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What doesn’t kill you might make you stronger, but it still really, really hurts.
The new single from Erin Gibney is about being drawn to a relationship that is lethally toxic to her; a relationship that she knows is going to destroy her in the end. In the same way that Kryptonite debilitates Superman and temporarily reduces his powers while he is exposed to it, the feels that Erin Gibney is getting are slowly killing her too.
“This song is about a relationship with a close guy friend of mine,” Erin Gibney explained. “We developed feelings for each other, but as soon as everything began, I knew it wasn’t right and I knew we would end poorly”.
Left bare, bruised and reeling from the end of a relationship, ‘Kryptonite’ is a song about the simultaneous joy and pain of being in love that will resonate with anyone who has ever looked for love in all the wrong places and been left feeling sad and exposed. It’s a song about being in a relationship that eats you up at the same time as it nourishes you.
“I don’t think I want to like you,” she sings. “I’m not ready for my heart to break again… Never really had a hard time trying to keep my head on straight / But you give me those heart eyes and my good sense goes away”.
“It’s a song I wrote to work through how I felt about the situation,” she says. “It talks about the excitement I felt in feeling the emotions I did and the doom I felt in knowing how it would end. I wrote this song with Nell Maynard, who helped me bring it to life last spring. I wanted this song to combine the panic and confusion with the fun and giddiness of falling for a friend”.
Listen to 'Kryptonite' exclusively on Holler below.
Following on from a string of near perfect pop country singles last year – ‘Exit Signs’, ‘Talk Me Out of Him,’ and ‘You Made Your Bed’ – ‘Kryptonite’ further showcases the unflinching honesty and intimacy Gibney has found in the last 18 months, working with producer Paul Ebersold as she found her way through “genuine heartbreak and the pain, the anger, the hurt that goes along with that” after the end of a five-year relationship.
“I feel like I’m stepping into this brand-new version of myself,” Gibney says, reflecting on the music she’s preparing to release in 2024. “I feel like, for so much of my life, I had a lot of these people-pleasing tendencies, and I would go with the flow with a lot of things. This is me stepping into my own and being like, ‘This is what I want, and I’m not sorry about it’”.
Originally from Southington, Connecticut, Gibney moved to Nashville in 2017 to study music business, with an emphasis on music production, at Belmont University. She released several singles and an EP while still in college, before the four big singles that truly announced her to the pop country world in 2021 and 2022. ‘Naïve’ was the single that really signposted the way her songwriting would go from there.
Love is a learning curve and listening to Erin Gibney’s songs feels like talking it all through with a friend who really knows and understands you. A friend who isn’t afraid to tell you about the best and worst bits of being in love, but reassures you that you’ll always come out the other side.
“My past songs were a little more whimsical,” Gibney notes. “I had this really romantic view on life, and, right now, I don’t have that view, and I think that’s okay. I think it just shows the ebb and flow of life”.
“It’s honestly a little bit scary, because I don’t think I’ve ever been this honest in my music before. I don’t think that I’ve ever said words like this out loud,” Gibney admits about sharing her new music. “I think it’s important to be that honest in your music. It’s scary, but it’s important”.
'Kryptonite' is released on May 3rd on Rock Ridge Music. Presave here.
