Christmas music usually tells us how we’re supposed to feel. Warm. Held. Surrounded. Glowing.
Believe came from the opposite place. The ache of wanting that magic and not quite touching it. I wrote it in a season where everything outside looked bright and sparkling, but inside I felt flat. Lonely. Slightly out of step with the world. Everyone else seemed to be in a film montage. I was just… there. This song became the place where I could admit that. The comparison. The quiet ache beneath the fairy lights. The strange grief that can sit inside a season that insists on joy. It’s a Christmas song for people who don’t always feel Christmassy. For anyone who keeps trying, year after year, to stitch together their own version of magic.
Lyrically
The lyrics paint the “movie version” of Christmas. Hand-in-hand walks. Diamond lights. A roaring fire. Skaters falling in the square. Arms wrapped around someone who feels like home. But the voice in the song isn’t inside that world. He’s watching it. Through glass.
“It’s not like a movie” was my way of naming that gap between expectation and reality. The moment you realise you’re on the outside of something that’s supposed to include everyone.
“With every year that passes by, it’s harder to believe” is really the centre of the song. Not cynicism. More like the tiredness of growing up. Of carrying loneliness into a season that tells you this is the happiest time of the year.
But the song doesn’t stay there.
“So this year, I’m gonna try…”
That line matters to me. Because belief isn’t always something that arrives. Sometimes it’s a small decision. A stubborn one.
Sonically
I wanted it to sound like Christmas, but never in the obvious way. There are chimes, bells, celeste, organ, choirs, a big key change. All the familiar signposts. But the chords don’t go where you expect. The piano dodges the sentimental route. The harmonies swell in strange places.
It’s festive, but slightly off-centre. That was deliberate. I wanted the music to feel like a snow globe. Beautiful on the surface. A bit lonely when you look closer.
Visually
The snow globe image arrived almost immediately. Me, frozen inside it. Perfect little world. But sealed off. Watching life happen through glass. That tension between beauty and isolation is the core of the song.
The process
The musical seed came to me while I was playing piano at a friend’s 30th birthday. I found the opening progression, then the melody followed almost instantly. “Every year it gets harder to believe” turned up soon after and unlocked the rest. It’s one of the fastest songs I’ve ever written and released. End of November. Out a few weeks later. No overthinking. Just following the thread.
What it means now
Believe is one of my favourite songs I’ve made. Not because it’s big or polished, but because it’s honest about a feeling we don’t talk about much at Christmas.
I’d love it to end up soundtracking a story like that one day. Not for the prestige. Just because it would mean this quieter truth got to sit in the room too.
Christmas is magic for some people. Painful for others. Often both at once. And still, we try. We hope. We choose to believe, even when it feels thin.
Sometimes magic doesn’t just appear. Sometimes we make make believe.