Abbie Ozard deals with music and memory in “Heartbreak Radio”

Abbie Ozard’s latest single, “Heartbreak Radio”, is out on ModernSky UK.

When it comes to memory, for most people, music is inherently tied up into it. For better or worse, certain specific songs are inexorably entwined with our memories.

Manchester’s Abbie Ozard explores this idea on her deceptively upbeat and jaunty sounding single “Heartbreak Radio”. Universally relatable, it is simultaneously telling of the power of music and the malicious ways in which your mind will taunt you with memories of past relationships that are linked to songs. In her own words, “‘Heartbreak Radio’ reiterates the fact that moments in your life will never be forgotten when they are put together with music.”

On the surface, “Heartbreak Radio” sounds like a polished, sickly pop song. Yet, it’s kept musically dynamic and versatile via Ozard’s sharp enunciation and the bending, reverb-heavy guitars that are gorgeously at odds with the five-note repetition that threads the song together.

Her use of repetition is incredibly smart. Not only is the chorus so toe-tappingly good, it’s a bodacious, swinging, uptempo exploration of the power of music and the way that the mind works music into our everyday lives, weedling its way into each crevice. 

The track relates to the way that memories are formed. By repeating the same notes and basing the entire song around this simple chord structure, it not only makes for infectious pop music, but makes us think of the repetitive nature of our memories. Our minds work like broken records replaying the same old memories of a relationship, reminded of them via our own personal “Heartbreak Radio”.

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Rachel Chandler

Rachel Chandler is an English Literature with Creative Writing graduate from the University of Birmingham. She has previously written for RADICL Mag reviewing music and currently writes for Screen Queens and The Simple Cinephile reviewing film.

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