Saisha Hayes

Saisha Hayes is a 22 year old Indo-British artist who just released ‘Come Alive’ a track from her sophomore album “Prozac’s Posterchild” which investigates intimacy in the digital age. Come alive is about letting go and finding freedom in one’s darkness, which is what makes it a perfect song for Halloween.

The video fuses elements of horror from the west and from Nepal. One of the demons wears a mask of “Kaal Bhairav” the lord of time. This aspect of time is a key component of the music video as it drives the plot of the story. A girl is made to face her inner demons from her past in a mirror maze. Her demons are tying her up in this maze she wakes up in a creepy forest, where she meets a goddess. The goddess is her in the future, once she has faced her demons from the past and accepted them. The goddess heals the girl and the girl gets to come alive! Born again, she begins to dance with a new found passion in the mirror maze, ultimately finding light in her own darkness. 

Watch ‘Come Alive’ (Official Music Video)

About the song

Come alive is concerned with freedom, but particularly freedom concerning women. The opening dialogue establishes this as “in the darkness of the night, they all came alive, monsters and demons, women born to shine”. The juxtaposition of darkness and women elucidates that a woman is only able to shine when everybody else is asleep. As the song continues the narrator croons “I sing for the women who dance so shamelessly at night, the women who come alive!”. The fact that women are not even able to do something so simple as dancing without being judged further comments on the freedom of women and the social constraints placed on them, as any action they do will be a basis to judge their morality and purity. Other lyrics challenge these constraints and this type of thinking imposed by society “don’t tell me what you want to do, tell me what you want to be instead!”. Instead of focusing on the material existence or a title of a job, or the role society wishes to mold you into, as one’s desire can be constructed by the external world, the song challenges the listener to really understand and reflect on what kind of person they wish to be instead, ie. the internal world.

The song sounds very trippy, with allot of synths, lots of layers. This is an intentional decision so the song can feel like letting go of one’s inhibitions! The drums and the space given to the vocals reflect this. The drums start out slow steady and then they crescendo into the chorus mimicking that feeling of euphoria as there is a build-up and then a drop. The vocals have allot of reverb and are sometimes panned, to add to the overall trippy vibe of the video and the song. 

FOLLOW SAISHA HERE

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