On listening to Connor Desai‘s new single ‘Some Time Ago’, we were instantly captivated by the unflinching honesty and palpable vulnerability that this singer-songwriter instills into every word and note. That’s certainly a benefit of presenting acoustic music to your audience, it unshackles your emotions from layers of production that so easily dissociate the listeners from your intentions as a songwriter.
There’s no mistaking the meaning here. Inspired by the timeless songwriting styles of Joni Mitchell and Tracy Chapman, Desai unravels her own troubled relationship with female sexuality and what all of that means in the complicated world we live in.
Here, the Seattle-based artist takes a deeper dive:
“Historically, struggles for equality involve a war. Gender equality is strange in this way – here we are sharing beds, maybe raising a couple kids, and there’s this deeply problematic undercurrent that we have no frame of reference for solving. In public we marched, empathized with each other during #metoo and targeted a handful of high profile predators with #timesup. But how much progress did we make? Where are we with equal pay and representation? Parental leave? Reproductive rights? The level of compartmentalization reminds me of how the public rituals of girlhood often wander into the private anguish of womanhood. M.A.S.H. bleeds into E.P.T. That’s the story I want to tell.”
The lyrics of ‘Some Time Ago’ could easily be read as in insightful poem, full of some many thought-provoking lyrics, but one that we’ve hand picked is, “It seems that throughout time our progress dies upon this line.” This represents so much about the fight for gender equality, with the emphasis being on fight, and you can almost hear the fatigue in Desai‘s hushed tones. All of this is accentuated by that natural qualities of acoustic guitar, piano and church organ throughout, which leave their resonance hanging in the air long after the song has finished.
You can also listen to ‘Some Time Ago’ in our Folk This Way playlist.
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