Alex Amor has released ‘Inside’, the final preview of her debut album Heavenly Bodies, which arrives on 21st August. The five-and-a-half-minute track began as a sprawling poem and became what Alex calls a “sad-banger lullaby for loved ones gone too soon”.
The single arrives ahead of Alex’s appearance at All Points East on 22nd August, where she will play on Lorde’s headline day. She will also perform an intimate in-store at Rough Trade Denmark Street on 26th August.
Grief carried by buoyant indie-pop
Alex Amor sets some of her heaviest writing against a buoyant, guitar-led backdrop. ‘Inside’ does not treat loss as something still or orderly, instead letting fear, love and dissociation move through a song with an irrepressible pulse.
More on Alex Amor
The lyric looks directly at compounded grief, generational trauma and the instinct to pull away before another loss can happen. Alex has described dissociation as one of the coping mechanisms that shaped much of her twenties, and the song pushes against that habit by choosing connection despite the risk attached to it.
Lines about imagining a world where friends do not overdose sit beside the fear that getting close to someone could mean losing them too. ‘Inside’ wants intimacy, but it understands exactly why somebody carrying that history might retreat from it.
Producer Baz Kaye was determined to preserve every word from Alex’s original poem, and the extended runtime gives those thoughts room to unfold. Rather than forcing the writing into a compact chorus-led structure, the arrangement allows each confession to lead naturally into the next.
The optimism Baz and co-writer Peter Brien brought back from Glastonbury can be heard in the lift of the music. Shimmering guitars, floating synths and steady forward motion carry the accumulated pain without letting it define the whole song.
‘Inside’ review
‘Inside’ refuses to choose between sadness and release. The writing is raw, yet the music keeps reaching outward, giving the track the feeling of someone trying to reconnect with the world while still carrying everything that made them withdraw from it.
Alex Amor’s vocals sit close to the listener without becoming overwhelmed by the scale of the lyric. She leaves the words messy where they need to be, which makes preserving the original poem feel essential rather than indulgent.
The guitars provide the lift, while the synths cast a softer, dream-like edge around them. That combination suits a song about dissociation because the production can feel grounded and slightly removed at the same time, creating space for painful thoughts without flattening them into one mood.
I like that ‘Inside’ takes its time. Five and a half minutes gives the song room to breathe, repeat, hesitate and continue, which feels right for pain that has accumulated rather than arrived in one clean moment. The shifts register gradually, with no rush towards a tidy resolution.
The phrase “sad-banger lullaby” sounds playful, but it fits. There is comfort in the melodic sweep and energy in the band, while the writing keeps returning to fear, absence and the difficulty of remaining open. None of those feelings cancels out another.
As the final preview of Heavenly Bodies, ‘Inside’ points towards an album where cosmic imagery remains tied to recognisable human fears. Alex turns loss into something expansive without pretending it can be made neat, and the result feels generous, unresolved and fully alive.
You can listen to ‘Inside’ here and follow Alex Amor on Instagram.
