Following the announcement of their upcoming EP in June and their title track ‘One More Night’ – Only The Poets, a four-piece band from Reading, consisting of Tommy (lead singer), Clem (guitar), Andy (bass) and Marcus (drums) – have just released their newest single ‘Gone By Now’.
This time around, the band chose a different approach with their release.
Instead of just announcing it, the band let their fans choose between two of their upcoming singles. It was no wonder that ‘Gone By Now’ turned out to be the winner, since fans have been waiting for that record for about a year now, after hearing it live on the band’s tours, festivals and getting to hear the demo during Q&A’s on tour.
Partially produced by Clem and Marcus on the road during the Lewis Capaldi Tour in early 2023, the song keeps following the band’s signature sound. The upbeat melody starts rather slow and quiet and the listener gets to enjoy a steady build-up throughout the whole song, until it gets to a powerful bridge, both sonically and vocally. Speaking of vocals, as always, singer Tommy shows his ability to portray every single emotion through his voice for the entirety of the song, inviting the audience to connect with the track’s meaning to the band.
In a recent video on the band’s Open Stage account – Tommy talks about the story behind the song and explains that he wrote it about his ‘own anxieties and angers while getting over a relationship’ and about ‘addressing these feelings and emotions that stick with you during that process, like they are a person.’ Seeing as this is a very relatable topic, a lot of fans immediately connected to the tune and it became a favorite extremely fast.
The record itself begins with the lyrics ‘Cold words and hot tempers, we let them get away,’ which immediately puts the audience in the writer’s position of him dealing with his emotions. The lines ‘Never really happens but it happens with you, haunted by the heartbreak, you’re still living in my head’ show how the internal battle with one’s own thoughts is an ongoing issue and that losing a relationship is a process that is challenging to get over. Letting the listeners into the exact thought process, Tommy then sings ‘I want you to leave, I want you to stay with me’ which shows the inner turmoil of wanting to end a relationship on one hand but also not being able to let go just yet on the other.
During the bridge he says how ‘It’s so unfair, you keep me here. Stuck in the middle of all of this.’ which emphasizes the difficulties one can have when they are trying to get over a relationship or even when one is trying to understand their own thoughts and feelings.
To summarize it all: Only The Poets are currently one of the most promising bands in the UK – if not in Europe and you should keep an eye out for what they have planned in the future. With their beautifully composed songs and their meaningful lyrics, the band is going to become real big, real soon.
Written by: Lara Thissen
Edited by: Vanessa Svejkovsky
