‘Young Heart’ is quite the departure from Birdy’s previous album,
2015’s dramatic Beautiful Lies. Where Beautiful Lies was a fairy tale, Young
Heart is a gritty realist portrait of the artist in pain, looking for the
light.
The songs on the album tussle between light and dark, between that vastness of
space and the interior of home. The conflict between wanting to hide away and
being compelled to go away, to new places and new experiences play out across
the record. The album opener Voyager is a beautifully written song about the
knowledge and pain that you need to end a relationship, but the no-man’s land
where your partner doesn’t know yet. From there, the record speaks of the
fallout – the loneliness, the pain of missing the person she still loves, the
acceptance of grief being central to love and loss, longing for travel but the
pull of the familiarity of home.
