If emotional, heart-on-sleeve singer-songwriters in the vein of Lewis Capaldi et al are your jam, Scottish singer-songwriter Aaron Smith is well worth your time. His second EP, ‘For My Father’ is a heavy listen, seeing him open up about challenges experienced growing up, loneliness, addiction, the end of a relationship, and more, via huge pop tunes that wouldn’t sound at all out of place on Radio 1’s daytime rotation. He’s packed a lot into these four tracks, as he explains in this here track by track.
Unconditional
When I wrote ‘Unconditional’, it was a time where I was away from my loved ones constantly, and it was quite hard. It was kind of my letter to them saying that I’m okay and that we are still close. I’ve always been very close with family, so not seeing them was quite tough.
Brother
‘Brother’ is a song about addiction. It is based on a story that I had been told and felt I could relate parts of that story back to myself, and some of the struggles myself and loved ones may have faced over the years. Addiction is a scary topic that can affect anyone in any walk of life, whether it is drugs, alcohol or anything else – it feels like a bit of a taboo subject but is something I feel strongly about and felt I wanted to address. It can consume peoples minds to the point of no return.
Your Turn Now
I always say with my music that I like anyone who’s listening to take their own meaning from the track and maybe use it to reflect on something that may have happened in their own life. For me, ‘Your Turn Now’ is about a bad relationship I had with a family member. It’s from a time in my life where I did not feel safe or settled at home. The story the song tells stems from facing years of emotional abuse and manipulation, which in turn took away my childhood.
Doubts
I wrote ‘Doubts’ a few years ago when I went through a bit of shitty time. I was in a relationship, and it was at the point where the spark was gone, and the relationship was definitely over, but neither of us had called it. I didn’t want the relationship to end but had to just come to terms with the fact that it was over.
