Pina Palau — Swallow The Pain

With Swallow The Pain, singer songwriter Pina Palau returns to feed us spoonful after spoonful of honey-dripping sass laced with sweet, sticky irony. This time, the music explodes with distorted guitars played with a whole lotta swagger. This is the type of tune that begs for the volume dial to be turned way up high and, if you happen to be driving, for the windows to be rolled all the way down!

The song describes a party where an unnamed female protagonist spends the entire night studying another woman: watching as she gets everything and everyone that she craves. Just on the strength of her beauty! The observer wrestles with a volatile mixture of admiration and envy. On one hand, she wants to be just like her. On the other, she sees the trappings of her predicament clearly. 

When asked about the song, Pina said: “I have a good idea about myself, as a woman, and I don’t want to be boxed into any type of stereotypes or reduced to my looks! When I read the lyrics to this song, for the first time, without the music, I could feel the underlying jealousy. When I played it for my co-producer, Mario Hänni – and he knows me well! – the first thing that he said was that we need to make sure that the underlying irony is legible! That’s why we added the distorted guitar! To symbolise female power and the strength and drive to resist conformity!”

“We had so much fun recording this tune. We really rocked out and just went nuts with it! Looking back on it, I wrote this song to heal myself. And, now, since the song is out, I hope that it inspires other women to do this type of work, and sparks something of a chain reaction.”

Swallow the Pain is the 3rd single from singer-songwriter Pina Palau. It was lifted from her upcoming debut titled Illusion, set to drop later on this year. The record was produced together with Mario Hänni (Mnevis and ex-Drummer of Sophie Hunger and Pablo Nouvelle) – a collection of songs that could be described as a labyrinthine journey through various shades and inflections of indie folk.