Best of CBR Music with Vince Leigh

Inez Hargaden

Dear Song

Recorded at the venerable Amberly Studios, her latest single, Dear Song, Inez Hargaden takes what might have been an ordinary folk-pop tune and turns it into something altogether more elusive, more textured.

Hargaden, an Irish singer-songwriter known for her evocative storytelling, brings a quiet intensity to the track. Her voice, shifting between tenderness and resolve, draws you in slowly before delivering the kind of emotional heft that leaves you both satisfied and searching for more.

This is no simple ballad; Dear Song builds itself into a delicate yet forceful meditation on loss, healing, and the strange ways music can stitch together the fragments of a fractured heart.

The track opens with a gentle acoustic guitar, immediately setting the tone for something reflective and intimate. The melody wears its folk roots on its sleeve, with just a hint of traditional inflection. There’s a familiarity in this intro, the kind that makes you lean in, thinking you know what’s coming next.

But Hargaden sidesteps predictability. When the chorus arrives, it doesn’t just lift—it expands, as bass and drums join the fray, subtly but decisively pushing the song into new emotional territory.

The real surprise, though, lies in the chord choices during the chorus. They don’t follow the well-trodden paths you’d expect. Instead, they reflect the emotional uncertainty at the heart of the lyrics:

When the storm falls so fast
The break is divine
For the lost and the rest
No words hold goodbye.

It’s as if the music itself mirrors the instability of trying to hold on to something that’s already slipping away. And this unpredictability isn’t just for show—it’s essential to the song’s narrative arc. Hargaden’s voice, soaring yet controlled, acts as the glue, holding the track together even as it flirts with the edges of disintegration. Lyrically, Dear Song is full of images that are as precise as they are abstract. In one moment, Hargaden sings of ‘new words in my wardrobe,’ a playful metaphor that gives way to lyrics baring poignancy:

Why won’t the chorus go on?
Tears drip and dive in their time
Throat’s catching ice and
I learn that the songs that I love they are gone.

Here, the music takes on an almost tactile quality, as if the very act of songwriting is a struggle to grasp that which constantly eludes her. The electric guitar lines that slip between verses add to this sense of searching, their understated presence a counterpoint to the emotional weight of the lyrics.

And then, just when you think the song might settle into a predictable structure, the bridge arrives, and the mood shifts one more time:

Glory in the words
of the raised king
You cast your cold hand
on life passed by me

Hargaden’s voice is tinged with something like resignation. It’s a potent visual, grounded in the kind of poetic tendencies that elevate the track beyond mere sentimentality.

By the time the final chorus rolls around, you’re not just listening to a song anymore; you’re wrapped in it, carried along by its current. There’s a sense of catharsis, but also of unfinished business, as if the song itself is a letter that will never truly find its recipient.

Dear Song is a testament to Inez Hargaden’s ability to transform the ordinary into something deeply affecting. It’s a track that demands more than just a cursory listen, one that rewards you with new layers of meaning every time you return to it.

In a world awash with disposable pop, Hargaden’s music stands out—not because it’s flashy, but because it’s real, and because it stays with you long after the final note fades.

Follow Inez Hargaden on IG @inezhargadenmusic and FB @inezhargadenmusic for updates and gig news!