23-year-old alt-pop singer-songwriter Lauren Dejey’s career has been a steady incline these past few years. She’s been making music for a few years now but after being discovered by songwriter Jake Gosling and signed up to his Goldun Egg label, that incline’s only gotten steeper. This October, with three singles under her belt already, she’ll release her debut EP, Kali Ma.
We’re getting ahead of ourselves, though. To mark the announcement and whip up anticipation, Dejey’s now releasing the EP’s first single, “Just Because You Said You’re Sorry Doesn’t Mean You Are”. An upbeat piece of alt pop, there’s a dry wit about her story of being pleaded with by an ex she’d rather forget. “Do you wanna go for drinks in the middle of town? / I’d rather drown”, she says with a withering, almost audible side-eye.
Composition-wise, she keeps things straight to the point, using a handful of elements—a bouncy synth pop melody, a snappy beat, some light vocal harmonies, and her own voice of course—to maximum effect. It’s darkly funny, but really quite uplifting, in don’t-take-any-nonsense kind of way.
Sharing her thoughts on the track, the South Londoner says: “We’ve all had someone in our lives that makes us feel weak so often that we start to believe it. I’ve had enough negative people around me already that it’s sort of a fuck you anthem to them and future people. I don’t have to accept your apology if I don’t think it’s genuine, and no you can’t relieve yourself of guilt if I’m still living with the hurt. Might be brutal but it’s how I felt at the time. On the flip side I can appreciate that people that bring others down usually don’t feel great in themselves either, but I’m not the punching bag for that.”
The Kali Ma EP drops October 27. While we wait for that, take a listen to “Just Because You Said You’re Sorry Doesn’t Mean You Are” below.
