Melbourne singer-songwriter TAMS/N OTWAY delivers the love song you're not expecting for Valentine's Day.
Fearless and unapologetically herself, Melbourne singer-songwriter TAMS/N OTWAY is a rare talent, carving her place within the industry with her unique alt-pop sound is dark, haunting and beautifully bold with an electricity that is palpable and raw.
Arriving just in time for Valentine’s Day, TAMS/N OTWAY has unveiled her latest single ‘Love Me Always’ for anyone who’s ever had their soul shredded by another human being.
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The perfect addition to any catalogue of heartache, ‘Love Me Always’ is a song scented with a fear of abandonment, commitment issues and toxic attachment styles.
Hauntingly beautiful, sensual and yet distinctly soothing, the cinematic track is a lonely and desperate plea to always be loved – even when you don’t know how.
Across the nearly five-minute track, Otway lets her wildly infectious vocals take the lead, immediately capturing our attention and making us fall in love with her music. Featuring longtime collaborator Tobias Priddle on drums and guitar, you’re guided carefully through a maze of swirling guitars, bubbly synth and pulsating percussion as the track takes on a life of its own.
With nods to the likes of Lana Del Rey, MØ and Allie X, Otway has been evolving and experimenting with styles for the last couple of years, but ‘Love Me Always’ sees her reaching her most relatable and human effort to date, championing the wickedly bright future of her avant-garde, ascendant music.
With Otway presenting herself in all the delicacy of her voice, the pleading lyrics are smart, specific and heartbreakingly relatable while the lush and hypnotic repetitive structure represents our inability to break relationship cycles.
“When you’ve had your first heartbreak, when you’ve begged for someone to stay and when you feel your first major rejection, you feel raw, exposed and vulnerable and that was the inspiration for the vocals as well as the artwork,” the alt-pop singer explains.
An ode to the vulnerability one feels after going through a breakup, ‘Love Me Always’ was inspired after Otway’s own experience of heartbreak.
“After my first boyfriend broke up with me, I was a confused mess. I can admit I did not take the breakup well; I was dramatic and overwhelmed…”Please don’t leave”,” she says.
“Lucky for me I was already a singer and songwriter so I started learning guitar to preoccupy my mind. This was one of the first songs I wrote and would play it over and over again as a way of catharsis.
“Honestly, I never planned on releasing it.”
After finding herself repeating the same behaviours over and over again with new people in her life, Otway penned the perfect chorus, ‘All the girls… they run away and all the boys… they run away and all I do… is run away’; a reflection of Otway chasing after things that didn’t want her and running from things that did.
“The song is intended to be ugly, loud, desperate and repetitive. Like that voice in your head that won’t shut up or that part of you that just can’t move on. You go around and around in circles until one day you (hopefully) break the pattern.”
The follow up to previously released single ‘Audacity’, a playful take on Otway’s experiences with misogyny, the vulnerable sparkling single is undeniably made by a woman truly forging her own path however she sees fit, with Otway expanding on her signature sonic palette that we’ve come to know and love.
‘Love Me Always’ is plain and simple, rip-your-heart-out sad. Play it just loud enough to drown out the sobbing. Listen to ‘Love Me Always’ here.
For more on TAMS/N OTWAY, visit here and follow her on Instagram.
