Amy-Lin Slezak’s new single, “How Dare She,” kicks down the door with a question that’s less query, more accusation hurled across the digital divide. Slezak, who comes dusted with the rigour of opera and theatre training and is now navigating the independent release currents after raising a family, certainly knows about delivering a line with intent. And this one lands squarely.

The track pulses with a straightforward rock-pop energy, a vehicle for confronting that baffling, teeth-grinding resentment sometimes reserved for women who colour outside the lines, succeed a little too loudly, or simply occupy space without asking permission. It’s the sound of someone tapping their foot impatiently, arms crossed, baffled by another’s audacity to simply be.

You can hear the sneer Slezak is singing back at, the collective gasp from the cheap seats when a woman builds her own stage instead of waiting to be cast. The guitars churn – sometimes they remind me, strangely, of the sound of wind chimes getting unexpectedly aggressive in a rising storm – carrying this defiant energy. It’s not just frustration, though; there’s an uplifting quality, a refusal to be drowned out by the background static of judgment, particularly the kind that festers online.

Slezak isn’t just chronicling the negativity; she’s stepping over it. The song channels the exhaustion but converts it into fuel. It’s a sharp, unapologetic assertion: “Yes, I did. And what of it?”

What, indeed, is so fundamentally unsettling about a woman carving her own path?

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