In “You,” a searing new single by Eliza Noxon, the young singer-songwriter shares a challenging part of her life with listeners. She wrote the music in a chilly little dorm room in May 2021, more than a year after her brother had died. Then she, too, felt an overwhelming wave of grief that kept coming back and made it impossible to move ahead, even if the calendar told her a year had passed.
What’s mainly affecting about “You” is how plainly and clearly it expresses emotions. The lyrics express a stripped-down version of grief, infused with anger and deep regret that Noxon hadn’t allowed herself to feel before. She’s written about being tender-hearted and missing someone, the eerie silence that follows loss, the desperate desire to reverse time, all of which make for an insane musical journey.
Though she wrote the song alone, it expanded in the studio with assistance from musicians Jake Reed and Pierre de Reeder, who supplied bustling drums and lush production. The technical devices allowed the song to feel singular while also belonging to everyone who’s ever experienced a loss, they wrote both intimate and universally relatable.
Noxon says that performing or listening to “You” now feels like a communal exhalation, the sound of everyone who’s lost someone special and is ready for their story to be told. That connection is the heart of the song. It’s not just her own story it tells, but the shared sense of grief, anger, and struggle to keep going despite being surrounded by what’s wrong.
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