There’s a peculiar ache that settles in when listening to Maddy Low’s new single, “Dragons.” It isn’t a dramatic wound, but a slow, persistent pressure, the kind you feel behind your eyes after staring at a blank page for too long, convinced that whatever you create will be a monumental failure. For an artist of eighteen to articulate this specific brand of self-imposed paralysis with such clarity is, frankly, unsettling in its precision.
Low sings of the exhausting battle against perfectionism, the quiet, corrosive fear that you are an imposter in your own life. The song is a diagnosis written by the patient; she identifies the enemy not as some external monster, but as a beast born of her own ambition. The dragons of the title are her own high standards, the heavy “brake” a mechanism she installed herself.
The production brilliantly mirrors this theme. At its core, it’s an acoustic ballad—vulnerable, stripped back. But it’s wrapped in a sophisticated architecture of glassy piano, vocal harmonies that feel like the ghosts of expectation, and shimmering synth pads. For a moment, those synths sound less like music and more like the architectural blueprints for a beautiful prison, meticulously designed for a single occupant.
This isn’t a song about victory. It’s a snapshot of the exhaustion, the deep desire not for greatness, but for the simple freedom to exist without the constant, crushing weight of your own potential. Maddy Low isn’t asking for a sword to slay her dragons, but for the schematics to understand how she built their lair in the first place.
The track ends, but the hum of the internal machinery remains. It leaves you wondering: what happens when the architect of the cage finally misplaces the key?
