Sometimes life throws you a curve ball and flips what you thought you knew completely around, leaving you shattered and heartbroken. And sometimes, you pick up what someone shattered so carelessly, and you turn it into beauty. That is exactly what Parker Graye has done with her newest single, Last Time.
The song starts with a beautiful, slow piano. Parker sings about the things that should have been- their house on some land on a hill, holding hands on the front porch, hanging their pictures on the walls. A life that was going to happen, or so she thought. You can hear the sadness in her voice as she sings each line, feeling the heartbreak that she truly went through before writing this song. When Parker sent me her song, she wrote, “Last Time” is about blindly loving someone, fantasizing a future and realizing none of that was ever real. It’s about losing someone, and more than that, mourning the loss of something you never really had.” She portrays all of these feelings so well through the slow verses and chorus.
The chorus gives a peek into the turmoil of Parker’s relationship: “And I'm watching it all fade into black. When you say the things that you can’t take back. You promised you’d change when I drew the line; That I’d be all yours and you’d be all mine. You told me ‘darling last time was the last time.”
Parker also filled me in on the writing process for this song. When describing how the song came about, Parker said, “I wrote this song with Luca Fogale in 2019 only days after the final breakup with the farm boy I wrote about in my two previous singles. We took texts, the future I’d painted in my mind, the years of dishonesty and emptied it all onto paper. It was the most vulnerable I’d ever been in a session, it exposed a part of me I never knew existed. The song meant so much to me I was afraid of even bringing it to life, fearful that it wouldn’t sound like I was hearing it, until I met Spencer Cheyne. We spent 2 days in the studio and it truly felt cathartic. I barely held back tears on every take and bawled my eyes out on every playback. This song really does mean so much to me and I hope that it connects with people who have been through similar situations.”
Parker Graye’s Instagram bio reads, “on a mission to make country music sad again”, and she is doing exactly that. I am a sucker for sad songs, because they make you feel such deep emotions. Parker's lyrics with her voice and the music behind it is a beautiful combination.
Last Time is available on all streaming services TODAY! Please go give her a listen and support her blossoming career! I can’t wait to see how well she does in the country music world! In Parker’s words, “If you’ve loved, lost, forgiven and repeated, I hope this song finds you.”
Jess