There are songs built for rainy introspection, and then there are songs built for the moment you realise you have completely, helplessly fallen for someone.
Modern Oli’s second single, “Transatlantic”, belongs firmly in the latter category. It’s a sun-drenched, piano-anchored rush of pure romantic exhilaration that arrives like a postcard from the best summer of your life.
For those not yet acquainted, Modern Oli is the musical alter ego of actor Oli Higginson (best known as Footman John in Netflix’s Bridgerton), a role that has quietly amassed a cult following, so devoted that his TikTok has clocked over 4 million views in a single week.
But “Transatlantic” exists in a world entirely separate from Regency drawing rooms. Written during the filming of Bridgerton Season 4 as a deliberate departure from his typically melancholic songwriting, it captures something altogether more luminous.
The song is rooted in lived experience. Inspired by his long-distance relationship with actress Meaghan Martin, “Transatlantic” charts the breathless, gravity-defying feeling of falling for someone when geography refuses to cooperate.
The lyrics are unapologetically tender. They are about love across oceans. Time zones. Airports. That impossible feeling when that special someone makes the rest of the world temporarily irrelevant.
Oli himself puts it with disarming clarity: “I sat down at the piano and took myself back to one of the greatest summers of my life when I fell in love with the most intoxicating, invigorating human being I had ever set eyes on. It’s about the electrifying power of pure attraction.” He goes on to describe it as capturing “that tingly magic of feeling like nothing in the world matters except that person right in front of you.”
And honestly? You feel every word of that in the song.
Sonically, “Transatlantic” leans into 80s synth-pop territory. Think shimmering, wide-open production with a heartbeat built on big, rolling piano chords. The result is a sound that feels nostalgic without being retro for its own sake. Soaring vocals carry the emotional weight with an effortless ease.
Close your eyes and let “Transatlantic” take you on that exhilarating, romantic rush.