Heavy from io io by Clelia

Heavy – About

Heavy is a song that took its time to fully come to life. Originally conceptualized in 2018 with Anna Renee, it began as a fleeting idea, a moment of creativity shared in her really cool industrial-style apartment in Tennessee—one of those places with exposed brick, metal rafters, and a modernized industrial chic aesthetic. The kind of place where you just knew she did yoga, complete with a cool chimney that added to the atmosphere.

We sat there—Anna with her guitar, me humming, throwing ideas out into the open. We both worked on the lyrics, shaping the foundation of something that, at the time, I had no idea would resurface years later. Thanks to her, the melody existed in the first place. She helped strengthen the idea, giving structure to a song that was written before I ever went to California—a time when I was desperately looking for an escape.

Heavy was born out of the sadness that lingered from 2017, a period filled with painful experiences I was trying to outrun. I thought that by leaving, by going to Nashville, by filling my time with multiple missions—photoshoots, music, distractions—I could erase those memories. But pain has a way of following you, and so did this song.

I didn’t do anything with it until 2021, when I revisited it with Patrick Woërner. By then, everything had changed. The post-California era was different—I wasn’t chasing the thrill anymore. Instead, I was stuck—back in my hometown, forced to detox, work, and find myself in a way that was far less adventurous but far more real. It felt like a failure, though maybe a beautiful one, because as much as I wanted to be somewhere else, I couldn’t deny the physical beauty of this place and the few roots I still had.

When I found Patrick through SoundBetter, it felt like the universe was shifting my songwriting into a new space—one of processing disappointment, frustration, and the void. Heavy reflects the simplicity and weight of life in a place that is all too familiar, a life that feels unchanged yet permanently altered.

I recorded the vocals in the studio space I shared for photoshoots, using nothing but a USB mic plugged into my laptop from Sweetwater. It was raw, unpolished, but real. I sent those vocals off to a guy in Berlin I’d never met, and he turned it into something ethereal and shimmering, layering it with echoes, textures, and twangy guitar flourishes that brought the song’s emotions to the surface.


I appreciated his use of layering and canonic rephrasing, echoing the chorus with haunting little undertones that felt repetitive and ghostly. I also loved his use of the jazz brush drum at the beginning—it carries a forced tempo, a sense of urgency, almost like the song has a mission built into its structure, influenced by German folk-pop sensibilities. There’s also an ode to The Beatles and Paul McCartney’s "Let It Be," a moment of musical interpolation—a respectful nod rather than theft, a technique where existing melodic or lyrical ideas are woven into new works to create layers of meaning and connection.

Heavy feels like a melancholic road song, deeply introspective and reflective. It captures the feeling of solitude, acceptance, and quiet resilience—that state of mind where life isn’t perfect, but you’ve learned to just roll with it. The opening line, “There’s a tiny ball of sunlight waking up with nobody to love,” sets the tone for the song’s quiet detachment, suggesting loneliness without despair. The lyrics carry a sense of endurance—“You’re just strong enough to feel fine”—as if getting by is enough, even if it’s not fulfilling. The imagery of driving alone with a dog, facing the open road, reflects both freedom and isolation, a moment of reckoning with personal truths. Lines like “You’re just young enough to feel old” evoke bittersweet nostalgia, the realization that youth is slipping away even though, in the grand scheme, you’re still young. The refrain of “Heavy, let it be” is a mix of nihilism and surrender, echoing The Beatles while embracing a kind of cosmic indifference. The song closes with the mantra-like phrase “so it goes”, a final nod to Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle—a reminder that life moves on, indifferent to our struggles, and all we can do is exist within it.


Heavy isn’t just about sadness—it’s about sitting with the weight of life, acknowledging it, and letting it settle in.


One of my favorite visuals for this song is a defeated young-ish woman, driving down the highway in a truck with her dog—kinda country, wide open roads, nowhere in particular to go, just the weight of everything sitting in the passenger seat with her.

In a way, Heavy is both nihilistic and Buddhist—a song about accepting what is and finding peace in the present moment, simply because it could be so much worse. Sometimes, life isn’t about getting what you want, but about receiving what you need—what the universe has conspired and determined for you, beyond personal desires. It’s about parting ways with the individual mission and instead, fitting into the broader picture, surrendering to something greater. After all, we are just tiny grains of sand on the beach of life.

Classically trained with piano in my youth, I later studied jazz singing. Along the way, I dabbled with the theremin and developed a love for all things percussion and raw, objet trouvé sounds. My influences range from hauntology to shoegaze, dream pop, and soulful indie pop-rock, with a tinge of the beauty of simple acoustic sounds and a dash of alt- R&B soul.

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