Life is short, life is simple
Life is joy, life is pain
Life is wonderful, and terrible
But it’s beautiful, and love’s the same
This week has been a special one at The Root, as several members of our staff—myself included—have revealed our very personal struggles with mental health in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month.
In keeping with that theme, The Glow Up’s Anthem of the Week is “Life,” by Philadelphia-based singer-songwriter-rapper Ivy Sole.
A Wharton Business School graduate and a Charlotte, N.C., native, Sole is now making an impact on the music business, bringing an intimate and self-reflective tone to an increasingly shallow industry, as noted by the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Sole’s music, which she laughingly calls “narcissistic,” is truly a personal exploration as she delves into topics such as inner spirituality, mental health, and home.
In “Life,” a single from her third album, West, released last year, the musician meditates on the paradoxes that sometimes make existence so difficult to cope with. In the accompanying video, we see a young, black male hero literally wrestling with his own demons. It’s a visual metaphor for the internal battles a lot of us are grappling with and a much-needed affirmation that we’re not alone in those struggles.
Honorable mention: Sole’s “Dream Girl,” which borrows a riff from Smokey Robinson’s “Cruisin’” (also memorably reimagined by D’Angelo in 1995) to meditatively woo a crush. To tell the truth, we’re not sure if the “dream girl” in question is the dancer in the official video or Sole herself (maybe both), but the effect is so sweet, we couldn’t care less.