The Singles Bars: Sara Diamond, ‘Stay a Little’

Welcome to The Singles Bar, a review series focused on new single and song releases.

Regret and pain rush through her bones. She craves fire. Sara Diamond, using her ethereal, feathery voice to transform her troubled emotions, turns to her pen for a cathartic experience. “Stay a Little,” a sinuous R&B romp, was written “around 5:00 am right after a breakup,” she says. “Something in me told me to start writing, so I took out my notepad. The bulk of the writing came from that. It was probably one of the fastest, and more honest songs from our writing sessions.”

Over sugary, fractured synths and candied finger snaps, Diamond battles with herself. “I’m so selfish / I know this is done / But conscious calls me in, saying ‘don’t leave him yet, keep it going,'” she utters, piecing together her love-torn angst. “I don’t wanna be alone,” she later contends. The Montreal singer-songwriter wears her misery on her skin until it brands her for life, and that tension drains her vocal, to great consequence.

When it came down to recording the song, the tidal wave of anguish washed over her (again). “Even recording it brought me back to the way I felt the night that I wrote it. [It] is about knowing the relationship is over for both of you, but hanging on out of fear, comfort, and not wanting to hurt the other person,” she explains. “Communication is key, and I have a hard time with it. So, for a while I stayed, hoping I could rationalize my way out of what I was feeling. I told myself that I didn’t want to hurt him so I tried to make it work, but in reality, it probably hurt even more because I stayed even when my heart wasn’t in it. It was also the fear of being alone, not knowing if I’d ever know love like that again.”

“Stay a Little” follows a string of singles, including the euphoric “Unsure.”

Grade: 3.5 out of 5

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