If reality doesn’t quite hold up to the metaphysical bliss that greets you when your head hits the pillow, sink into Nancy Dawn Olsen’s latest single, I Don’t Want to Wake Up which captures the dreamlike state our minds enter when they entertain our ardent desires that fall out of focus come the morning light.
The ballad kicks off to an ethereal and vulnerable start with minor-key minimalist piano chords; as the orchestral swells raise the energy, Olsen matches it with her resoundingly pitch-perfect vocal timbre. I Don’t Want to Wake Up becomes a firestorm of a single that reminds you that love unparalleled, but there are few things as visceral as the absence of it. Lyrically, it may be the opposite of Aerosmith’s Don’t Want to Miss a Thing, but it carries exactly the same fire.
I Don’t Want to Wake Up is now available to stream and download via Bandcamp.
Review by Amelia Vandergast