Dallas-based artist JOURNEYGLO captures the ache of uncertainty with “Wave After Wave”, one of the most striking moments from her debut album Limp By Your Side.
It’s a song that resides in that uneasy in-between space between holding on and letting go. The production, co-crafted with Oscar and Julian Gamboa at Dallas’s JOGS Studio, is minimal but not empty.
Sparse keys and quiet atmospherics leave plenty of room for JOURNEYGLO’s voice to soar. It is tender, questioning, and resolute all at once.
Her classical background as a Vanderbilt-trained clarinetist shows in the song’s composure. There’s discipline in the restraint, elegance in how every note feels intentional. But emotionally, it’s wide open.
Lyrically, “Wave After Wave” distills the emotional fatigue of waiting for someone who can’t decide whether to stay or go.
“When you find yourself, come find me then / But don’t waste my time until you understand,” she sings; a line that captures the songs essence.
The recurring ocean imagery mirrors how feelings swell, retreat, and return, and never quite resting in calm water.
Each repetition of the question “Are you in or are you out?” cuts a little deeper, shifting from gentle wondering to something closer to demand.
It’s fitting that Limp By Your Side centres on experiences within uncomfortable but necessary spaces where self-growth takes root.
JOURNEYGLO, born Gloria Lee, knows that tension firsthand. Having transitioned from faith-based music into a more exploratory indie sound, she writes like someone re-learning how to speak. Less to convince, more to understand.
The performance itself feels personal, almost voyeuristic. Almost as though we’ve stumbled into her late-night processing session.
There’s a fragile kind of honesty in the way her voice wavers on the word “falling”, as if she’s still deciding whether she really means it.
What makes “Wave After Wave” so captivating is the vulnerability it embodies, and how it lets uncertainty have its own kind of beauty.