Finding HopeThe Loneliest Whale – Out Now!
Posted on April 24, 2025
NOTE: Spoilers for the documentary, The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52.
If you follow me on any of my social media accounts, you will likely already know that my new single, ‘The Loneliest Whale,’ is officially OUT! I love this song so much and I’m so excited for you all to hear it – it is, without a doubt, one of my favourite songs I’ve ever written.
If you’re a regular on my blog, you will probably have read the posts about ‘Write This Out‘ and ‘In The Mourning,’ the two singles that I released prior to this one. ‘The Loneliest Whale’ is the first official single of my upcoming EP but the earlier songs felt really important in establishing the foundations of this new project. Plus it meant I could release more music with the EP.
I wrote this song with an amazing artist and songwriter, lukeistired, who I went to university with. It was the summer of 2021 and our course had remained online up to this point and, finally able to work onsite again, we booked a practice room and started writing this song. We made a solid start and I later finished it by myself before working on the production with my long time collaborator, Richard Marc. It was then beautifully mixed and mastered by Josh Fielden.
Photographer: Thomas Oscar Miles // Cover Design: Richard Sanderson
The song, unsurprisingly, uses the story of The Loneliest Whale as a metaphor for the loneliness that can often come with being autistic. This whale calls at a frequency much higher than other whales (it’s believed to be a hybrid) and while other whales can hear it they can’t understand it; they can’t communicate. That was something that I desperately related to, both before and after I was diagnosed as autistic. I’ve always felt like I’m on a different, more difficult to access frequency, so I’ve had this story in the back of my mind for a really, really long time.
When I sat down to start writing songs for this project, I knew this was a story that I wanted to write a song about. Although I knew the story well, I wanted to make sure I had all of my facts right and so I started researching. But what I didn’t expect to find was just how many individuals and communities also related to this whale, how many people have made art about this whale… I was so inspired. I’d expected the song to be a lonely, melancholy one but this changed the emotional direction: the loneliness and isolation is still there but there’s also hope. It’s a much more uplifting song than I’d ever imagined it would be.
The one obvious source of research that I avoided was Joshua Zeman’s documentary, The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52. It was a documentary that I was really excited to see but I knew that, if they did find the whale during the documentary, I would never be able to write the song I was so inspired to write. So I decided that I’d watch it after the song was finished and then, if there was anything I wanted to change about the song, I could but I could also leave it as it was.
The documentary is great and I highly recommend it (although major trigger warnings for gruesome scenes of whaling – I’m not convinced that that level of blood and violence was necessary to make the point but that’s just my personal opinion): it manages to perfectly balance the story and mythology of the whale with the physical search and all of the science involved. And while they didn’t find the whale, they do manage to record two separate whale calls at this same frequency, close together but far enough apart that they had to belong to two separate whales. So there are two of them: two 52Hz whales. The Loneliest Whale no longer needs to be lonely. I was so moved by this discovery: just as the whale is no longer lonely, neither am I.
I am so excited to finally have this song out in the world. As I said, it is one of my favourite songs I’ve ever written and I think it’s the song that I’ve had most people reach out to me about, after playing it live or sharing snippets of it here and there. It seems to really resonate with people and that is so, so special. At the heart of it all, that’s what I want for my music; all I want is for people to feel seen and heard and understood when they listen to it.
In The Mourning – Out Now!
Posted on March 1, 2025
I know I’m pretty late in my announcement – things have been beyond hectic since the song was released and my insomnia has been brutal – but, as of Wednesday 19th February, my new single, ‘In The Mourning,’ is out in the world! If you follow me on social media, you will, of course, already know this but I know that there are those of you who don’t and I wanted to make sure you knew as well. This song means so much to me and I’m so excited (and a little bit nervous) to have released it…
If you read my post about ‘Write This Out,’ you’ll know that these two songs are part of a bigger project, the details of which are still to be revealed. I’ve only been mentioning it because I want you all to know that these songs are connected, that they’re not one-off singles. ‘Write This Out’ set the foundation, establishing the need to get the story out of me, but this song – ‘In The Mourning‘ – is the beginning of that story: when I was diagnosed as autistic.
When I sat down to write this song, it tumbled out, like it had just been waiting to be written – it was, after all, more than five years since I’d been diagnosed. I’m not sure why I’d never written about it before: maybe I’d thought that I didn’t have anything to say about the actual diagnosis, only about my experiences of being autistic. But it seems that there were a lot of emotions and moments from when I was processing the diagnosis that have stuck with me, that I’d apparently needed to express. It was definitely cathartic to write and one of the things that makes it so special to me is how, when I listen to it, it really feels like how I felt during that time; yes, the lyrics describe that but the song also manages to convey the emotions I was feeling within me and around me.
