Singer-songwriter Sophia DeLeo is not arguing with shouts but rather with a story, and one that's her own. Now she has a single, "Til You Do," and it's a song as much as a soul-baring reflection on what it's like to come of age in the shadow of one of the country's most polarizing debates. And the result is an infectiously disarming one; it draws the listener in by the ear hairs rather than driving an argument.
DeLeo brings us back to her youth at age seven, when she read the alarming three words, "Abortion Kills Children," on a sign held outside a clinic just down the street from her house. That memory, raw, bewildering, formative, forms the corner of "Til You Do." This song begins as a tender acoustic whisper before expanding into a swirling, bittersweet folk-pop swell.
"Til You Do" is, at its core, about perspective or the absence of it. The lyrics grapple with the sentiment that it's easy to judge abortion care when you've never had to walk through that door. There's genuine vulnerability in DeLeo's voice, particularly as the chorus swells, urging people to consider the weight of their choices and the right to make them.
Acoustic strums and delicate string flourishes lend the song a cozy, almost pastoral sensibility, with DeLeo's lyrics taking center stage, carrying all the emotional weight. And "Til You Do" is not just timely, but it's timeless. In the wake of Roe v. Wade's reversal, the battle for bodily autonomy is being refought, in court after court across the land. But here, in less than four minutes, DeLeo is telling us that it is also taking place in the heart and in the memory of those who have had to endure it.
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