There’s a picture of loneliness painted in Sam Mirzad’s new single, “One and Only,” that is both specific and all too familiar. The song envelops listeners in a somber mood. It’s a gradual progression of feelings where time stands still and love has been gone for ages.
Mirzad doesn’t deal in easy clichés or quick fixes for breakups. Instead, he burrows into the silent agony that remains when love dies, and being alone is the only thing that ever stays the same. Here, the “one and only” isn’t a person but rather loneliness in shadow form, the kind that lingers when everyone else has gone away. It’s this inversion that makes the song so distinct in its power. Loneliness isn’t just an emotion here, but the protagonist.
“One and Only” is music that plays like a movie. It’s both big and small at the same time, and the production is so spare that every note can breathe. Mirzad’s voice is unvarnished, and he speaks incisively of surviving but not truly living. The melody drifts through an empty room like smoke, in sympathy with the empty beauty of the words.
Mirzad does not blink into the void itself, a quietly courageous act. “One and Only” doesn’t attempt to uplift, it lingers in discomfort and asks you to sit with your own silence and unspoken pain. There is a mournful sound to it, thrilling and eternal and striking, an ache of human honesty.