Martin Luke Brown – “highest high”

“You were my highest high / Oh and my lowest low.” Incredible? Yes. Revolutionary? Absolutely not. And that's exactly why it works. Most relationships worth grieving refuse to become one clean thing in retrospect. They were incredible. They were awful. You miss them. You're relieved they're over. You'd never do it again. You also wouldn't erase it. Martin Luke Brown manages to fit that entire emotional mess into two phrases we've all been using forever.

Then he slips in the line that really gets us: “But I wanna keep my heart open to break again.” That's the grown-up part. highest high isn't terribly interested in deciding whether the relationship was good or bad. Martin already knows it was both. The victory is getting to the other side without deciding that loving somebody that much was a mistake.

It helps that the song sounds so fucking good. It doesn't behave like something nursing a wound. Piano and acoustic guitars steadily gather momentum until the whole thing blows open into a full-band release, which is fitting for a song Martin describes as “cranking up the dial on the emotion and letting it all rip out.” He's singing about being broken while sounding suspiciously thrilled to be alive.

Spend five minutes in Martin's world and that starts making sense. He calls his friends one of his greatest achievements and community the baseline that's allowed him to feel safe and supported. He made life & death etc. with people he's known and trusted for years, saying that familiarity turned the process into exploration and play. You can hear that spirit all over highest high. This isn't Sad Man With Feelings™ alone at the piano. By the end, it feels like everybody came over.

Look, whoever this song is about, we're not saying we're picking Martin's side.

We're picking Martin's side.