Celeste's Strange - A story of the first listen

Celeste's 'Strange' is a beautiful and delicate tribute that summarises all we think but can't quite explain about heartbreak

It's 7:50am and I'm nearing the end of my morning commute. My boyfriend and I of 7 years have just gone our separate ways. We had grown so significantly together and yet, somehow, outgrown each other. I can't understand how it can all just be, gone. Where did it go? Did it dissolve in the air? Drift away in a breeze? An illusion perhaps. Yes. Impeccable work of a magician's disappearance act. Sure to re-appear at any moment. We're just on the edge of our seats waiting for the reveal. We'll look back and laugh at that agonising trick. End scene. All a dream.

But it's not.

I'm broken, confused and lost.

Two soft minor piano chords play through the radio. Celeste's voice enters. Oh no. My heart. That VOICE. My stomach. It's like I already know I will face hard truths in this, even one line in. Like I am the only listener, playing to me and me only, caressing my wounded heart. I already know I'm a goner.

The verse builds and the gentle piano allows her voice to effortlessly soar. Her tone provides all it needs. Less is certainly more here.

The chorus hits me like a tone of bricks:

"Isn't it strange, how people can change, from strangers to friends, friends into lovers, and strangers again"

But it's Celeste's voice that tells the story. The kind of voice that could sing about fish and chips and leave you emotionally distraught, questioning where the breakdown was, haunted by potatoes.

As the song unfolds, I don't realise it, but I'm really crying. Ugly crying. Gasping crying. A weight lifts as the track ends and once my skin has absorbed the moisture left behind by my tears. It is like someone has taken my jumbled and mourning heart, ironed out the underpinnings, and reflected it back to me.

Celeste's 'Strange' is embedded with such beautiful natural grace and heartfelt curiosity, it would be a crime not to devote your ears to this.

Hindsight addition: It's been around 9 months since this moment, and every single time those initial chords play, I'm taken right back to being in the car, at the very same roundabout, with the very same feeling of an empty aching. It has a hold on me that turns my body cold, but in the most beautiful way possible. The power of music. The power of timing. The power of Celeste.