Recommended Tracks: “Breathe In, Breathe Out,” “Love Worth Saving,” “Ends With You”
Artists You Might Like: Dean Lewis, Hozier, Benson Boone
Valentine’s Day typically offers up a million questions about love. From rocky starts to burgeoning romances and ultimately, profound uncertainty, love weaves itself in and out of our lives. David Kushner tries to answer the compelling question, Where will love be in 20 years?, on his new EP of the same name. Five months after releasing his debut album, The Dichotomy (2024), Kushner was inspired by his parents’ strained relationship. Now, while making his losses known in this seven-track EP, he unpacks the passing of time and the question of where love lies two decades later.
“Is this love worth saving?” That’s the titular question that Kushner poses on the opening track “Love Worth Saving.” Through literal lyrics and a solemn tone, he employs emotive storytelling to make you wonder what could be decades later. He sings, “Time is movin’, baby / Will we last past eighty?” and “Will we die old and angry? / Or is this love worth saving?” An introspective track that explores the inevitability of change, Kushner questions whether love can make it through growing old and personal difficulties after watching his parents’ relationship crumble to pieces.
Kushner continues examining aspects of passion, love and longing that are not always so black and white. With just his voice, the 24-year-old singer-songwriter has the ability to make listeners feel the yearning and regret he’s experiencing. On “Breathe In, Breathe Out,” Kushner grieves someone still living, or rather, someone he can’t have (“Darling, breathe in and breathe out my love, oh I’m with you somewhere / Darling, these hands are reaching for us… existence is unfair”). In a daydream, we dream about what was never said — the whispers, the quiet and the secrets that tear us into two. With haunting vocals, poetic lyrics and cinematic visuals, each breath lingers with an uncertainty for what love really means.
But he comes to the realization that love is not always sweet and kind; it can even make you sick to your stomach like a poison. He asks, “Does love have decrees? / With time, we will see.” He plays on the ideas of love, hatred and eternity and how the combination can be catastrophic. Despite this, he hopes the story “Ends With You” and I, even when love slips away and disappears. Knowing life can treat us so unkindly, it’s no surprise that “even when angels fall from the sky” and he “hears the bomb going off tonight,” Kushner still wants to hold onto hope. On “Beautiful Things Don’t Ask for Attention,” love turns to hate. Kushner explores this devastation in the 1970s-inspired track. Here, he realizes the person he loves is slipping away (“You see where we’re headed / Somewhere to disappear”) and that he can’t do anything to stop it. But sometimes, it’s the truth that kills a relationship before it even starts. It’s the realization that not everything is black and white — sometimes it’s grey.
Yet, unapologetic honesty permeates Kushner’s two-year-long discography. He continues themes of loss and deep regret on “Empty Bench,” which employs recurring themes of religion that can be heard on songs like “Humankind.” In the emotional Christmas track, which conveys the bittersweetness of an empty and abandoned place in the form of a symbolically titular empty bench, Kushner finds himself held down by the weight of memories left behind. Missing this person, he sings, “Oh, how I miss you, I miss you in my arms / I stare at the pictures I keep in my car / I’ll sit on this empty bench / And wait ’til we meet again.”
In fact, love may not be meant to last. Maybe in another universe, things would have turned out differently. In the end, Kushner turns the page in an old book because he learned his lesson but the dichotomy of love remains the same. He plays on the two sides of the coin of love, from love slipping away to a love that is strong and enduring. On “Safe In My Arms,” Kushner, despite losing all faith in love and giving it all up throughout the EP, finds someone he loves unconditionally and can follow into death. He’s forced to wrestle with the raw and personal — the weight of love, the fear of losing everything it stands for, as well as watching relationships deteriorate, whether it’s under silence, under things left unsaid or because it wasn’t meant to be.
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