Daily Dose: Kaleah Lee, "Where'd The Time Go?"

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

The question posed by singer/songwriter Kaleah Lee in her new single is one that, like it or not, you’ll likely be asking yourself more and more as you get older. It’s something this Vancouver-based artist is acutely aware of. As she says of this song, it came to her first as a poem that she wrote down when she had a few minutes to herself on her birthday.

“For me, birthdays are a strange and bittersweet thing, being a day when the reality of getting older is scarily magnified,” Lee recalls. “The song is a sort of meditation on not only being hit with the fact that I’m getting older, but also that my parents and loved ones are getting older too. Time is so, so precious, and all the change that comes with each passing year seems to become more and more obvious, whether I want it to or not. ‘Where’d The Time Go?’ feels like a time capsule for me, and I know that I’ll appreciate looking back at it being such a candid and specific representation of how I felt on that day.”

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I’d like to think that that’s why the song is as short as it is. With our time on this planet being as fleeting as it is, we shouldn’t waste any of it. That may seem counterintuitive to the notion of getting people to spend a few moments calmly concentrating on your song, but the underlying message is clear: listen to this with an open heart and then get on with the business of living.

The way Lee portrays it in this song isn’t quite so blunt. Over a simple finger-picked guitar pattern, she coos about changing bodies and changing priorities. “Notice the hollowing out of your cheeks,” Lee sings. “How you’ve grown up to desire nights quiet and meek.” There’s deep, deep wisdom in her words concerning how much our perspectives change as we age and how we’d all do well to embrace that rather than fight it. Having that much foresight at her young age is only going to serve her well as she gets older and grows as a writer and performer. I can’t wait to hear where she goes from here.

Listen to Kaleah Lee’s “Where’d The Time Go?” below.

Daily Dose: Kaleah Lee, “Where’d The Time Go?”