“Let me dance with my arms open wide” Sydney J sings on “dear adrianne,” embracing the ambiguities of life and love on her latest release Love Songs. The record is earthy and intimate, staying true to the artist's indie folk roots as she paints her world in love. For Sydney J, song writing is a form of cosmic therapy, deepening her connection to herself and her world around her. The 11 tracks were written while the artist fell in and out of love, some beginning as private musings encapsulating the rawness of her feelings at the time. When returning to these works, she wanted to translate these emotions into a tangible album, imbuing into the music the beauty she felt in love, walking through life with glittering eyes.

Tenderness is reflected in her lyricism, and magic in her use of orchestral strings throughout the album, leaving you feeling simultaneously grounded and transported. This tension was intentional, as Sydney J expressed how complex and multilayered love can be, saying, “Love is not just one thing.” This journey of discovery through love is palpable as the songs explore butterflies and affection along with longing and heartbreak. Many tracks have a duality within them, featuring stripped-back outros after previously lush soundscapes, or lyrical contradictions in “wishing,” saying, “Pushing and pulling, you give and you take.” The world built in Love Songs is a complex rendition of love, each track suited for a different phase. The song “butterfly” is beguiling and captures the intrigue and marvel one feels after meeting someone new, but this metaphor is flipped on its head in “wishing” when love interests become elusive and hard to catch. The initial sense of wonder at the expansiveness of beauty turns into wondering how it can be so finite at the same time.

After being in love, Sydney J became intrigued by perspective (how does this person see me?) and decided to explore this through the breadth of her own music. After listening back to these songs, she considered the way music creates a separate space to carry feelings you eventually grow distant from. Break ups begin to hurt less and moving on creates afterimages of the joy or pain you felt once before. As a part of the album release, Sydney J commissioned various artists to create a piece of art based on her song “angel baby", and she was struck by how varied their interpretations were of her song. One artist took the track as a portrayal of a father daughter relationship, honoring the constancy of always being an angel baby in the eyes of your parents. Hearing the song in a new tone, morphed the meaning of it from yearning to one of endless care. For Sydney J this is not a bastardization of definition or her artistry, but is freeing, allowing for those emotions she felt so encumbered by to change shape into something uplifting. “Someone could interpret my song ‘pain’ as a happy song,” she marvels. The ability of everyone to approach the same piece in completely distinct ways also allows us to shift the meanings we assign within our own lives.