B-Side Guys

From her Los Angeles base, Lily Kershaw has crafted something rare: a song that makes depression feel not just personal but communal. The title track from her third album “Pain & More” transforms private suffering into shared experience, wrapping raw confession in deceptively gentle melodic forms.

Co-produced with Brandon Walters (known for his work with Lord Huron), the track builds its emotional architecture carefully. Kershaw’s verses float like paper boats on still water, each line carrying more weight than its gentle delivery suggests. When she sings about being “gentle and at ease,” the tension between words and reality creates its own kind of truth.

The genius of “Pain & More” lies in how it elevates mundane wishes into profound yearnings. Kershaw’s lyrics sketch a portrait of contentment through its absence—simple desires for a full gas tank and money in the bank become tokens of a larger peace that remains elusive. These everyday markers of stability take on an almost mythic quality in their ordinary impossibility.

Drawing inspiration from ’90s art-house cinema, Kershaw understands how to frame melancholia in beautiful light. The production maintains a dreamy distance that makes the intimate confessions feel both immediate and somehow underwater, like memories trying to surface.

Her decision to structure the song as a lullaby serves multiple purposes. It softens the blow of difficult truths while highlighting their persistence—these are the thoughts that keep you awake at night, dressed up in bedtime story clothes. The gentle melodic approach makes the underlying desperation all the more striking.

What distinguishes this track from typical break-up songs is its understanding of how personal pain intertwines with broader struggles. Kershaw’s narrator doesn’t just want love restored—she wants her friends to be happy, wants basic needs met, wants the kind of stability that makes emotional healing possible in the first place.

The production choices support this layered narrative perfectly. Each element feels deliberately placed yet natural, creating space for Kershaw’s voice to carry both strength and vulnerability. It’s a masterclass in using restraint to heighten emotional impact.

Throughout the track, Kershaw maintains a delicate balance between resignation and resilience. Her acknowledgment of being “right here before” carries both the weight of repetitive suffering and the wisdom of survival. It’s not hope exactly, but something more hard-won—the knowledge that feeling pain means you’re still here to feel it.

As both standalone single and album title track, “Pain & More” serves as a perfect introduction to Kershaw’s larger artistic vision. It’s a song that understands how personal struggles echo universal experiences, and how the smallest wishes can carry the greatest weight.