Daily Dose: Esmé Patterson, “Light In Your Window”

Daily Dose: Esmé Patterson, “Light In Your Window”

Daily Dose is your daily source for the song you absolutely, positively need to hear every day. Curated by the Paste Music Team.

As it’s been said a million times in a million different variations, breaking up is hard to do. And everyone deals with heartbreak in their own distinct ways, though each (grief, jealousy, etc.) is a universal feeling felt by many.

For Denver-based singer/songwriter Esmé Patterson’s friend Martin, his post-breakup emotions manifested themselves in an extremely specific way. The veteran artist explains:

The idea (and the name) for the song “Light In Your Window” came to me when driving with my friend Martin past his ex-girlfriend’s house. He reflexively looked up to her bedroom window to see if the light was on, and then was angry with the muscle-memory that had made him do so. He expressed the melancholy caused by the slowness with which healing processes can sometimes move. I had been going through a breakup as well and poured some of my feelings into that metaphor and it became a song! For me, it is a song about longing for the end of longing.

“Every time I drive down your street / I look for the light in the window,” the bouncy, dreamy synth-based track opens, Patterson’s voice airy yet determined. “I can’t help it,” she repeats in the chorus, echoing that same feeling we all deal with when having to explain our sometimes unexplainable, unjustifiable actions in the wake of a nasty split. The gravitational pull towards an ex-partner can move mountains.

“Light In Your Window” is backed by indie darlings Tennis, who morph the track in their own synth-pop image, making this a major departure from Patterson’s past twee-folk stylings. It feels like a big step up for the newly minted major-label act, recently signed to BMG, each warm keyboard note and uber-catchy melody coming off as more confident than the last.

The new single is accompanied by the news of her fourth album, which still doesn’t have a release date or a title. But if “Light In Your Window” is anything to go off of, it’ll definitely be her best to date. Watch below and listen to our Daytrotter sessions from 2012, 2014 and 2016.

Esmé Patterson Tour Dates

November
19 – New York, N.Y. @ Mercury Lounge $

($ – with Ali Barter)

 
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