LAUREL— “Crying on the Tennis Court”

Love means nothing in tennis, which feels unnecessarily cruel given everything LAUREL is going through. She’s crying on the court over a man who kisses other women for sport, her family thinks he's the worst, and her response to this mounting body of evidence is to want him even more. Somewhere, a therapist has just called a line judge.

There’s something refreshingly undignified about “Crying on the Tennis Court.” LAUREL isn't writing from the safe distance where heartbreak has been processed into personal growth and everyone has learned a valuable lesson. She is still very much in the match. She knows the score. She knows he's trouble. She would simply like God to make her cool enough not to care, and until divine intervention arrives, she'll be over here making increasingly questionable decisions.

The title track arrives ahead of LAUREL's forthcoming album of the same name, due January 15, and she handles both the writing and production herself, with Jake Falby supplying strings. Sonically, it has enough sweep and drama to make all this romantic self-sabotage feel almost reasonable. Almost. Catchy pop music has gotten considerably worse people acquitted.

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