It feels like there’s Aotearoa musical heritage pumping through “Romeo”, the latest pop gem from Georgia Lines.
Though inherently different songs, there’s a similar pop vein in “Romeo” and The Naked and Famous hit “Young Blood”: the 80s-indebted synths, the climaxing bridges, the catchy choruses and, most importantly, that dash of carefree wonder for those days when one’s love for music was first ignited. Put another way, “Romeo” is transportive, nostalgic and (without sounding too generic) relatable.
Co-written and produced with Joseph Faris, the single, according to Lines, “is about the reality of the tensions you can sometimes feel in a relationship and wanting the ease of the ‘Romeo’ fantasy.”
The Auckland singer-songwriter’s lyrics tell the full story, Lines sounding both sad and slightly pissed off in her singing: “For just one time in my life, I wanna feel like Romeos standing there with a rose, all this time I’ve waited for you to show me the knight in shining armour.”
Packaged with all the good markers of a modern pop song, “Romeo” follows Lines’ recent catalogue of upbeat, transcendent, and HAIM-esque pop cuts that revolve around relationship irks, fantasies and their realities. Her self-titled debut EP, released three years ago, slipped her into this world with songs like the funk-esque “Made for Loving” and the hopeful “Never Had Love”.
“I love a good pop song,” as she told Rolling Stone AU/NZ at the end of 2021. “There’s incredible things to pop and that classic verse-pre-chorus-chorus repetition, there’s something beautiful about that.”
And Lines does it so well.
But while bravado-fuelled songs like “Romeo” appear throughout Lines’ body of work and have seen her crowned for awards like AMA Breakthrough Artist of the Year in 2022, her new single marks the end of an era, according to the musician. “Following on from ‘Nothing But Love’ and ‘Monopoly’, ‘Romeo’ closes the pop chapter before launching into my debut album,” she reveals.
This makes sense coming from someone who once told Rolling Stone AU/NZ, “If I don’t enjoy what I do, then I don’t know what the point is.”
Georgia Lines’ “Romeo” is out now.
