Bathe Alone Reflects on the Enervating Effects of Living a Life Perpetually on and Often Over the Edge of Anxiety With “Champagne”

In Bathe Alone’s song “Champagne” the songwriter addresses the way anticipating the breakdowns in your mind can be an exhausting proposition that warps the way you live your life. You are always on edge about what might trigger a panic attack or a paroxysm of anxiety in general born of trauma. The title of the song apparently refers both to imagining what it would be like to trade places with someone you see randomly in the world and to the realization that even with your your own struggles that you have things about your life that are good and that part of mental health problems is feeding into them even if almost against your control, in particular by comparing your life to that of other people. But that insight does seem to take the edge off even if you’ve gone some way down the path of having having an episode as it suggests that you can often derail that procession to emotional disaster. And yet the song and its beautifully melodic dissolves and ethereal tones isn’t sitting in the moments of greatest stress, it seems to come from that time after the worst wave of it has passed and you are able to have some perspective on what it is that triggers you and amplifies the experience. What makes this thematic and musical contrast especially interesting is that though it’s essentially a blissed out, soulful synth pop song, at no time does Bathe Alone try to placate you by saying it’s all going to be okay or any of the other useless platitudes you often get from people who might have better mental health but no insights into how to make things better. Rather the song honors the experience while transforming that energy into something more introspective and reflective and thus more manageable. Listen to “Champagne” on Spotify and connect with Bathe Alone at the links provided.