Over a soft bed of piano and percussion, Natalie Mering makes a blunt observation about the human condition. “We’ve all become strangers/Even to ourselves,” she sings on “It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody,” the lead single of her upcoming fifth album as Weyes Blood, And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow. It’s the second in a trilogy, following 2019’s Titanic Rising—and while its predecessor addressed looming catastrophe, Mering writes in a statement that this record is about being suspended in the inky great unknown. Instability and deadlock, alienation and algorithmic anxiety—what exactly has got us all so unwell? And what happens to a society where we forget how to handle one another with care?
As the song opens, Mering is feeling lonely at a party: “Oh, it’s been so long since I’ve felt really known,” she confesses. Discovering the shared ache of seclusion, she yearns for pain and isolation to dissolve, settling on a poignant solution: mercy. As Mering repeats the title refrain, the song swells with orchestral strings and effervescent harp from Mary Lattimore. Her assertion that she’s not the only one suffering lingers alongside her own reminder that “it’s all a part of the same thing”: Being good to one another won’t fix the world as it is, but it can at least make each day a little more bearable.
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