Kaylyn Marie – Forget Me Not (2021)
No stranger to The Other Side Reviews, singer-songwriter Kaylyn Marie has featured on our virtual pages at least twice before. With her tender and heartfelt sound, she has impressed us with sassiness, soulfulness and sentimentality. Raised as a town-hopping youngster, the US-based songstress uses personal experiences to shape original material with engaging and relevant music.
Featured not only on The Other Side Reviews (that’s us!), Marie has received critical acclaim from Nexus Music Blog, Edgar Allan Poets, YMX and Indie Music Center. Her music has been placed on various online radio stations/podcasts in both her solo and band capacity. Performing as frontwoman for The Wildings, Marie proffers a vibrantly jazzy style; however, it is in her solo project that she embraces a more soulful side. The latest addition to her repertoire is the EP Forget Me Not.
In her sophomore solo EP Forget Me Not, Kaylyn Marie embraces a melodic representation of the human soul in its most desperate times. Using the tale of a woman leaving a toxic and abusive relationship, Marie follows her on a journey of tragedy, self-discovery and empowerment. In only five tracks, we track her progression from a world of confusion to the warm sunshine of self-love. This sounds like a conclusion paragraph but it is the opening of a complex book of experiences. Let’s dive in!
From the opening single ‘One You Haven’t Used’ to ‘Finally’, Marie captures the emotional depth in the cycles of grief – both dealing with troubles and overcoming them. What I find intriguing is how the melodies align with the emotion behind the lyrics. The acoustic-inspired ballad ‘At Work’ invokes a challenging intimacy approaching and attempting to overcome unhealthy love. Yet, while there is a complex poignancy in this conversation, it is the simplicity that makes it endearing. Of course, this is only one part of the tender narrative from dealing with rejection to acceptance and forgiveness.
Following ‘At Work’ we have ‘The Same’ – an exploration of how loving someone, even in an unhealthy way, can be natural but also necessary. In this song Marie’s lyrics “change is hard to take and easy to hate” identifies the tipping point between joyful optimism and dark fear. It is also here that the melody changes from sombre to more upbeat. In ‘Finally’, we hear a more buoyant “sassiness” to the single embodying the moment you catch a glimpse of the person you have become.
For more from Kaylyn Marie check out her official website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Spotify.
