Spring is in the air, and that’s exactly the feeling you get when you hear the first notes of “Blue Ruin” by Noa Lee. It’s a song with different layers though, both from a musical and a lyrical point of view.

“Blue Ruin” may initially sound like a happy hopping tune, it is in fact about a burnout and how you can feel completely lost within yourself, seeing no escape, while realising you have to find a way out. The video was shot by students, based on a scenario that Noa Lee worked out herself. It had to be something that partially matched the words and the theme of the song, without making the whole thing too depressing.

So she started thinking, looking for keywords, which led to Sisyphus, a king from the Greek mythology who was forced to repeatedly do the same useless work. This resulted in the idea of letting a man drag a bath in an open field. The bath becomes more and more full, until in the end the man himself lies in it, totally exhausted.

The music of “Blue Ruin” is both catchy and mysterious. There’s this jazzy element in the drums and bass that makes it sound very adventurous. At the same time the intro, that regularly returns during the song, is very recognisable after hearing it just once, and you risk to have it stuck in your head for several days in a row.

Noa Lee hasn’t recorded a full album yet. This young female singer just released a few singles so far. Nevertheless she already got the opportunity to play support act spots at wonderful venues like Ancienne Belgique, TRIX and OLT Rivierenhof, Belgium’s most beautiful open air venue. We would love to see her as a main act at these places soon.

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Noa Lee on Facebook, Instagram.

Picture: Alexander Popelier