It's your turn for a review, Finn. Open wide!

Stuff that's great:
- Acoustic instruments, of course.
- The neat time signatures are awesome.
- Honestly, the intro is great.
- The quickfire singing starting at 1:47 is SUPER awesome and has a great feeling.
- Mix is solid and clean.

Stuff that can be improved:
- So the intro is great, and it's also nearly a third of the song. I think it's awesome, just too long.
- The minor melody there is, is barely there.
- Ending is too soon and doesn't really conclude the awesome main section.
- I feel the bass around 1 minute sticks out a bit too much, and could be pushed back in the mix.

Basically, this feels unfinished as heck. It comes together cohesively, just falls short on actually being 'complete'. If it were longer, it would be super incredible.

9/10

I like the pensive mood at the beginning, and the chimes were a nice touch. The soothing vibe and warm texture are both huge boons. I think the pacing is a little slow, and you may have overdone the reverb on the vocals a tad. I commend you for avoiding 4/4 time. I think you could’ve done a better job of leading into the section at 1:45. The sudden injection of energy there needed some priming. Nice job creating a sense of climax into 2:24, but I still think the pacing is off a bit. The vocals are delivered really rapidly during the entire second half, whereas the entire first half moved by much slower. Perhaps I would’ve liked to see you integrate these two textural details to give the piece a more interesting shape. That said, I think the devil truly is only in the details with this one. You’ve made another feel-good, well-mastered track here, Finn. Nice work! ;)

Mixing, mastering, and balance
2/2
Structure, transitions, phrasing, and variety
1.5/2
Melody, tonality, harmony, and texture
2/2
Instrumentation and sound design
1/1
Emotion, atmosphere, and catchiness
1/1
Originality and uniqueness
.75/1
Overall (how do the above elements interact?)
1/1
Composite score
9.25/10

This is fantastic!

I don't agree with Johnfn actually. The beginning is completely necessary especially considering the lyrics. I love your voice.

I do think I see what other people are saying with it missing something. I think it's not big enough when it comes to the chorus. Like there needs to be more desperation and near shouting levels and pitches. But that's just my opinion.

Great work and good luck

I actually preferred to the vocals when they were out in the front. Your voice is a gorgeous asset of yours. I really enjoyed listening to this, but it did feel somewhat unfinished in terms of what could be added to it, but you've gotten some really nice advice and you already know this! Your harmonies are SO beautiful, and I love that you have your own well-thought out style that runs through your songs.

A pleasure to listen to.

i think the core idea of this song is phenomenal, even better than your last one. /however/ the song has a couple of problems that really nag me...

first off, i dont think the song really starts until "what I want for me", which is about halfway through the song! once you do get to that point, THE SONG IS AMAZING. but that intro just... it doesn't really do anything? It's nice, it's chill, it's not offensive at all, but compared to the absolutely bonkers good second half, it almost seems like it should be part of another song.

second off, why on earth does "we all carry it" fade out?? i mean the sighing vocals you fade into are really nice and stuff but, ugh, its such a wasted opportunity for an AMAZING transition! like imagine if instead of fading it built and built into the "i need to be loved" section??? IT WOULD BE SO GOOD.

finally, the mix needs some more love tbh. i disagree strongly with proudaardvark, the vocals (particularly in the "i need to be loved" section) need to be brought much more to the front! at a section like 2:30 they're dangerously close to falling into the "background instrumentation" bucket, which makes no sense at all for a song which should so clearly be driven by vocals! and also, imagine how good this song would sound with bigger drums in that climactic final section?!? UGH

you still get 10/10 from me because this song is amazing. so i guess with those issues fixed it would be an 11/10 or so... =P