Single Review – Losing You by Claudio
Legendary drummer Vince Leigh (Pseudo Echo, John Farnham, Tina Arena) joins Sheldon Ang Media in dissecting Losing You by Perth sonic scientist Claudio
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Powerhouse musician, producer and Perth composer Claudio has released Losing You, her second single for 2022. The new track follows a series of single releases and a list of other achievements, including sharing the stage with The Roots, Mayer Hawthorne and Common, and touring the world from Spain to Italy, Germany, France, Brazil, Southeast Asia, the USA, and Australia. Claudio has also generated over two million YouTube views with her 2017 TEDxTalk, How To Translate the Feeling into Sound.
Engineered by Mark McEwan (Birds of Tokyo, Tkay Maizda, Karnivool) and mastered by John Greenham (Billie Eilish, Mura Masa), Losing You is a hybridized pop track incorporating electronic and ambient forms wedded to a melodic finesse that’s difficult to ignore. Aside from the intensity of Claudio’s vocal performance, the most persuasive element here is the method by which Losing You’s narrative—an outline of a complex relationship and its subsequent dissolution—is mirrored in the music. The verses’ sparse allure is juxtaposed effectively with the chorus’ semi-operatic nature, eschewing a straighter disclosure of the main hook by peppering a lush backdrop with a pop grandiosity that manages to mix bittersweet revelation with epiphanic contemplation.
The accompanying video is also worth noting, not merely because it has already won Best Music Video at several International Film Fests, including Rome, Berlin, and NYC, but because of its equally valid interpretation of the lyric, a one-take-like exploration of immersion (ballet dancer Rose Alice is submerged underwater for the video’s entire duration) featuring a figure whose slow-moving, physical exertions mirror relief for the emotional weight sustained in the narrative. The flowing singularity of this body, metaphorically decelerated, alludes to the artist’s enclosing all-embracing confinement, which, despite the verses’ depiction of alienation, ultimately leads to an affirmation, however tenuous, with the lines, ‘the more and more I feel for you / the scars will do the speaking for me’.
Losing You brings to the surface a relatable quandary while maintaining that dilemma’s knotty configuration, reflected in sonic choices primarily but then sweetened and highlighted by Claudio’s arresting musical approach.
