Story scent: ashy and a little smoky perfume

Story best enjoyed with a taste of: dark chocolate-covered mini salted pretzels

Play on repeat while reading: ‘Devour / The Performer’, by TULLE (obviously)

The words twist themselves with hyperactively ethereal melodies and bright keyboard chords. The ideas explored in TULLE’s new apocalyptic-pop track ‘Devour / The Performer’ are so frighteningly familiar you want to run away from them and, for a second, lie even to yourself, claiming ‘these don’t belong to me’. But they do. They belong to all of us.

The thought of being devoured, looked at, or even stared at as a better alternative to being overlooked exposes the cracks in the human experience. We all want to be noticed, told we’re special, told we’re perfect. We all want to be rewarded for our performance. So like jesters in a court, we twist and turn, keeping up appearances.

This track is brave in admitting something people usually keep hidden or deny. TULLE runs around in circles, performing perfection, trying to find a way, any way to be recognised. In that vicious cycle, her true self gets lost, misunderstood, and she slowly succumbs to the madness of the circus.

“My whole project is about performing and putting on a mask, and that’s what the song means to me: to constantly be trying your best, wanting people to notice, and kind of always falling flat. Slowly going a little bit mad over it,” TULLE shares.

With each stroke, the melody raises tension until you are hypnotised into witnessing TULLE standing in a dark red light, waiting to be consumed by the gaze of others. When the pressure gets so high, you might just scream, the melody calms down, and the singer’s voice slowly utters, “I’ll be trapped here forever waiting for their devotion”.

These words cut deep. This performance is a trap, yet it is the point. The singer describes herself as desirable and asks the metaphysical observer, “Don’t you want me yet?”. After everything she has done, after all the work she has put in to reach that elusive perfection, how can she not be devoured? And if she is to be devoured, how can she still be misunderstood?

This track makes you question the idea of perfection and the things you lose as you strive to achieve it. It also begs an important question of ‘Why?’ Why are you trying to ascend to that pedestal? Who is it for? Is it for you? Is it for them? Maybe it’s more complex than that. You can be noticed and be devoured, but is it in the right way? Is it in the way you want, and is there a right way at all?

A symbol, a prodigy, a jester, a clown. Devour starts striving towards perfection; you want to be beautiful, be desired. As it progresses, you understand, any attention is better than none at all. Even laughter, even judgement. “They keep laughing, but I’ll keep dancing, at least they notice”, settles it. To close it off, “If I keep going, then they might love me” re-establishes the trap. Once the need to be devoured takes hold, it will consume.