As much as most of us will try desperately to hold onto the last few weeks of warm, sunny weather, it’s time to acknowledge that the sun will soon be setting on our summer. It’s not over yet, of course, in the middle of august. One could say that we’re now in the “golden hour” of summer— the golden hour being the time of day right before sunset, when the sun is low in the sky but still casting a golden orange light across everything it touches.
The lyric video to Ross Freedman’s new single “Horizon” seems to have been filmed during one such golden hour. It scans an empty landscape of glimmering seawater, bobbing above the horizon towards the sun and dipping back down again. Sometimes land is visible in the distance— it takes place “somewhere between Marina del Rey and Catalina Island” opening notes tell us.
The video is a fitting background. “Horizon” is Freedman’s first new song out since 2015. He wrote it just after his mother and father-in-law had passed away. The track, written in a singer-songwriter style, is bitter and melancholy, to reflect this bleak era. The chorus refrains, “Your horizon’s so messed up but you love the sky” over a poignant piano accompaniment and soft vocal harmonizations.
The outlook portrayed in the song may at first seem dismal and pessimistic. Freedman sings, “You jumped the gun— what’s done is done.” But actually, there is hope yet. Everything comes to a climax just after the 3 minute mark. The lyrics carry on: “Jump out of your skin if you’re still playing dead,” as the instrumentation picks up and peaks, like the waves of the now turbulent water in the increasingly shaky video footage. Things settle back down shortly after.
Freedman writes that “Horizon” is about “finding one’s footing after a series of extreme, destabilizing events,” like the cameraman at sea. Horizon is a beautiful track about the universal truths of the world. It reminds us, as the days get shorter and the gloomy end of summer approaches, that life always goes on.
Written by Maya Merberg
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