Singer-songwriter Harry Hannah’s new single captures a bitter-sweet breakup
Not all breakups are bitter, and sometimes you part ways wishing the other person the best even though it hurts like hell. Cobourg, ON-based singer-songwriter Harry Hannah captures a breakup’s bitter-sweetness with his easy-galloping, alt-country latest single “Baby Don’t Look Back.”
With mellow rhythm, a little bit of twang, and a lot of philosophical introspection, “Baby Don’t Look Back” tells the true story of a breakup Harry went through years ago, knowing the whole time it would eventually have to end.
“I was 23 coming to terms with love and loss,” he said. “I had some dues to pay and time to spend, and so I wrote a new song. Her path was promising and moving quick. I really didn’t feel the same about mine, and I needed to sort my life out in Ontario – relocating out West wasn’t an option for me. She was bound to mountains, while I was bound to the Great Lakes.”
Harry still remembers sitting in a café in Cobourg called the Black Cat, pen scratching his notebook as he performed a sort of self-surgery or his own therapy session, writing this song on a windy Autumn morning, coffee and a blueberry scone at his side.
“It was a transition that needed to be made,” he mused. “I knew I had to do my best to keep my head up, not get bitter and just be nice. These lyrics almost worked as a reminder to that.”
At the end of the song, autumn turns to winter, and the narrator finds some warm acceptance, if only by comforting himself with the thought of one day following his lost love.
Harry Hannah is an independent folk singer-songwriter from the north end of Ontario’s Northumberland Hills – “The Cobourg Folkster,“ some have called him. Built with a rugged sense of charm, a lot to talk about, and a heart as soft as a Doberman’s chew toy, Harry has made a name for himself skinny-dipping by the riverside, running wild with the rabbits and wolves, and howling his sweet songs all the way from Cobourg to Alberta.
“Baby Don’t Look Back,” from his forthcoming album, The Wild Side of a Feel Good Town, is available now.
