Robin Swann’s new single, “Flaunt You,” lands with the deceptive sheen of polished indie pop, but listen closer – there’s grit under its fingernails, a heart beating anxiously beneath the bright synth layers often crafted with collaborator Xander Lee. It captures that peculiar, stomach-flipping vertigo of falling headlong into a love that feels both utterly destined and terrifyingly risky. You know the feeling, like realizing you’ve accidentally painted yourself into a corner, but the corner is incandescently beautiful.
Swann sings of wanting to shout a name from the rooftops while simultaneously wanting to tuck it away, safe from prying eyes or potential disapproval, hinting deeply at the specific anxieties that can accompany same-sex love and the complex shadow cast by family expectations. The music mirrors this – swells of almost cinematic sound crash against moments of close-miked vulnerability. There’s a texture in the layered vocals during the chorus, a kind of shimmering density, that oddly reminds me of the iridescence on a pigeon’s neck feathers. An everyday detail, yet startlingly vibrant when you actually stop to look. Seems fitting, somehow.
The song doesn’t offer easy answers. It lives in the precarious space between fear and fierce desire, the ache of concealment warring with the desperate hope for authentic, open connection. It charts the shaky ground of wanting this love, the one that scares you, to finally be the one that lasts, the one worth the potential fallout.
It’s a potent little capsule of hesitant bravery, that internal wrestling match before you step out into the light, hand-in-hand. What courage it demands, not just to feel love, but to dare to openly wear it?
