Standing in the middle of festivities and looking at all the happy people while your own heart is aching. That’s one of many ways a heartbreak can manifest in, an eternal-feeling Big Sad that refuses to shrink in the presence of joyous things. This party we’re about to peek into was a New Year’s Eve celebration, and Kaiyah Mercedes has written a song of a me-character at the party suffering their bleeding heart.
The 16-year-old singer-songwriter Kaiyah Mercedes lives in Melbourne and is keen on writing songs about the sadder side of our emotional beings. Thus, she often writes about heartbreak, sadness and mental health struggles, combining them into songs of various genres. Ranging from folk to pop ballads, each song has its own story to tell, and every song offers to console a sorrowful mind with their relatable lyrics and soft melodies.
“My songs are almost always sad. I write about sadness in every way I can, from folk songs, to soft rock, to pop, and then to ballads like this one. There is so much to be said about heartbreak and mental health struggles and sadness, and I hope my songs can give other young, sad teenagers something to relate to.”
Kaiyah Mercedes
Back to the new single, “New Year’s Resolutions” is a piano-driven pop ballad forming a damp atmosphere from all the sadness within. It’s a heartbreak song, following a breakup that happened just before or perhaps even during the party, and the resulting shattered heart has all been put into the emotional lyrics. There’s immediacy and disappointment in the way the artist sings the lyrics, further punctuated by the piano chords, and that shows how much the song’s character wants things to be different instead of being in this situation she’s in right now. The lyrics also highlight the painful efforts of making it seem like she’s fine and taking part of the celebrations, when in reality she’s far from being okay. Heavily relatable song for all who have had their hearts broken and are trying to make it seem they’re doing fine.
“When writing this song, I started with no idea what I was going to write about. I wrote it in ‘I Heart Songwriting Club’, and my inspiration word for the song was ‘toast’. The only line I had was “breakfast in bed on the weekends” because I thought of toast in relation to breakfast, and started seeing a story in my head of a person reminiscing on really simple beautiful moments that meant a lot to the person who’s point of view the song was written from. Through the next few lines, I started getting a picture of more memories, almost like flashbacks, and then the pre-chorus representing the end of a memory. The story really did create itself – I felt like the words were just spilling out of me. It was almost like I was simply a medium for this melancholic story of young heartbreak and longing to be told.”
Kaiyah Mercedes
“New Year’s Resolutions” is out now, and Kaiya has a music video for it to be released later in the month. It’s also the third single off Kaiyah’s upcoming debut album set to release later in the year!

Don’t forget to support this project and to follow on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, and Spotify. You can also check out her official website.
You can obviously find it in the following Playlists: Less Than 1,000 Followers, Fresh Singles, Indie Only, Female Rising Stars, Chill – Folk – Acoustic, 12 New Songs This Week, and Missing You….
P.S. If you enjoy discovering new artists and fresh new music you can subscribe to this blog Less Than 1,000 Followers and follow the Playlist with all the artists that we have presented here!!!
This coverage was created via MusoSoup #Sustainablecurator
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