By Andrew Benzinger

The latest single in a series of fresh pop releases starting with “Run into You”, Callaghan Belle’s “Sleepwalking” has a fittingly dreamy sound that compliments its subject matter well. Her second release of 2020 sets a tone of excellence for her avid followers, and promises to gain more fans in the coming months.

The Detroit-raised, LA-based pop artist’s lyrics weave images of young love and fantasy, and its surreal synth and beat accompaniment certainly boost these ideas. But while “Sleepwalking”’s at times melancholic lyrics - “Miss the way you say my name” and “Thinking about you and what we used to do” - suggest love lost, the song maintains a driving beat, bright sound and strong tone. As a result, “Sleepwalking” retains shades of a break up song without giving in to the gloomy and dismal tone typical of most ‘I lost my boyfriend’ music. Instead, we get a glimpse of the complex and disoriented feeling of looking back at the memories of a vanished relationship - especially felt in killer lines like “Am I dreaming you? Or do you feel it too? / It seems like you’re sleepwalking away, but I’m wide awake”. As Belle remarked about her new song, “‘Sleepwalking’ is about the denial phase of heartbreak. That moment when you first wake up in the morning and you don’t remember you broke up. The song is metaphorically extending that brief moment of blissful ignorance. It’s trying to live there for as long as possible. For me, the lyrics depict wandering through a ghost town of memories, going through the motions of an old relationship.”

A final interesting choice that works in favor of the dreamlike completeness of Belle’s single, “Sleepwalking” ends without waking up from this half-asleep fantasy, content to remain “dreaming of you”. “Run into You” and “Sleepwalking” are just the beginning of a new wave of singles from Belle, and if the first two are any indication, it looks like this summer is going to be a bright season for pop.