Plenty of songs have been written about bad feelings. It’s the very first line of High Fidelity, that near-perfect ode to the joy of listening to a song that makes you really feel it: “What came first, the music or the misery?” But there aren’t as many songs that are written to the bad feeling. But on “Dear Misery,” that’s exactly what Colonial Blue frontwoman Stephanie Rice does.
The song, which is the title track to the band’s upcoming album, starts as a ballad, with Rice singing in a whisper to the parts of her life that felt bad. “When I was writing this song, I felt like I was on the brink of healing—like I had reached a point where I didn’t feel damaged, broken, or bitter anymore,” she says. “I had finally found myself on the better side of life, and was able to look back and say, ‘Dear misery, you’re not welcome here.'” As she finds her voice in the song, though, the rest of the band shows up to back her up—with big guitar riffs and stomping drums making clear exactly how unwelcome those feelings are in her present.
(Dear Misery is out June 17th.)
