FLETCHER Covers Heartbreak with EP, you ruined new york city for me
By Alexandria Hopkins
Experiencing heartache can feel like the most excruciating, horror-inducing time of your life. The feeling that someone who once grew from a stranger into a lover, that you spent so much time on, so much of your love with, has become nothing but a stranger again and that you might never see them again is incomparable. Ask anyone who has been through it: consensus says that it’s overwhelmingly terrible.
Of course, feelings like these do not last forever. You can surround yourself with friends or family, binge watch a few Netflix shows with some ice cream pints. Or, if you are a recording artist, make something about said heartbreak.
The latest to follow this footpath? Singer-songwriter FLETCHER with her EP, you ruined new york city for me. A 5-song EP, the album covers her personal experience with heartache, weaved as a story set in the background of New York City as she attended NYU’s Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music. That setting, while not apparent through the lyrics themselves, adds so much more than one would realize when thinking about the album as a whole and how it sets itself up. If FLETCHER’s you ruined new york city for me proves anything, it demonstrates that breakup records that focus on the atmospheric and real sides of the artist themself—proven through records such as Melodrama, Back to Black, etc.—are still here and can still connect to people in ways like never before.
As proven on the album, FLETCHER is a force not to be reckoned with: through taking lyrics that would be eerily cynical from any other artist and making them not only real but catchy, she’s proven her talent. Thanks to production by the infamous Frank Ocean and Sam Smith-collaborator Malay, the album flows beautifully. Songs like “All Love” and “Undrunk” sound reflective, remembering a past once lived with envious undertones, but at some points, contempt. Though there are some cynical moments on the EP—seen in songs like “If You’re Gonna Lie” and “About You”—the overall EP feels poignant and the beginning of something new for the artist.
The album is also wonderfully clever. That cleverness shows itself in different places: from the wordplay of the chorus for “If You’re Gonna Lie” (“If you’re gonna lie/Do it in my bed”), to the contrast of the verses and chorus in “Undrunk” reflecting the lows and highs of a party, to the impactful beat drop in “Strangers” that plays out similarly to the end of the romance movie, something that this album represents. For an album about heartbreak, you ruined new york… carries itself and its confidence well, serving as another point in the album’s favor.
A factor that ties the album together is FLETCHER’s vocals, presenting h a combination of confidence in her capabilities and weariness over times with this past lover, all while matching with the instrumentation near perfectly. Though it does not come out often, her “belting” potential shines on “About You.” The extension of her vocals on “Strangers” serve as highlight as well and leaves you pondering about what else the singer-songwriter has in store for her listeners. Those questions concerning what is in store for FLETCHER keeps the EP going, and what leaves listeners more satisfied than when they first started.
For an EP, you ruined new york city for me is a beyond impressive outing for the new-coming act, highlighted by indestructible production and a powerful vocal talent to match. While it may still be “just being an EP” (especially when considering its length and the runtime of the songs), it does highlight a question throughout, and one that I’m personally more than eager to hear about: where does FLETCHER go from here, and how can she elevate even further from where she is now, post-heartbreak and on the brink of stardom?
In the meantime, check out FLETCHER on her first headlining tour starting on September 3rd in Toronto, ON at the Velvet Underground or at the iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas, NV on September 21.