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The song is a heartbreaking and emotive alt-pop single, which has quickly become a fan favourite with the Instagram video shared as a response to a comment where a fan said ‘orla i’m begging on my knees please release iiiittttt’. The snippet was shared by the artist in a recording of its live debut in Paris on the ‘EVERYBODY NEEDS A HERO’ with several openers including Emma Harner and Hohen Ford. The tour comes after the release of her latest album ‘Everybody needs a hero’ .

 

 

 

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In classic Gartland style, she performed the track first for fans on social media singing emotively alongside the acoustic guitar playing that brought the singer to fame.  

 

 

 

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Gartland explains the creative process and concept behind her latest album in an interview with Billboard. The artist shares her musical desires, stating “I wanted the good, the bad and the very ugly.” in terms of writing songs surrounding love and relationships. The style is reminiscent of her self-made creative independence, but pushes past homemade ambitions and instead revels in a heavier alt-pop sound.

The artist has revealed the monetary difficulties touring the US as a small independent artist, especially post-pandemic, after the tour commenced in November 2024. However, this has not discouraged Gartland from live performance announcing several upcoming opportunities to catch her live. The artist announced her involvement in this year’s Glastonbury Festival last month, promising to give ‘everything we’ve got’.

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Only the week before, she also announced that she would be performing in the Lollapalooza festival as well as her role supporting Glass Animals for their ‘TOUR OF EARTH’ this August.  

 

 

 

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The band have also spoken about their thoughts of touring after the pandemic in an interview with The Independent. Their album ‘Dreamland’ was released in 2020 during the lockdown, and tours for the release were postponed until 2021. They discuss the fear of ‘petrifying financial shortfalls’ if they were to need to end the tour abruptly.

With Gartland’s YouTube beginnings, live performance is understandably important to the artist. She has shared these performances on her YouTube channel in her series ‘tour diaries’.

With the latest album still recent in its release, it will be exciting to see fresh music from the artist.

It started a couple of weeks back on January 1^st when O’Connor returned to Twitter, after having been absent for over 8 months. He replied to a fan’s tweet asking about the release of the new album. In it he simply said “oops … sorry for delay … do you still wan[n]a hear it?“.

oops !… sorry for delay… do you still wana hear it ? https://t.co/oAUocYWIsV

— rex orange county (@rexorangecounty) January 1, 2022

Ramping the mystery up even more (as well as the generous fan service), last week saw fans receiving postcards in the mail with a phone number, the voicemail of which said “I know it isn’t easy, and you may have had enough. But I promise that it’s worth it, if you try and keep it up“. Following this was a snippet of a new, as-of-yet unreleased song.

Here’s what happens when u call pic.twitter.com/rw7cETbeUv — E (@mendescollector) January 13, 2022

And yesterday he went to TikTok to post a snippet of what appears to be the same song from the voicemail, with the video showing him lip-syncing to the lyrics. The track was captioned “Keep It Up” and gives fans hope of an upcoming single soon to come from the artist.

@rexKEEP IT UP♬ original sound – rex orange county

NME quotes the lyrics as “Every time I open my mouth, I have regrets in my mind.  Every time, and no one seems to figure me out. I guess it’s stress. It’s making me feel so depressed. Most my life I felt so tired, but every now and then when I try I say keep it up and go on, you’re only holding out for what you want. No longer owe to strangers. It’s enough. It’s enough.“

Despite the lack of new material, O’Connor did find time to release a live album back in 2020, entitled Live at Radio City Music Hall. The singer-songwriter grew up in Surrey, and first rose to fame after featuring on famed US rapper Tyler, the Creator’s 2017 album Flower Boy. Like many new artists these days, he started out making music as a teenager, producing his own songs with Apple’s Logic software and releasing a debut album on SoundCloud/Bandcamp back in 2015, which you can listen to here. It caught the attention of Tyler, the Creator and English musician Two Inch Punch, and the rest is history.

With only three studio albums to his name, fans can be pleased to hear something new is finally close to surfacing. Otherwise, we’ll just have to wait and see what’s coming next from this elusive artist, who seems ready-in-waiting for a comeback any time now.