The inevitability of loss rarely sounds so graceful as it does here, where Jackie Santos transforms the pain of watching someone slip away into something almost buoyant. |
Santos, originally from Northwest Indiana and now based in NYC, has crafted her debut album around themes of unsuccessful relationships, but ‘Only Love‘ feels less like defeat than acceptance wrapped in velvet.
Santos draws from 1960s pop sensibilities, her voice carrying the warmth of a Northern Soul singer who’s discovered dream pop’s soft edges. The Brooklyn-recorded track floats between folk intimacy and soul expansiveness, creating space for the kind of vulnerability that doesn’t beg but simply exists. Santos doesn’t plead for someone to stay; instead, she acknowledges the futility whilst finding grace in the attempt itself. Her self-described ‘dream ballad’ classification proves apt—this is music that inhabits that liminal space between sleeping and waking, where heartbreak feels strangely suspended and love’s impossibility becomes its own kind of beauty.
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