19&YOU coat emotional ambiguity with alt-pop gloss on “HEAD/HEART”

Keeping pace with acts such as joan and Lany in a shared enthusiasm for feel-good, serotonin-hiking exuberance, the LA-via-Sydney four-piece continue on an unabashedly upbeat course, leaving a trail of synth-laced confections in their wake. “HEAD/HEART”, true to effusive form, gels Jackson Leitch’s kinetic guitar licks with Cameron Graves’ undulating vocal flights in an exercise of pure electronic-drenched vivacity, while lyrically contending with the trials and tribulations of modern relationships.

Teetering between heartfelt gravitas and playfully untroubled melodies, the track focuses on a sense of ambivalence often left in the aftermath of a break-up, as executive producer and songwriter Noah Taylor explains: “Something that really resonates with me about this song is how the lyrics are a conversation with one’s self,” he reflects. “You want to call someone that you ended things badly with, but you wonder if you even want them to pick up. I love how the chorus acknowledges that just because something ends bad doesn’t mean it was always bad. Sometimes people discredit an entire experience if it didn’t end well, but I believe a relationship that is so emotionally charged must have been beautiful at some point too.”

Cameron Graves offers further perspective on the track’s composition: “I love this song because of the unique piano ballad start which quickly picks up to an intense trap-inspired pop chorus. It’s something we really love doing and haven’t heard before. The soft ballad mirrors the feelings of the heart and the chorus is the hard-hitting voice of reason. We wrote the lyrics to match that feeling of being bonded to someone that you know in the end is not the one.”