Premiere: Connah Evans isn’t ‘Holding Back’ anymore

Unrequited love can be wickedly painful. Heartstrings swell until they snap, and the wounds may never heal completely. Popular culture is littered with such tales of the oppressed and outcast, from Éponine in Les Miserables to Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series to playfully innocent themes in the Peanuts cartoon, crafting universal truths of a broken heart around heightened realities. Despite such immense gravity, there is a certain amusement that also comes along with such a one-sided cat and mouse game. Pop upstarted Connah Evans hits the reset button on the theme with his creamy, ice-cream wonderland of a new single “Holding Back,” premiering today.

“She’s over tiring / But I know I wanna see her / Oh, I wonder if I don’t go / Will she be there when I’m alone,” he sings, trying to untangle himself from his own emotions, bubbling and fizzy. He’s all shook up, but he relishes in it, choosing to follow his off-kilter whimsy for the potentiality of Cupid’s red arrow hitting another squarely in the chest. Later, he weights the possibility it might all be just an illusion, “I’m a walking disaster / ‘Cos when I’m around you / My heart it beats faster / And I just don’t know where it ends / But maybe it’s all in my head.”

The hefty lyric is dolled up with an electrifying production, laced with chewy guitar and sharp neons. “Over the last 12 months, I have been working hard to hone in on a sound that is unique and authentic to me ⏤ one that, not only listeners of my music, but almost anyone will enjoy. I now feel that I have done just that,” he tells B-Sides & Badlands. “In [this song], I speak of the pain and fun that comes with unrequited love, but as always, I focused on giving it that upbeat, lively sound of which I ensure my songs demonstrate, regardless of what my lyrics portray.”

Evans draws stark, glowing, reverberating lines from his throbbing heart to a perhaps unsuspecting object of adoration. He’s unabashedly bold, his cheeks flushing with a soft pink hue, but his vocal deceives him and underscores his own insecurities. “And I try so hard, somethings bound to give / But I can’t drop, the fear that it could always fall apart / You’re holding back, you’re holding back,” he convinces himself in the song’s nearly stripped-down stanza. But the beat rushes in all over again seconds later, washing over him and sending the listener into a glitter rave out onto the club floor.

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