Claudia Balla has always written songs like short films, where emotions unfold in vivid detail against lush backdrops, and with โVideo Game,โ she once again proves why her folk-pop is as cinematic as it is intimate. The Hungarian-born, Switzerland-based artist, learned in classical music, intuitive in pop, draws on her eclectic influences to create this delicate and vulnerable song, enchanting and tender with orchestral grandeur.
The track opens with swelling strings that immediately set a tone of melancholy grandeur, like the overture to a play about loveโs disillusionments. Over this, Ballaโs rich voice enters. She leans into anguished openness. She sings, โI want your attention / I want your affection / You say I am clingy, that I am needy, that I am batshit crazy,โ indicting how easily womenโs desires for love and recognition are pathologized.
But soon her voice drops into a lower, breathy range, as she recalls the indifferent contours of a relationship, portraying the scene in muted colors as her partner stares at his phone instead of listening, and you see the disregard plainly.
As the arrangement builds, the beats strike with force while a piano runs gently underneath, anchoring the chaos with fragile continuity. Her layered vocals, ranging from plaintive highs to shadowed lows, create the effect of a dialogue with herself, like a mind turning over the same wound from different angles.
What sounds like vulnerability doubles as resistance, reclaiming those labels and turning them into a fierce, self-aware anthem. Listen to โVideo Gameโ by Claudia Balla on Spotify.
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Review by: Naomi Joan