REVIEW: Hailey Picardi Peels Back the Infinite Layers of Guilt and Heartbreak in Latest Track “car crash”
REVIEW
REVIEW
☆ BY SULLIVAN JORDAN ☆
WEAVING A SILKY AND INTIMATE PORTRAIT—of an all-consuming, fleeting and dangerous romance, Hailey Picardi wants listeners to embrace vulnerability. The California-based singer-songwriter offers listeners a comforting space to express their anguish and regret on her debut single “car crash.” Raw and folksy guitar instrumentals remain intimate as vocals expand into a more heartfelt and melancholic world soaked in heartbroken frustration, self-contemplation, guilt and tentative acceptance.
Through her point of view, she acts as an alarm, sending anxious signals to someone under the same addictive spell as she was before heartbreak and despair. Despite her cries of anguish and a pulsing desire to save someone else from her same fate, she finds herself knocking on sound-proof glass—helpless and distraught.
“car crash” begins like a midnight drive. The windows are down, letting a cool breeze float through your hair as the radio blasts your favorite song. An isolated acoustic guitar accompanies Picardi’s quaint and sincere vocals as a peaceful night drive speeds up, making your heart race and your mind spin out of control. The car stereo begins fading to static, losing the signal to reality as the mastermind in the driver’s seat slams on the gas petal, ignoring any road signs along the dark and infinite abyss.
Cinematic instrumentals seep through the tranquil moments in between each breath and stroke of the guitar, infiltrating your mind just as the stings of regret and helplessness take over Picardi’s thoughts. The song’s sensational production reaches an explosive, and almost cathartic peak, during the bridge, which not only acts as a structural component to push the story and song forward, but as a metaphorical bridge that both Picardi and the love-struck protagonist are forced to cross.
Throughout “car crash,” Picardi brutally confronts her inner-guilt at not having the power to stop someone else from falling into the same inescapable trap she was once tangled within. She acknowledges that even though so much of it falls out of her control, she cannot help but feel a sense of responsibility, no matter the outcome: “Now I gotta watch this car crash in slow motion/I know how this ends but I can’t stop it from unfolding.” She sings as a big sister or best friend, desperate to impart her wisdom and cast a protective spell over the situation. However, Picardi painfully realizes that people must navigate their own emotions, even if that means experiencing the lowest levels of the human experience.
As Picardi sings through a window into her past, she has the advantage of looking at a terrible situation in retrospect: “I know you like it cuz it was once me in your shoes/You don’t have the full picture but I’ve got a bird’s eye view.” Rather than writing a song centered around her own journey, she twists the listener’s expectations, giving us just enough information to understand what she experienced in the moment, while also touching on the sensitive and complex emotions associated with a destructive aftermath—an emotional peek into a broken heart we rarely get to witness.
As “car crash” continues, Picardi’s guilt becomes more tangible as she realizes her words of warning mean nothing against the powers of fate: “Darling I would warn you but I’m in the rear view mirror/So he gets to decide the story that you’re gonna hear.” Once thought to have had a hand on the steering wheel, Picardi finds herself, once again, out of control, screaming into a void with no answer, helpless against imminent destruction.
Her frustration culminates in the bridge, where Picardi confronts her inner-demons and accepts herself for who she is and always will be: “And I get it, you can’t see the warning signs/Wanna believe there’s good in everyone/It’s a curse that reflects mine/And I get it, you’re a deer in the headlights/You’d try to heal the one that’s broken at the cost of your own life.” Picardi’s vocals become more vulnerable as she rips apart her own knotted mess of emotion, letting everything spill from inside her.
In her eager but ultimately fruitless wish for emotional control, Picardi finds that releasing herself to the wind is what gives her the most power over herself, and her feelings and desires. Bottling things up inside is only a temporary bandaid to cover damage that has already been done. Only when you let yourself fall will you learn how to fly.
