Long for a lover with ella ruby’s “last year”

Long-distance love and long-lost love both have their own ebb and flow in the mind. And when the memories and wants float to the surface, there’s nothing you can do to stop them. ella ruby takes their dark and dreamy tones and tells an intimate story of the frustration behind those sex dreams.

“I’ve dreamt of you each night this week,” she confesses in the opening lyrics. There’s raw desire dripping from each syllable and minute catch-breath the mic picks up. It boils over with steamy lines like, “oh your fingers and your skin, the feel, the taste of you again,” and the double entendres like, “You only come for me in my dreams.”

Beneath the simmering vocals, light percussion and isolated strings buoy the harmony. The percussion brushes the vocals along, gently ushering them from one thought to the next. The strings slip and slide across octaves, sometimes tremoloing between two notes like the lyric’s conclusion is still up for debate.

The indecisive instruments mirror the painful desire. “You’ve got to stay out of my dreams,” ella ruby pleads. We get no say in what the heart wants, no matter how much it hurts us.

Stream “last year” below.

Ben McCoy

Ben is an advertising Madman who spends his days with words and music. When he’s not writing for his supper, he’s eating it at some of NYC’s most interesting restaurants.