The Angel Olsen song that “wasn’t meant to be shared”
American musician Angel Olsen is one of the most potent voices working in the alternative indie folk realm, blending a menagerie of genres to create a stunningly poetic sound. Since emerging in the early 2010s, Olsen has experimented with a variety of styles, moving between classic indie rock structures and jazz and classical arrangements, yet her voice is the defining feature of her work.
Olsen’s rich and intimate vocals deliver her lyrics with extra dynamism, casting a spell over the listener with her ethereal melodies and occasional country-inspired twang. Whether she’s accompanied by nothing more than an acoustic guitar or a full-string quartet, Olsen’s songs are never short of captivating.
She released her first EP, Strange Cacti, in 2011, although those with access to a cassette player could get their hands on a physical copy the year prior. The singer followed it up with a full-length album, Half Way Home, although she earned further recognition with her second album, Burn Your Fire For No Witness, which came after she signed to Jagjaguwar in 2014.
Opening with the track ‘Unfucktheworld’, one of Olsen’s most-streamed songs, the singer takes us on a journey through the realisation that a relationship isn’t working, and she is “the only one now”. It’s a tender lo-fi ballad, which makes for the perfect introduction to the record.
Yet, the album’s longest track, ‘White Fire’, is the centrepiece of the record and draws from classic folk artists, with brooding guitars echoing the early sounds of Leonard Cohen. The song unravels with the poignant opening lines: “Everything is tragic, it all just falls apart”. Olsen urges the listener to preserve their happiness for themselves, which can easily be worn away by doomed relationships. She sings lines which form the album’s title, “If you’ve still got some light in you, then go before it’s gone/ Burn your fire for no witness; it’s the only way it’s done”.
Olsen revealed during an interview with Billboard that she almost never recorded the song, stating, “It was one of the last things I had written and wasn’t meant to be shared, but I ended up taking the album title from it.” Clearly, the track – one of the album’s highlights – was too special not to share.
Detailing further, Olsen explained: “A lot of the songs on the album are about knowing the self outside of everything else and I think of ‘White Fire’ as being from the perspective of this character who has grown old and is going back to the beginning of who they were. They’re thinking about how many times they were defiant and confident that they were doing the right thing, but in hindsight they’re like ‘Oh, that was kind of silly. I was so fierce and yet so wrong.'”
