On the tender "Hearts Aglow," Wyes Blood – real name Natalie Mering - shares her experience of toiling relentlessly without the company of friends, yearning for the joy that has eluded her for years.
I've been without friends
Oh, I've just been working for years and I stopped having fun
Then a newfound presence in her life ignites a spark, rekindling her desire to revel and unwind.
Baby you're the only one
Who'll drive me down to the pier
Take me up on that ferris wheel
"When you start hustling and getting a little success, especially if you're freelance, you get into a cycle where work becomes the only thing you do," Mering told UK newspaper The Sun. "There's no other option, especially in a place like America where it is so competitive, and no structure to ensure you'll have enough money for practical survival. It took me until my late twenties to afford such basic stuff as health insurance."
"So yeah," she concluded. "I was heavily into work and definitely stopped having as much fun."
The song harks back to dark days of the pandemic when the reality hit that vaccines didn't have a thousand percent guarantee. "A lot of people went, 'F--- it, we're going on vacation anyway. We'll still have fun,'" Mering said. "Everybody was hanging on to the last semblance of normal life. The idea of not giving Covid to anybody got cast aside."
Mering recorded "Hearts Aglow" for her fifth studio album, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow. The singer cited the song with its doo-wop harmonies and billowing strings, as her "secret favorite track" on the record.
"It's a real love song. I wrote it in real time," she told Uncut magazine. "Somebody took me down to Santa's Monica pier and it all came to me while I was on the Ferris wheel. I felt we live in times where sincerity and empathy are totally on the fritz. Most people feel these things, but just don't know how to take all the abstract information and turn it into action. I thought, 'What would show that we have human souls and that we're alive? That's the idea that we're glowing from the inside-out."
By the end of the album, on "Given Thing," Mering is "making ashes of our joy." "I was in a relationship, and it had a lot of different phases, and it ended," she told
The Guardian. "But I don't feel bad when things end that are supposed to end – death is a source of life. There's a lot of life and death on the record."
Mering co-produced the song with Jonathan Rado, the multi-instrumentalist of rock duo Foxygen. Rado played bass and tubular bells. The other musicians are:
Andres Renteria: shaker
Mary Lattimore: harp
Drew Erickson: organ, strings arrangement
Meg Duffy: guitar
Brian D'Addario: Wurlitzer
Michael D'Addario: drums
Michael Chadwick: harpsichord
Zach Dellinger: viola
Jacob Braun: cello
Andrew Bulbrook: violin
Wynton Grant: violin
Ben Babbitt: backing vocals
Classically trained harpist Mary Lattimore has collaborated with Kurt Vile, Thurston Moore, and Kesha.
Drew Erickson has also worked on Lana Del Rey's Blue Banisters and Did You Know There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd albums.
Meg Duffy is an American musician and guitarist who has played as a studio musician on records by The War on Drugs, Sylvan Esso and Kevin Morby.
Brothers Brian and Michael D'Addario are the lead singers, songwriters, and multi-instrumentalists of the American rock band The Lemon Twigs.
Natalie Mering debuted the song live during her December 6, 2022, concert at the Music Box venue in San Diego.
When Mering sings, "I've been without friends. Oh I've just been working for years. And I stopped having fun," she's assessing her life. "That's going touring for years," she told Mojo magazine. "I stopped having fun and that's kind of my fault. I became a bit of a workhorse to preserve myself. I kind of let go of partying and going out in favor of going to bed early.
Especially in America, if you don't come from a generation of wealth, you have to work your ass off to build anything, so I was just nose to the ground - I'm going to just work, work, work - but I think in some ways the pay-off ends up being a pretty isolated existence."
Mering has since made changes to her work-life balance. She now makes time for fun and relaxation. "My new thing now is that I have to do the show but I also have to hang out," she said. "I have to find the weird place to eat, force my band mates to come out with me."
Some critics have compared "Hearts Aglow" to "
Avalon"-era Roxy Music. "I wanted it to be cold, which is funny because It's also about fire, that fire in the darkness," Mering told
Mojo. "I also wanted it to have these swells of warmth."
Mering and her band recorded the song in Studio 3 of United Western Recorders studios, which is where The Beach Boys made Pet Sounds. "That room has an incredible sound," she said, "so we were trying to capture that mood within the room."
