Review and Reflection: Annabelle Dinda’s ‘Some Things Never Leave’

After her widely successful song, “The Hand” comes an album exploring themes beyond the male archetype

“Every time I open my mouth, I think, ‘Wow what a loud noise!’” Annabelle Dinda belts in her song, “The Hand.”

If views are anything to go by, 15.7 million people on TikTok think otherwise. In fact, one comment on that viral video of her performing the song acoustically reads, “This is the passion music has been lacking lately.” And I couldn’t agree more.

What started as a passion project has bloomed into her second studio album, “Some Things Never Leave,” with a reimagined production of “The Hand” and nine additional songs. Released on January 30, not a single song strays away from what she’s known best for: intimate, confessional, authentic songwriting.

The album begins with “Big News Day,” a song that feels like coming home from a long day at work to an anticlimactic news story on the TV. Born out of social disconnect and emotional numbness, Dinda focuses less on complex lyrics and more on a reflective narrative that’s sure to connect with people who have big feelings and nowhere to put them.

Going further into the album, “Satellites” hits harder than any song I have heard from her. It’s a melodic story of a relationship stuck in an exhausting revolving state. Two people feel a gravitational pull towards each other, but their love is less of a satellite orbiting a planet and more of a star being sucked into a black hole. This phenomenon is a learned pain - another win for sensitive artists from Dinda.

Dinda’s writing almost makes more sense when you feel it rather than decipher it. We could sit down and analyze every word, but some lyrics might be vague for a reason. “The Body Remembers” makes our bodies out to be records of the lives we’ve lived, but every centimeter of skin will have a different scratch depending on the person.

“But what if / That feeling I get sometimes / Where I could hold my lungs in my hands,” an aching reminder of pain stored in parts of your body as a result of repressed trauma.

“Some Things Never Leave” is a beautiful example of passion well-nurtured and artistic dreams coming true. As Dinda wrote on her latest Instagram post, “...it’s so crazy to be alive and to want things and then to somehow get the things you want sometimes. Lucky lucky lucky.”

After listening to this album, I hope she knows we’re just as lucky.