Again, this isn’t an easy song to listen to – I was trying to process a lot of grief and confusion and uncertainty – but it isn’t without hope. I had been feeling so lost and so broken and suddenly I had answers and information and the beginnings of a new way forward. I’d never felt in sync with the world around me and suddenly I knew why. That didn’t change exactly but knowing why made such a difference and it helped me to see the world differently, to see the places I could fit rather than seeing all of the places I couldn’t.
Photographer: Thomas Oscar Miles // Cover Design: Richard Sanderson
If you’ve been diagnosed as autistic – or anything that turned your life upside down – did it take you a long time to process it? Did you go through a mourning period of sorts? Maybe you relate to this song, maybe you don’t. But if you do, I hope you know that whatever you feel – or felt – is valid; I hope you’re talking to people who love and support you and I hope you’re moving through it as smoothly as possible. No state lasts forever. Change is, after all, the only constant in the universe.
I’m so grateful to be able to put this little piece of my heart out into the world and I’m so grateful to everyone who’s already listened to it, who’s left a comment, who’s reached out to me about it… If you haven’t listened to it yet, you can find it here. I’ve never been one to say ‘I hope you love it!’ because I think many songs inspire more complex emotions than love. So, instead, I tend to say, ‘I hope it makes you feel something.’ I’m going to sign off here: I hope you’ll take a few minutes to listen to the song and I hope it makes you feel something. And if you’d like to share that with me, on here or on social media, please do. Nothing means more to me.
Write This Out – Out Now!
Posted on January 15, 2025
If you follow me on one or more of my social media platforms, you will already know this but if you don’t… SURPRISE! My new single, ‘Write This Out,’ is out today! I’m so excited and I cannot wait for you to hear it!
‘Write This Out’ is the very first single in a much bigger project, one that I’ve been actively working on since 2021 and thinking about for even longer. But details about the project will have to wait. Today is for ‘Write This Out’ – my first song to be released since ‘House on Fire’ in 2023. It was inspired by this fear that I’ve always had: the fear that, if I forget the details of my life, then I would be losing all of the pieces that make me who I am. I think this is very tied up with my OCD – in the form of memory hoarding – but I think it’s also connected to a lifetime of masking and my struggles with unmasking; my memories anchor me and without them, I would have no idea who I am. This manifested as a desperation to keep these memories safe and so I’ve been writing everything down for years. The memories are preserved and so I don’t have to try to hold onto every moment of my life at once: as an autistic person, I can find it really hard to regulate my emotions and they can get utterly overwhelming and I cannot function if I’m trying to hold EVERYTHING – the past, the present, the future – in my head. So if I’m going to function – and function I must, to some degree at least – I have to get those feelings out before I start to lose things and ultimately lose myself. I have to write it all down, something that is completely exhausting but feels impossible not to do. I have SHELVES of notebooks in my room, filled with my thoughts and feelings and experiences.
And beyond that being a part of my life that I wanted to express in song form, it was a concept that felt like a really important one to begin a project about being neurodivergent – although more specifically about being autistic – with because writing about my experiences of being neurodivergent, of being autistic, is something I’ve really wanted and needed to do. I never wanted to hide these fundamental parts of my identity but being open about them can feel really vulnerable and as much as I wanted to write about it all and put it out into the world, it took me some time to get there, as well as other life stuff – autistic burnout, chronic illness, mental illness, trauma, therapy, and so on – getting in the way. But I started writing songs because I never heard anything that I related to and I think every song I’ve written has been a stepping stone to this moment, to this project. I wanted to stop holding all of these feelings and experiences and difficulties and write about them, write about my reality, like every other songwriter gets to.
Plus there’s a huge population of neurodivergent individuals that have very little music written directly about the experiences that often make us feel separate from those around us. That’s not to say that every neurodivergent person WILL relate to this song and the songs to come but I hope that some will and that they can find some validation and some connection from them. We deserve music that covers our experience of the world, that makes us feel seen and validated and understood. As I said, no song is going to resonate with every neurodivergent person – being neurodivergent doesn’t automatically make us the same and grant us the same experiences – but I think we need more neurodivergent artists in the world and I’ve been so excited to see the number of artists talking about their neurodivergent experiences rise exponentially over the last few years. I’m proud to be a part of that, even as a little indie artist with a relatively small audience.
This isn’t an easy song to listen to: it’s bursting with panic and desperation and urgency. And if you relate to that, I feel for you; it’s an awful, exhausting way to exist. But I hope that, if it does resonate, you feel seen and you feel heard and you feel understood. Maybe this song can help you write out all of the feelings that are overwhelming you. Maybe it can help you say them out loud or scream them at the sky if you need to. You’re not alone.
Photographer: Thomas Oscar Miles // Cover Design: Richard Sanderson
As I said, I’m so excited to finally put this song out and for people to finally hear it. I can’t wait to hear what you think. Here’s to ‘Write This Out‘ and to all of the songs to come!
Finding Hope 