The intro to LOVER doesn’t waste time. Sondae builds this gauzy, almost Neptunes-lite atmosphere before his voice arrives, soft but certain. You get that immediate sense he’s about to tell you something that’s weighing heavily on his mind.
Those electronic touches create a feeling of being suspended between thoughts, changing the temperature of the room.
The chorus hits differently than the rest of the track, swelling louder, more urgent. It’s the sonic equivalent of someone’s name you can’t stop turning over in your head late at night.
On LOVER Sondae blends the romantic and the spiritual. The song explores rekindling something that burned bright once but now feels unreachable, and he plays that tension across both planes without spelling it out.
His Cape Verdean and Portuguese background seeps into how he structures rhythm, pulling from Bossa Nova’s sway while keeping his feet in contemporary R&B’s slower burn.
The verses sit back, almost conversational in their delivery compared to that hook. His falsetto doesn’t showboat, it just exists where it needs to.
The production stays lean on purpose, giving the emotion room instead of drowning it in layers. That choice takes confidence.
Since dropping albums like Amen and By The Water, Sondae’s carved out this specific lane between indie experimentation, R&B’s emotional vocabulary, and worship music’s transcendent aim.
LOVER sits comfortably in that overlap, the kind of track that works whether you’re processing a breakup or questioning your calling.
DIY ethos intact, handling his own production and visuals, the Brighton artist keeps building this world on his terms.
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