Dean Lewis Releases “The Hardest Love”
The Hardest Love is Love That’s Always Happening
Known for 7x platinum and first single, "Waves," "The Hardest Love" is the second studio album by Australian singer and songwriter Dean Lewis. As a thoughtful reply to his full-length award-winning debut "A Place We Knew" in 2019, the emotionally intelligent artist equips his listeners with the gifts of love, healing, and the freedom to feel through his therapeutic sentiment of "The Hardest Love."
Uniquely known for his sentimental affluence, this 10-track album is a custom-designed work dedicated to the invocation of his fans and their reactions to his most adored tracks. "The Hardest Love" became a fabrication of complex feelings transformed into a language his fans understand; an expansion of his debut album and multi-award-winning songs such as "Waves," and "Be Alright." His music connects deeply with so many people simply because it connects deeply within himself.
“A lot of artists say ‘I do this (writing songs) for everyone else.’ I think a lot of people just don’t say it, but the truth is you write songs for you and it has to be for you.” Lewis expresses sincerely, sipping an iced americano. “Like for me, when I write a song, it’s always what I wanna do and about what I’m going through. To get in touch with anyone else, it has to be genuine.”
While many artists re-direct their attention to changing the conversation with their next album, Lewis meets his fans where they are by extending his delicate truths, inviting fans to step closer and fall deeper into the music that makes them feel whole.
“To be honest, I wrote (The Hardest Love) during Covid-19 when everything was kinda shut down," Lewis explains thoughtfully. “I wrote, like, six songs about this one girl I thought I was going to end up with. I wrote a song about my dad, and I wrote about a friend who passed away. The Hardest Love is about that.”
Photo Credit: Kent Taver
Written in a hotel room just the day after "Be Alright," "Small Disasters" is a beautiful mess of bad habits and betrayal pressing pause with a candied guitar melody that could sing you to sleep on its own. As an enticing trinket commencing the album, Lewis's passionate voice gives the song room for growth, replacing lonely echoes with warm welcomes, "Cause we're drowning above water in a movie drained of colour." This song is an elegant analogy of a charade; the story of a reckless lover nothing more than a painful travesty disguised as a fairytale.
The chapter ends with brave layers of harmony that fade sweetly with a sharp, carving mystery. A glass of bittersweet wine.
A chasmic caffeine kick, "Looks Like Me" is a charming pick-me-up with lavish recherché and syncopated rhythm. Like the song you hear on the rolling credits of a movie with a happy ending. Written in B major, the topline is an alluring sequence mixing sharp-minor chords and B major 7, supporting the following addictive resolve in the line, "Maybe I'm just not good enough at all to feel your love." The chorus loop is stacked with whimsical harmonies giving the song the fullness and luxury listeners are craving, revealing un-phased pain and depth in feeling worthless. Lewis's voice is consumed with desperation for relief and freedom from an enslaved love as transfixed melodies glisten with high hope and readiness to move forward. 'Not feeling good enough isn't good enough to break me.'
A 4-minute storybook illustration of cherished memories, whispering sweet nothings in the wind. ‘The Hardest Love’ unveils enchanting themes of a bright-eyed lover chasing the girl of his dreams. The song encompasses a feel-good love story with a tragic ending hidden behind a suitcase packed with perished hope. With her eyes filled with tears, the song's protagonist became a vivid, engulfing evocation that fell to dust in Dean’s embrace as he grieves the absence of his adored beloved.
As a sequel to 'Be Alright' 'Hurtless' is steadily paced sharing down-casted eyes on a tale of a broken, beating heart buried in a graveyard. Shovel by shovel, the remains convey a battle of holding on and letting go of a relationship homicide. The lyrical honesty is elegantly brutal as Lewis's spoken-word verses fall from his lips in clean, crisp, teardrops of fervor, "And I'm not saying we were perfect. I hope that one night with him was worth it. But telling me that it was a mistake don't make it hurt less."
“The hardest love is also the relationship that I tried to get going with this girl that just uh…yeah, it just didn’t work out. I feel like that was the last time in love that I will go in so blindly and ignore like, every red flag.”
Prolific in effortless dialogue, Lewis is intentional with connecting more mindfully with his audience and even himself by finding eccentric methods, such as storytelling and conversational dialogue to identify his sound and relationship to music. To make this happen, he would play the piano while talking out the lyrics for Hurtless, imagining himself in a scene of a movie.
“I just think dialogue helps you create scenes better. It puts you, the listener, in the scene,” Lewis describes reflectively. In the interview, he recalls memories of freestyling with his brother, admiring Eminem for his spoken-word soundbites. This inspired him to create the conversation in songs like Hurtless and Be Alright.
“It’s weird, sometimes I think, ‘all I’m doing is describing one scene. Isn’t that gonna get boring after a bit of time?’ But no, I think it’s really powerful if the chorus isn’t so specific. If you do that for the verse, that can really draw people in.”
Photo Credit: Kent Taver
As the most difficult song on the album to write, “How Do I Say Goodbye” is a pivotal moment and definition of “The Hardest Love.” This song about his father battling cancer romanticizes life while dwelling in heartache from the hostile touch of a dreadful nightmare. “How do I say goodbye to someone who’s been with me for my whole damn life.” As an emotional strip-down of the most difficult feelings to process, Lewis aches with desperation, love, and grievance, avoiding the painful severance of an unforgiving death. With confronting melodies and stinging lyrics, this song will leave you with delicate scars like a painful burn.
“I wrote the song about my dad being sick and I didn’t know at the time if he was going to be okay. If the worst happens, which is what the doctors have predicted, it would’ve been very different. Like, I would’ve put it (the song) out, but I probably wouldn’t be pushing it as hard. You know what I mean? Because how do you talk about something so personal in a way where you’re sort of trying to be like ‘hey, everybody, here’s my song.”
Lewis describes the perfect collision of sentimental lyrics with a fitting melody as a rare gem, making this track a pivotal moment in his career as a writer and in his personal growth:
Lewis smiles with surprise, “I’m never gonna write anything as good as this ever again. When the lyrics and the meaning are very direct, and it’s exactly what you want to say with that melody, it fits perfectly. It’s insane, like, I don’t even know how that happened.”
“How Do I Say Goodbye has taken crying to a new level,” he laughs. It’s all sips, smiles, and heavy song titles with Dean Lewis!
In the end, I realize that this isn’t the end of the album, because the hardest love is always happening. This album is truly about the hardest love. The hardest love is the love we think we deserve, and the love we take advantage of the most. The hardest love is the love we lose, the love we grieve, and the love we give. 'The Hardest Love' is a double-edged sword. It's everything we could ever want, yet everything we fear losing. Everlasting and unforgiving when poisoned with cruelty.
Dean Lewis's second studio album, "The Hardest Love," is a beautiful and emotionally charged collection of songs about love, heartache, and resilience. With a unique blend of pop and folk elements, this album will wrap itself around your heart and soul. From the opening track, "Small Disasters" to the closing track, "To Have You Today," this album will take you on an emotional journey of experiencing every hardest love.
Every song is carefully crafted to create a deep and meaningful listening experience. The lyrics are honest, and heartfelt, and speak to our vulnerabilities and the silent struggles we all face in relationships. Musically, the album is lush and dynamic, with each track having its own unique story. Lewis's rich voice adds warmth and depth to his heavy lyrics. For an emotional and meaningful listening experience, "The Hardest Love" is a must-listen.
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