Every once in a while, a love song sneaks up on you, not because it’s saying anything particularly groundbreaking, but because it’s delivered with such brutal sincerity that you’re forced to sit down and reckon with it. Enter Cydan’s “falling 4 u,” a track that feels less like a song and more like the emotional equivalent of someone handing you their diary and saying “please don’t laugh.”
And of course, you don’t laugh. You cry. Because this is the kind of music designed to bypass your brain entirely and go straight to the pit of your stomach. The influence of OPM artists like Zack Tabudlo is evident; the emotional reach, the aching earnestness, but Cydan pushes it in his own direction. The production is stripped-down and deceptively simple, the kind of arrangement that makes you think nothing’s happening until you realize you’ve been held hostage by the melody for three straight minutes.
The lyrics themselves hover in that dangerous territory of too real. It’s not just about love, it’s about the terrifying vulnerability of actually admitting it. That kind of honesty feels almost alien in today’s pop landscape, where everyone is desperate to seem effortlessly detached. Cydan, on the other hand, sounds like someone who has thrown “cool” out the window and is just standing there with his heart in his hands, refusing to dress it up in irony.
What makes this even more striking is the clarity of the production. It’s clean without being sterile, polished without sanding down the emotional edges. The instrumental gives just enough room for the vocals to breathe, like a stage lit by a single spotlight; minimal, but exactly what the moment demands. That restraint amplifies the rawness of the lyrics. Instead of burying the emotion under layers of reverb or production gimmicks, the track trusts in its own simplicity, and that trust pays off.
And this is where the LAUV comparison sneaks in. Because LAUV has made a career out of weaponizing emotional transparency, turning late-night overthinking into radio-ready anthems. Cydan is tapping into that same energy, but without the glossy, stadium-ready finish. “falling 4 u” feels smaller, closer, like you’re in the room with him. It’s intimacy over spectacle, sincerity over polish.
Is it a little much? Yes. But that’s the point. Love is a little much. Rejection is a little much. And if you’re going to write a song about those things, it should feel like too much. That’s why “falling 4 u” works: it doesn’t try to be anything other than devastatingly earnest.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for publications in the US and former lead writer of Atop The Treehouse. Reviews music, film and TV shows for media aggregators.
