To Be Alright

Album: What Happened to the Heart? (2024)
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Songfacts®:

  • "To Be Alright" finds Aurora grappling with that universal itch to feel connected and transcendent:

    I know I belong here on Earth, but I long to be lifted up

    The song is essentially the soundtrack of a soul wondering why feeling alright seems so maddeningly elusive.

    "It's about a wish," Aurora told The Sun. "A wish to feel better. And being confused about why some things seem so easy for other people when they can be so hard for you."
  • Musically, "To Be Alright" pairs a buoyant rhythm with Aurora's signature ethereal synths. Aurora wrote and produced the track alongside Matias Tellez, a Norwegian songwriter and producer with Chilean roots who's also lent his talents to the likes of Girl in Red and Maisie Peters.
  • Nestling as the second track on her fourth album, What Happened to the Heart?, "To Be Alright" distills the entire record's thematic exploration into a three-minute pop tune.

    "Though its precise function and anatomy were not clearly understood, the heart was believed to be the center of the soul," Aurora explained of the album in press materials. "Of intuition. Of emotion and intention."

    But now, Aurora goes on to say, the heart has been rather unceremoniously replaced by the mind, the new overlord of reason and logic. "With the world being so corrupted by money, power and selfishness you cannot help but ask yourself," she lamented, "what happened to the heart?"
  • "To Be Alright" represents a moment of reckoning amid the record's overarching themes of emotional struggle and the quest for healing. "Of all the major chord songs, it fits the album the most," said Aurora.

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