This one should be right up my street, having been employed in the air transport business for n years.
Rhys’ back story is that she was born and raised initially in super cool Portland, Oregon, the name of her forthcoming EP but a town that has perhaps lost its way a little just lately.
Moving to Sweden at the age of 10 her parents adopted a peripatetic lifestyle, moving around Stockholm frequently and, together with the stricter lifestyle of that city and country, its Jante rules and regulations and codes of conduct et al, she became disillusioned with her future prospects as a musician.
That prompted her to learn Swedish by joining a school choir and she was signed to a recording contract at 18 having been discovered a year earlier, moving on to rack up multitudes of streams.
She hasn’t looked back since but did latterly experience some disillusionment having lost touch with her identity amidst the demands of the industry. The forthcoming EP ‘Portland’, from which ‘Heathrow’ is taken, is her first project as an independent artist on her own terms.
I haven’t quite got my head around the meaning of the song yet. The way I read it is that Heathrow (the airport) is the catalyst to two stories – one when she moved to be with a lover and a second one when she came across that lover on a subsequent visit after a breakup.
“Heathrow/Gotta catch the first flight out of this place
Seein’ you/God it gave me flashbacks from those days
I’m a whole different person/I hope that you noticed
I’m not even broken anymore
Heathrow/Get me on the first flight
I wasn’t ready for him last night”
What I also couldn’t get a handle on initially was why the video has her flying herself around the various islands of the Stockholm archipelago when the song is called ‘Heathrow’. It should be ‘Arlanda’ or ‘Bromma’. Perhaps even ‘Västerås’ in a budget version.
The story there is that she has a fear of flying and the video shows her conquering it. So, I presume, that indicates she can cure her concerns about meeting up with Mr X again in the future.
Musically the undemanding song presses all the right buttons. It’s consistently easy on the ear and is catchy in both verse and chorus. The bridge is a little gloomy but then so are the lyrics and she is singing about the past.
Vocally, her tone is quite beguiling.
The video reveals she’s had the same hairstyle since she was about three. But hey, if the cap fits…
The ‘Portland’ EP is due in November.
There is a short tour coming up in November and December to promote it but only in the three Scandinavian countries:
20th November – Nefertiti, Gothenburg
27th November – BLÅ, Oslo
3rd December – Vega – Ideal Bar, Copenhagen
4th December – Musikaliska, Stockholm
Find her on:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rhysmusic
