Whether romantic or platonic, many relationships eventually reach their end. However, the memories often linger, if not leave a permanent mark. Our partners, friends, or confidants may be out of our lives, but we are then left to sort through the pieces and reconfigure ourselves. McCall‘s new single, “One Eye Open,” details what that process looks like.
The song begins solely with McCalls’s vocal. The addition of her background vocals have a heavy hand in highlighting the fragility that is present as she recounts the aftermath of her relationship, “In my sleep I’m still with him / In this room where he told me / He is lonely / That he doesn’t miss me.” As the first verse progresses the background vocals become distorted, adding a layer of frustration to the mix. The distorted synth that breaks up the her vocal take seems to symbolize the inner turmoil that McCall faces as she tries to reconcile her feelings for this person with how he treated her.
Once we reach the chorus McCall is able to see how toxic the relationship actually was and in what ways it still affects her, “All of this time I’ve been blinded / All of this love is one sided / Now I know next time to let it go / Keep one eye open at night/ And I want to let you back in / But I still got scars on my skin.” “The point of the song is it’s really difficult to fully recover from a toxic relationship,” McCall explains. “When you let yourself be manipulated and torn down for a period of time, you start to blame yourself and let yourself believe you’re crazy, when really you were just in a bad relationship.” The delicate piano in contrast with the vibrant synths elevates the meaning that much more.
The incorporation of the percussion heightens the energy on the track and carries us to the end of the last chorus. The outro repeats the lyric, “It’s always gonna hurt a little bit,” with only the piano, synths, and background vocals still present on the track, making the listener feel validated within their own struggle. “One Eye Open” exemplifies that healing isn’t linear and that that’s okay.
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