So, Michael Paul Brennan has unveiled “What Could’ve Been,” and let me tell you, it settled in my mind not like a catchy tune, but more like finding an unexpected, slightly melancholy letter tucked inside a dusty book. There’s a grand weariness here, a sonic sigh for a society that feels like it’s misplaced its own instruction manual, and perhaps its heart. Brennan, hailing from Weymouth, seems to be channeling a global disquiet, this sensation of watching cherished ideals – liberty, decency, the simple art of not being awful to each other – gather dust on a high shelf.
The song paints with these stark “Blue” and “Red” skies, doesn’t it? For a moment, it made me think of those cheap 3D glasses from childhood, the ones that never quite worked, leaving you with a headache and a blurred, dissatisfying world. That’s the view Brennan offers, where “history repeats itself, liberty sits on the shelf, next to the pursuit of happiness.” It’s a bitter little still life, that. You can almost feel the collective head-shake, the shrug of shoulders witnessing a slow unravelling, a dream curdling in the harsh light of the morning news.
This Americana current carries his soulful vocals and lyrics, not with a foot-stomping revelry, but with the quiet gravitas of someone who’s seen a few too many tides go out and forget to come back in. There’s an intricate sadness woven through the instrumentation, a backdrop for this lament over what feels lost, or perhaps never quite grasped. It’s the sound of wondering if we collectively took a wrong turn at a crucial, unmarked junction some time ago.
“What Could’ve Been” doesn’t offer easy answers; it’s far too honest for that. It leaves you with the weight of its questions, this palpable sense of shared regret, and just the faintest outline of hope, like a nearly invisible mending stitch in a well-worn coat. Does acknowledging the disillusionment so plainly perhaps become its own form of peculiar comfort, or just another blue note in the twilight?
