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Tune-Yards “Find A New Way”

“Find A New Way” starts with Merrill Garbus singing about feeling creatively stuck, and someone telling her to just “find a new way” to sing. You’d only tell her that because she makes being a bold, idiosyncratic singer seem so easy. She cycles through a lot of doubt in the song, but the part that really gets to me – perhaps more so than anything else I’ve heard recently – is the point in the song where she belts out “when I see you changing, you make me think that I can change too.” I like this because it accepts change as a positive, often necessary thing, and that seeing it happen in others is usually the best way to see that possibility for yourself. A lot of people are terrified of change, and that’s a whole other thing. This is about the anxiety of wanting change, but having no idea how to do it, and feeling frustrated by that. It’s easy to tell anyone to “find a new way,” and it’s just as easy to know they’re right. It’s just usually extremely difficult to actually find that new way, especially when you’re all on your own.

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