I find myself bobbing along writing this song review. On Broods’ newest track, lead singer Georgia Nott’s joy is absolutely contagious. I mean, she has reasons to be happy, having married her partner and honeymooned in Bali earlier this year. But the success of Broods’ “Couldn’t Believe” is the ability to condense that happiness into 4 minutes of bliss. The song starts small with a series of small alternating notes, before the arrival of dance-pop synth that serves as the background to the Sia-esque joyous belting that lifts her voice at the end of each line.
The lyrics are simple. For the majority of the song, Georgia sings about how she can’t believe a lot of things that happened to her. She expresses incredulity at what her senses tell her and luck has brought her: namely a reliable, loving partner. Certainly there’s a sense of happiness that finding love brings you, but her surprise at a partner keeping promises or caring for her indicates traces of a tough past of absent or hurtful loves.
And it is in these glimpses of the past that the song shines, fleshing out a rich history without naming it: “you never kept anyone for long / I was the worst at being alone.” In two lines, we have a sense of the two partners’ respective pasts but more importantly, the newfound status of being together. With these clues, this man who now bears “a list of promises” is suddenly recast as not only a good man, but a changed man. It’s a love story without the boring he-said, she-said, meet-cute-recounting trap many enamored lyricists fall into precisely because this song operates in the dance-ridden, overjoyous present. The good times have arrived, and on this track Broods shares their exuberance to craft a near perfect indie-pop dance hit.
('17, Art History/CSRE) has escaped from Orange County and all that this former life entailed. When he's not staring at art, he's probably writing poetry/essays/manifestos about art. Or, ya know, mobilizing his queer agenda and thinking 'bout balkan diasporas inside his palace of books.