Clinton Kane Isn't Afraid of Feeling Something

Photo: Daniel Prakopcyk

Clinton Kane's an amalgamation of cultures. He's half-Norwegian, half-Filipino, and has lived thousands of miles apart in both Perth, Australia and the UK. While Kane was growing up around the world, he taught himself a bevy of instruments. Though he's lived such a worldly life, it hasn't made him invincible to life's ordinary perils like heartache and sadness.

Kane took to the internet in 2016. His very first YouTube video featured him unadorned, alone in a room playing the acoustic guitar, a straightforward yet beautiful James Arthur cover. Simple. Clean. Effortlessly honest. The format never really varied because shortly after he started accumulating massive amounts of views, he didn't want to fix what wasn't broken. Click any one of Kane's videos and you'll find the same thing: consistent natural talent. The tenderness of his voice in each of his songs sounds like he's always singing from the inner depths of his soul.

The internet loved the amount of transparency Kane placed in his music. He never gave his songs a formal title, instead opting to name them after moments in time. Some of his most watched videos are for songs similarly titled "this is what overthinking feels like," and "this is what a toxic relationship feels like." This is music born out of the idea of trying to capture and portray an intimate feeling.

After only a few short months, Kane's popular YouTube channel caught the attention of Columbia execs. He soon released his debut major label EP, this is what it feels like, in April of 2019. The EP created a place for Kane's internet project to live as a collection. His first collection of music that really made listeners relate.

"So I Don't Let Me Down" is Kane's first standalone single apart from the this is what it feels like collection. It's even more personal than his most vulnerable musical moments, something hard to do as the 20-year-old has already covered so much emotional ground. Kane's voiced his journey through everything from being cheated on to navigating his own rough childhood. Yet, somehow, "So I Don't Let Me Down" gets more personal than that. Kane shared some insight about the track with us, sharing,

"Feelings suck. And change is annoying and scary because, quite honestly, I like to be in control of everything that happens and wanna be in the know. 'So I Don't Let Me Down' is about having to accept the fact that life just doesn't work that way. You have to learn to deal with it, and by deal with it I mean cry in a corner."

The stripped acoustic track ventures down the path of Kane's own anxieties and griefs caused by the little changes that freak him out or being finding himself suddenly surrounded by strangers. This song is Kane finding a way to lift himself out of those overwhelming worries. This is what owning your fears and discovering ways to cope feels and sounds like.

Listen to "So I Don't Let Me Down" below: