In 2023, my word for the year was Renaissance.
I didn’t choose it because it sounded grand. It was more of a quiet nudge. Something in me felt misaligned. I didn’t need to start over… I needed to come back into myself.
That word slowly worked its way into everything. How I was thinking. What I was noticing. And eventually, into a song.
Renaissance came from that feeling of wanting to re-meet myself. Not invent someone new. Just uncover what had been buried under habit, fear, old stories.
Lyrically
The opening lines are simple, almost obvious:
“You’re where you are / Because of where you’ve come from”
But writing them felt like exhaling. A reminder that nothing in us is accidental. Even the parts we’d rather edit out.
“Put brush to canvas / Paint something beautiful” wasn’t about pretending things were fine. It was about using what’s already there. The mess, the history, the contradictions.
The line that stuck with me most was:
“How will you sculpt the likeness of you? / The true you darling”
It became less of a lyric and more of a question I kept coming back to. Not who do you want to be, but who are you when the noise drops.
Sonically
The verses sit gently. Almost cautious. The vocal doesn’t push. It leaves room. Then the choruses arrive and everything lifts. The strings climb higher each time. The vocal gets steadier, more certain. You can hear the shift happen, not just lyrically, but physically in the sound.
It’s actually a fairly stripped-back track compared to some of my others. Piano, strings, guitar, drums, vocals. But it feels big. I think that’s because nothing’s fighting for attention. The space does a lot of the emotional work.
The intro progression was inspired by Allegri’s Miserere. I’d been listening to a lot of Renaissance music and looking at Renaissance art, and that sense of reverence crept in without me forcing it.
Visually
For the artwork, I turned myself into a statue. Still. Carved. Mid-becoming.
The lyric video pulls in old footage of me growing up. Not as nostalgia. More as acknowledgement. All those earlier versions are still in the room. This song was never about erasing the past. It was about including it.
The writing
I co-wrote the lyrics with Clare Yarwood-White. She helped me untangle what I was actually trying to say and gave the song structure when my thoughts were still a bit foggy. We recorded a podcast episode together about the track not long after... talking through the references, the production details, the metaphors. It’s one of those conversations that probably only makes sense if you love the making of things, but it meant a lot at the time.
A couple of years on
It’s been nearly two years since Renaissance came out, and I can see now it wasn’t a one-off moment. More like a rhythm I keep returning to.
This past year has had its own winter. Hard decisions. Quieter periods. A lot of internal rearranging. And lately, I’ve felt that same gentle shift again. Not dramatic. Just a sense of coming back into focus.
I used to think a renaissance meant a big, visible transformation. Now I think it’s smaller than that. Quieter. Just the decision, again and again, to move toward what feels true.
We don’t only begin once.