There’s a strange comfort in calling your personal disaster a fairytale, and Jeremy Ryan’s new single, “My Fairytale,” lives entirely in that conflicted space. This isn’t the storybook of our youth; it’s the grim, dog-eared version one finds in a dusty attic, its moral hopelessly smudged.
Ryan sings of a rainbow devoid of its colors, an idea that for a moment made me think of those magnificent old tapestries where the brilliant dyes have surrendered to time, leaving only the ghost of a scene. The song captures that exact feeling: the shape of joy is there, but its essential vibrancy has been drained away.
The track is built on a classic rock chassis, but the engine is modern and anxious. The distorted guitar isn’t just backing for the vocal; it’s a character in the drama, a jagged internal monologue arguing with Ryan’s soulful, weary delivery. It’s the sound of a crossroads, not on some dusty Southern highway, but inside the skull, where the “good vs. evil” of our inner child wrestles with the resigned pragmatism of an adult who has seen too much. It feels less like a performance and more like overhearing a difficult conversation someone is having with themself in an empty room.
This is a song about the bleak destination we all fear—the one where wishing is no longer a useful exercise. It lingers, not with a catchy hook, but with the quiet weight of its resignation. Ryan has crafted a narrative of accepted desolation, a personal myth where the only ending is the one you’re already in. But is naming your bleak reality a fairytale a form of empowerment, or is it just a more poetic way to surrender?
