TrineLise Vaering (Denmark) – I hope he cancels (Single/future album track)

The oddly titled ‘I hope he cancels’ is the third single from Copenhagen-based TrineLise Vaering’s next (and eighth) solo album ‘A Songwriter’s Odyssey’ slated for release Jan 31^st.

I was immediately racking my brains to figure out what that meant. A date she can’t go through with now she’s spent a little extra time digging on Tinder? An old flame that’s back in town, and has engineered a meeting? A long-lost relative that has been in touch about getting back together again but now she’s got cold feet?

It turns out to be a little more mundane than that, representing a lack of confidence. Like the example she gives of wanting to invite friends over for a New Year party but you think they probably have other, cooler parties to go to, so you don’t reach out to them and you end up being bored to death by Jools Holland’s Hootenanny and Sadiq Khan’s firework display on TV, yet again.

“I’m not ready, ready for a “no” / so I’m not gonna reach out / it’s better to lie low.”

TrineLise philosophises that new experiences in general can be daunting, and yet ultimately we are all courageous since every time we leave the house or interact with other people, we expose ourselves to the risk of coming up short, of others not liking us, and so on.

Yet we do it every day—leave the comfort of our home, venture out into the world, dive headlong into love or engage in other risky behaviours. We do it because, as humans with dreams and aspirations, we need those challenges in order to grow.

Well for someone who lives like a hermit, sat in front of this computer all day long for work or play and whose idea of adventure is the Saturday afternoon trip to the supermarket it is certainly an interesting philosophy.

She crafts the song cleverly. It is delivered in an ‘alt-country’ style complete with banjo, pedal steel and twangy guitars, a catchy melody and a nice line in harmonies. It’s got the hallmarks of Nashville stamped through it while the early fragile negativity of the vocal would probably single it out for exclusion from that orbit.

In particular she portrays, in the mid section of the song, her inability to go on stage despite having a batch of new songs that she’s good at playing, and having been looking forward to it.

But then comes the twist as she suddenly declares that she doesn’t really care if no-one listens and would rather go home, which leads on the revelation that life has taught her not to listen to doubting voices in her head and that every time she goes somewhere or “is someone”, she makes a difference to someone or something.

Adding the rider that of course she will do the show.

Thus something of a miserable whine quickly turns into a robust statement of empowerment.

Now Nashville does like that.

She’s something of a genre bender, has embraced many of them, and we are informed that a variety of Americana-related themes will feature on the album.

Find her on:

Website: https://vaering.com/home