Hello everyone! Welcome back to another weekly blog of Lydia’s Girls. For this week’s post on the New Girls category, I will be discussing the band Overcoats. The electronic-pop duo is made up of Hana Elion and JJ Mitchell who met in college at Wesley University. My dad told me about Overcoats when he heard about them on a radio show. They met freshman year of college and started singing Amy Winehouse: You Know I’m No Good. (Amy Winehouse is another Lydia’s Girls) The duo describes the moment when they first sung together as an “epiphany, with the harmony of their combined voices leading to personal and individual discoveries.” Although they had this amazing moment they didn’t become a band until four years later. They both said that they needed that time to discover themselves and their musical styles. Overcoats fill their music with harmonies, and if you’ve read my other articles you’ll know that I love harmony! Their style is magical with the combination of the harmonies and their skills in electronic music. If you are not a big fan of electronic music, they also have acoustic versions of some of their songs and I highly recommend that for you. Overcoats have five albums: Overcoats (2015), YOUNG (2017), The Fight (2020), Used To Be Afraid Of The Dark (2021), and The Fight (Remixed/extended version) (2021).
This week’s song review was really hard for me because I had to pick just one song. All of their songs are great and if I had the time I would write about every single one, but I don’t think that would be too interesting for you. So, I picked YJSTS (You Just Stay The Same) from the album The Fight. Besides the fact that this is my favorite song on the album, I picked it for other reasons too. This song isn’t their usual style. There are electronic elements to it, but I think that it is more rock themed because they use real instruments like guitar, bass, and drums. The pre-chorus and chorus are definitely my favorite parts. I love how mystical the pre-chorus is, with the lyrics: “Oh what’s in my head?”. It’s as if we are going inside their heads and what they are thinking is the chorus. The lyrics are: “Oh, if I were something beautiful could you see me now for what I’m worth? But I know how it goes, no one says a thing. Oh, I know that things are changing and the world is what you make of it. But somehow, somehow you just stay the same.” These lyrics are so meaningful because they are true, especially in the world we live in today. The harmonies are powerful in the chorus too! This part of the song makes me want to sing Taylor Swift- You Belong With Me, while dancing on my bed using a hairbrush as a microphone. I hope you will listen to this song and if you do, comment below what you think. Overcoats is a great band and this song definitely belongs in the Lydia’s Girls Library.
Author: Lydia MacDavid
Chief Editor: Jacob Tomeny