The new single from singer-songwriter Zac Crook captures the untethered breeziness of the open road and the uneasy revelations it can bring. The song opens with a lilting guitar figure and a heavy slice of dark musing: “World’s on fire / but gas is cheap / nothing to do, nowhere to be.” The narrative quickly turns personal with Crook outlining a crumbling relationship as a sweeping soundscape of electric piano, vocal harmonies, and programmed drums tumbles through. Towards the end, the title turns into a final kiss-off as he speeds off into the uncertainties of a murky night.
With its ruminative ’70s AM Gold vibes, “You Wouldn’t Know” sounds like a throwback to a bygone era. The song’s inspiration, however, is far more recent and familiar. The lyrics started as an internal dialogue Crook was having while driving home late last March. At the time, he was in a long distance relationship, and he remembers being swept up in a wave of anxiety and stark realizations.
“The world was shutting down, and I felt like I was slowly going kinda crazy,” Crook explains. “We had to cancel a whole month of tour dates, and for the first time in a long time, because of everything slowing down, I was faced to feel a lot of these things that I hadn’t really dealt with. A big thing being, I wasn’t all that invested in the person, this relationship, that I had been telling myself I was.”
Crook adds, “Writing those words was freeing in a sense, but so heart-wrenching for me simultaneously. It was the beginning of saying goodbye to this person and this season of life that I cared so much about.”
Listen below.
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