Birdy’s ‘Young Heart’ Retrospective: A Voyage Towards Healing

In our rushed daily lives, it often seems utopian to find time to reflect on past grievances. English indie-folk singer-songwriter Birdy beautifully opens up this space in her fourth studio album “Young Heart.” “Young Heart” was released on April 30, 2021, and took four years to finish — a careful process that is reflected in the album’s narrative arc from heartbreak to healing.

“Young Heart” marks a turning point in Birdy’s musical career. The instrumental interplay between the guitar and the piano brings out a warm, stripped-back sound and leaves behind the big, theatrical one we heard on previous albums, such as “Beautiful Lies.” Birdy’s conversational, vulnerable lyrics — which stem from the singer’s personal experience of a breakup — are undoubtedly the highlight of the album. It is astonishing how she nevertheless succeeds in making this her most poetic, relatable, and comforting album yet, reflecting her growth as a person and artist.

The album’s first song depicts a departure, which can be interpreted as being from a partner, a situation, or even a country; “Voyager” starts with birds chirping, a playful allusion to her stage name and an ode to spring, the season of departure. The last line of the chorus, “I’m a voyager, and I voyage on,” describe her very nature: free-spirited and unapologetic as she moves toward her next calling. Although the song’s guitar instrumentation makes for one of the more joyous and faster tempos than others on the album, the lyrics juxtapose these upbeat sonics with a hint of melancholy about the inevitable end of the relationship or situation: “I know our days are numbered, but you don't know that I feel like that / You don't hear solitude, calling me away.” From early on in the album, she introduces solitude as part of the healing experience — a thread that she weaves through multiple songs.

In “Nobody Knows Me Like You Do,” Birdy returns to familiar territory with a wistful piano ballad that contains some of the most piercing and personal lyrics on the album. The minor chords and slow, independent melodies she assigns to the piano interplay beautifully with Birdy’s voice, conjuring the image of her harmonizing with her beloved. She reflects on her conflicting feelings about the breakup through paradoxical lyrics. “I swore I'd be fine 'til I realized that you still love me” may refer to a glimmer of hope but also shows how the feeling is hindered by the fact that the other person has not moved on. Her falsetto is contrasted with the lower range of the piano chords to mirror the tension in the lyrics. Towards the end of the ballad, she confronts her guilt and regret over the breakup: “And I know that I decided we had different lives to lead / Not sure what it was I thought I'd found once I was free.”

With its hesitant guitar plucking and lyrics like “Little Blue finds me again / Creeps over my heart,” “Little Blue,” the most intriguing song on the album, explores an unnamed feeling. Throughout the song, Little Blue grows sonically to represent a variety of feelings and concepts that come to life through personification. This culmination is heightened through the reluctant instrumentation and vocals. The most obvious interpretation may take it as a reminiscence on joyful times with the partner who has left: “Little Blue, reminds me of the love I had that's gone / Little Blue, in you is where those memories live on.”

The way she speaks directly to an abstract, usually negatively connotated feeling as if it was an understanding friend is truly sinning. When she sings, “Don't leave too soon / Please, keep me close to you,” this might refer to the messy process of healing in which we want to delay a clean cut by indulging in memories. However, Birdy certainly doesn’t limit herself to this interpretation. Little Blue might as well describe a kind of solitude, melancholy, or coping mechanism that is comforting rather than overwhelming. Accordingly, the careful introduction of strings and background vocals later in the song serves to create a comforting ambiance. The open-endedness of Birdy’s poetic soul-searching really contributes to the narrative, as it allows her listeners to turn to the song for any range of feelings they may be trying to figure out and work through.

The six-minute gem that is the title song, “Young Heart,” concludes the album’s journey towards healing and refers back to the first song, “Voyager.” The song is written as an apology, explanation, and farewell to her former lover. Birdy touches on a sentiment all too familiar to listeners around her age: “I'm still a young heart / There's so much I don't know / And I'm changing.” In contrast to many of the more hesitant songs on the album, the vocals and instrumentation are delivered confidently, lending the album and the journey an air of finality. Though it starts as a classic Birdy piano ballad, she adds different musical elements to the song as it progresses, among them an airy falsetto section that showcases Birdy’s dreamy vocals, and a theatrical descending melody. The lyrics “And it's been on my mind some time / I found a way to never let it show / But it was too hard” take listeners back to the departure depicted in “Voyager,” where she similarly felt that the relationship would inevitably come to an end. This time, however, she clearly rejects this as an unhealthy way of handling the breakup: “And though I still need you now / Baby, I won't hold you down.” She repeats the line “I’ll keep on loving you” many times until the song ends, showing us that although she put the relationship behind, her love and memories will not fade.

“Young Heart” journeys from conflicting feelings about an inevitable departure toward finding solace in solitude and accepting the breakup. With introspective, vulnerable lyrics, Birdy successfully shows us what stays, and what doesn’t, when we move on.