S. Carey, 'Break Me Open'

S. Carey's "Break Me Open" – the title track from his first album in four years – lays bare an emotional upheaval: a failed marriage, watching his children grow up, and looking inward to accept personal faults and wrongdoings. "Well I sat for days / Wondering how to pick up the pieces," he sings. "And I'm in a daze / Almost numb and I can't find the reasons."

But this is not a song about self-pity, but rather a look forward with gratitude and humbleness. It's a love song for whom he holds most dear: "I still have you three / And now I know what I know / Break me open." Perhaps best known for his time with Bon Iver as a drummer and vocalist, Carey's falsetto picks up from a single repeating piano note at the start with an angelic melody that really drives the story home.

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