Each Measure Review: Sean Kennedy
FEATURE
Music as a form of confessional is a challenge on a number of levels – the most obvious being that it takes an uncommon degree of courage to put your deepest insecurities and most profound heartbreaks on display musically or otherwise. But the other, more elusive challenge is that there is a fine line between being self-referential and being egocentric, and even finer line between being self-referential and being obscure. Songwriters who are overly self-referential run the risk of alienating their audience by pursuing themes that are only meaningful to themselves. To really succeed at confessional songwriting, an artist to be willing to go all the way – to eschew flattery in favor of honesty and to expose weakness as well as strength.
Only a precious few artists have been able to strike these balances. Sean Kennedy is one of them.
On his fifth studio album, The Person in the Mirror, the New York-based singer, songwriter, and producer explores deeply personal themes of love, loss, trauma, and resilience with the same stark candor he’s been exercising since he released his debut at the age of 15. His career as a songwriter began at 9 years old, and he might be a perfect example of why music is such an important skill for children. His discography displays an incredible ability to sublimate painful moments into deeper insights through his art.
He's now in his early twenties, and his music has grown with him. The Person in the Mirrorplays out like the diary of a young man with an old soul as he stares down the barrel of adulthood. It’s full of honesty without angst, self-reflection without vanity, and heartbreak without blame. It is overall about how all the pains and joys of a lifetime converge to make a person who they are.
The cover image shows a black-and-white portrait of Kennedy gazing at his own reflection in a mirror. His face is serious, pensive. It’s hard to say exactly what he’s thinking in that picture, at least not before we’ve heard his music, but it does capture the tone of the album. It’s intimate, personal, and direct – a confrontation between the artist and himself.
Musically, Kennedy tends to prefer raw, organic textures over artificial polish. With a soundscape that consists mainly of piano, guitar, drums, and bass, the album fits neatly into the indie pop-rock category (though there are a few tracks that lean towards the delicate intimacy of folk). Kennedy names Conan Gray and Troye Sivan among his influences, and like both of them, he captures emotional vulnerability in both his lyrics and his music.
Kennedy’s press release describes his use of music as “a tapestry to portray the different stages of his life,” and “perfect portraits of his high school and early college years.” Indeed, The Person in the Mirror does seem like a time capsule documenting the latest phase in his soul’s evolution. It’s an album that could only have come from the mind of a 21-year-old who has suffered, loved, and lost much in his life, and that’s what makes it such a unique and special work of art.
A recurring theme throughout the album is nostalgia, specifically the sharply painful variety that comes in early adulthood as you begin to mourn the end of childhood. On the opening track, “Eighteen,” Kennedy reminisces about his first love and the ensuing heartbreak that followed. It’s clear that even a few years later, the relationship still means a lot to him, and the track is filled with longing for the past. Yet it’s also offset by the mature understanding that he has no choice but to move forward, ending with the gut-wrenching lines, “But you don’t want me in your life / And I’m not eighteen.” In other words, he has to move on, but he doesn’t have to like it.
Kennedy takes a broader approach to the theme of nostalgia later on “When I Was Young.” In it, he reflects that although he’s achieved so many of his dreams, he misses the way things used to be and regrets how much of his world has changed since childhood. “When I Was Young” seems to capture in poignant detail the moment Kennedy realized he had grown up. At twenty-one, most of us feel that we are still children thrust into the chaos of adult life. It’s the moment we’ve been waiting for, but it’s never what it’s cracked up to be, and realizing that we’ve traded in the magic of childhood for the uncertainty of adulthood is always a painful reckoning.
What impresses me the most about the song is that even from his position in the middle of everything, Kennedy has the perspective to process these moments that so often defy description and translate them into such a resonant work of art. I feel similarly about some of the more autobiographical pieces on the album, like “What Do I Know?”, “Autopsy,” “Goodbye Yesterday,” and “The Story of My Life.”
The latter track, “The Story of My Life,” closes out the album as its inarguable masterpiece, but I have to admit, when I saw the title, I was a little worried. There are very few people in the world who are interesting enough to warrant having a song written about them (with apologies to iconic acts like Social Distortion and One Direction, of course), but Kennedy resists the urge to simply recount events that are only meaningful to him. He draws heavily on his own experiences, but he also universalizes them, describing some of his most life-defining moments without being overly specific, allowing us to fill in the blanks with our own memories.
Accompanied by an anthemic soundscape of marching drums and orchestral sweeps, “The Story of My Life” serves as a summation of what the album is all about. At the end of the day, it’s not just the story of Sean Kennedy’s life. It’s also the story of his mother’s, his grandfather’s, and the lives of everyone he has loved and lost. On a more cosmic scale, it’s about the interwoven textures of everyone’s lives and the ways in which trauma and resilience dictate these patterns. Though the story may be Kennedy’s, these themes belong to everyone.
Kennedy’s ability to universalize his own experiences and explore different perspectives is what makes The Person in the Mirror the triumph that it is. I’ve never been Sean Kennedy, but I have been heartbroken. I’ve been lonely and filled with self-doubt, and I’ve stood alone in the corner at a party wondering if anyone would talk to me. When Kennedy sings, “I could feel our hearts detaching as I lost my closest friend” on “Goodbye Yesterday,” I know he’s singing from his own heart, but his words resonate in mine just as deeply.
And that brings me to the final prevailing theme of the album: empathy. Kennedy exercises empathy to some degree on every track, most notably “Been There Too,” sung from Kennedy’s point of view to a younger person who is suffering (in my mind, a younger sibling perhaps?). “I remember when I was your age / I was stubborn and so full of rage… Just know I’ve been there, too,” Kennedy sings in his breathy, mournful voice. This is how Kennedy gives meaning to the pain and loss he’s experienced throughout his young life – he transforms it into empathy and comfort for those who need it most. And through his art, he asks us to practice empathy, too – to see parts of ourselves in him and parts of him in ourselves, and to understand how interconnected all our stories really are.
So, how do I feel at the end of this album? Privileged, mostly. I feel privileged that Kennedy entrusted these parts of himself to us. And in an abstract way, I also feel like I’ve met a kindred soul.
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