something I wanted to write about, I never felt like I had the right words to explain it. When I went down to Mississippi and was immersed in a ‘normal’ high school’s graduation on a football field – just like in movies and shows I had watched and longed for as a teenager – I was faced directly with feelings of missing out on the normalcy I so often hear the people I’m surrounded by talk about.”
“this place” opens with a gentle acoustic guitar before Krell’s soft vocals come in, describing how it feels to have grown up in NYC. She’s joined by a slow piano as the song progresses into the chorus, which ends with the hard-hitting lyric “I’ll spend forever trying to love this place”.
After a short instrumental break, the second verse describes in more detail the struggles Krell experienced during her teenage years, bringing the track to a raw and more vulnerable place. The second chorus brings us into a short but emotional bridge. The final chorus gains a little more power, but the extra lyrics added onto the end are where the song’s punch lies. After bluntly acknowledging her fear of changing versus staying the same, the instrumentals stop and she changes the last lyric to “I’ll spend forever trying to leave this place”. Listen here.
The sentiment of this track will be relatable for listeners who have a complicated relationship with their hometown (so, most, if not all, of us). Throughout “this place”, we see Krell looking for contentment and hoping to learn to love New York, and with the final lyric, we feel that back-and-forth pull of not wanting to stay but not wanting to leave quite yet. Krell has captured this universal feeling so perfectly, and the soft instrumentals throughout the track serve to amplify the message present in the lyrics.
Mae Krell’s debut album, (i think) i might be grown, is due out on April 12, 2024.
KEEP UP WITH MAE KRELL:
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