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Oct 24, 2023 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Irina Varina

Indie singer/songwriter Lila Blue is set to return next month with their fourth full-length album, Sweet Pea, out November 10th. Taking its title from Blue’s childhood nickname and birth flower, the album meditates on coming of age, healing, and transformation, tracing their path from childhood performer to fully-formed singer/songwriter. As they explain, “I felt like I’d been writing to an ‘other,’ without realizing that ‘other’ is the person I wanted to become. I’ve been actualizing my own healing, manifesting the person I am today.”

They have already shared the album’s title track and another new single, “There Is A Drought,” and today they’re following with another release, “Changeling,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Changeling” coats Blue in tension and simmering shadows, with snaking strings and elliptical guitar lines encircling the track’s centerpiece一Blue’s passionate vocal performance. Their vocals stretch, howl, and soar, feeling glassy and longing as they reach for the high notes while remaining rich and resonant in their lower register. Even with a relatively subdued and acoustic instrumental palette, the track has a sense of galloping momentum, with Blue’s lyrics tumbling out in a confessional rush up until the track’s very last moments.

Meanwhile, their lyrics explore equally confessional territory, colored by Blue’s embrace of their identity as a non-binary and queer person. The track reflects on the discord between Blue’s inner self and their physical reality. They sing, “Sometimes I feel like a changeling / There’s a spirit in my skin / That comes from the insides of another / That I’ve never lived in, never lived in / My tongue is dipped in shadow / Wherever I spit darkness comes / I am the opposite of a maker / I am, I am the undone.”

Blue explains of the track, “‘Changeling’ came out through reading and being deeply inspired by ‘Freshwater’ by Akwaeke Emezi and ‘Three Sisters’ by Anton Chekhov. Both had characters who were navigating sensations of moving through the world in bodies which did not feel like their own; a skin which contained multiple selves, and not all of those selves benevolent to the flesh they had to live in. As someone who has moved through dysphoria their whole life without words for it until recently, and has at many junctures felt as if my body and self are worlds apart from each other, these stories planted a seed that eventually became ‘Changeling.’”

Check out the song and video below. Sweet Pea is out November 10th via MOXE.