Songs for the Drunk and Broken Hearted

Editors’ Notes Inspired by a breakup, veteran British artist Mike Rosenberg taps into the fears and challenges of living without a significant other on his 13th studio LP. Rosenberg confronts these emotions head-on with honesty and vulnerability through good-natured and upbeat folk-pop songs, caught in a state of flux after his 2018 soul-searching travelogue Runaway. Whether he’s filled with affection (“The Way That I Love You”) or taking us back to a heated, unfair argument (“Sandstorm”), he reflects on the good times and the bad over gentle fingerpicked melodies that can feel intimate yet grand all at the same time. There are moments of levity, too, like on the midtempo groover “Remember to Forget,” where he details a drunken night while taking some influence, both musically and lyrically, from Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker”: “I'm a shit-talker/A bad joker/A Johnnie Walker/A chain-smoker/Everyone knows it all over town.” But Rosenberg, always one to tell stories, also writes about people who feel lost or feel like time got away from them—like on “Suzanne,” in which he sings about an older woman who wonders if she’s lived her best life. The deluxe edition features stripped-back, acoustic-only versions of each song featured on the album.