At the bitter-sweet age of 16, Tara has already mastered the art of balladry in her debut single, Pain. The Serbia-born, Sweden-raised singer-songwriter poured right from the pain in her soul, allowing it to transmute into haunting metaphors, ensuring they resound with maximum resonance as they articulate the frustration of hearing that your teenage years should be the best of your life, yet, you can’t escape the agony of them when depression, apathy, betrayal, uncertainty and heartbreak have you in a multifaceted chokehold.
With the production support of Tim Gosden, whose work cloaks the track in brooding textures, Pain sets the stage with aching progressions that echo the low-end dissonance of coming-of-age realism. Tara doesn’t posture; she gives voice to the unspoken realities of adolescence with the same conviction she uses to wrap her vibrato around each lyric. Her command of vocal expression carries the emotional weight without tipping into melodrama, grounding the track in raw authenticity.
Her cultural duality – growing up in Serbia before resettling in Sweden – doesn’t scream through the production, but it subtly informs her capacity to view the chaos of teenhood from an introspective, poetically jaded lens. Her tone is mature without shedding the fragility that makes her debut impossible to dismiss.
With a voice and instrumental blueprint exclusive to her, Tara’s success is fated in Pain.
Pain is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.
Review by Amelia Vandergast.
