Most breakup songs ask you to sit in the sadness. Judy Pearson’s latest single asks you to walk through it. “Heart On The Wall” starts as a gut-punch confession about one-sided love, then quietly transforms into something more powerful: a declaration of self-worth.

The track, clocking in at a tight two minutes and forty seconds, doesn’t waste a single moment. Pearson’s voice carries the weight of someone who’s done the emotional math and finally walked away from a losing equation. But there’s a moment that elevates the song from heartbreak anthem to something closer to a personal manifesto. “I’m already stronger / because I am no longer…” she sings, letting the line hang before the chorus crashes back in. That pause holds everything, the realization that leaving isn’t losing. It’s reclaiming.

The chorus itself, with its repeated message of “just another heart on the wall,” paints a vivid picture of someone who was collected rather than cherished. It’s the kind of imagery that sticks because most people have been there, hanging around waiting to matter to someone who saw them as optional. Pearson doesn’t dress it up with metaphor or soften the blow. She names it directly, and that honesty is what makes the song land so hard.

For a rising artist, Pearson’s work has a remarkably polished feel. The production on “Heart On The Wall” balances warmth with restraint, giving her vocals room to breathe while the folk-infused instrumentation provides a bed of quiet tension. The refreshingly simple music video reinforces the themes of independence, emotional display, and eventual release.

Listeners familiar with the confessional precision of Taylor Swift, the whispered vulnerability of Gracie Abrams, or the sharp emotional edges of Olivia Rodrigo will recognize the territory Pearson operates in. But she’s not simply occupying a lane created by others. Her previous single “Remember Me” showed a writer willing to pull from unexpected sources, weaving historical inspiration into deeply personal storytelling. That same willingness to dig for something real shows up here.

What separates “Heart On The Wall” from the standard sad-song formula is its trajectory. The track doesn’t end in defeat. When that final chorus returns after the bridge, the repetition of “just another heart on the wall” hits differently. It’s no longer a lament. It’s a statement of fact about what she used to be, delivered by someone who’s already moved past it. The song comes full circle, but the narrator doesn’t. She’s somewhere else entirely by the time the last note fades.

Pearson has already built a substantial audience, with more than four million streams across platforms and features in Notion, Clout, and Earmilk. She’s become something of a touchstone for listeners navigating their own complicated moments, the kind of artist people return to when they need to feel understood rather than entertained.

With a debut EP expected next year and her recently released Christmas single “Christmas With You” already out, she’s entering a phase where the foundation she’s built will start supporting bigger structures. But even now, with just a handful of songs to her name, Pearson writes like someone who understands that the best breakup songs aren’t really about the other person at all. They’re about who you become when you finally stop waiting to be chosen.

“Heart On The Wall” is available now on Spotify. Follow Judy Pearson on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube.

There’s a specific kind of emotional paralysis that “Freno” nails perfectly: knowing you should leave, wanting to leave, but finding yourself stuck in the same place anyway. Joaquina doesn’t just sing about this feeling. She builds an entire world around it.

The Venezuelan-American singer, who took home Best New Artist at the 2023 Latin Grammy Awards, released “Freno” as part of her debut EP “Los Mejores Años,” which also earned a nomination for Best Singer-Songwriter Album that same year. At just 3:34, the track distills a cycle of heartbreak into something achingly familiar. The lyrics circle back on themselves intentionally, with Joaquina admitting she’s “on her fifth try” when the saying goes third time’s the charm. It’s self-aware without being self-pitying, and that balance is harder to strike than it sounds.

What makes “Freno” work beyond its confessional honesty is the production’s restraint. Recorded at Miami’s Art House under the direction of 14-time Grammy and Latin Grammy winner Julio Reyes Copello, the track opens with fingerpicked guitar arpeggios that establish a melancholic foundation before Joaquina even enters. There’s no distortion, no heavy effects. Just natural sustain and space, complementing the synth pads and programmed drums underneath.

The guitar work, performed by Colombian session guitarist Ana Liu, deserves particular attention. A Berklee Presidential Scholarship recipient who studied under Danilo Pérez and John Patitucci, Liu brings a jazz-trained sensitivity to the pop arrangement. Her open voicings evoke hesitation, mirroring the song’s “braking” motif with almost literary precision. When the chorus hits, the guitar shifts to strumming for emphasis, adding percussive weight without ever competing with the vocals. It’s warm, woody, and impossibly tender. Every sustained chord feels like a confession you weren’t quite ready to hear.

That restraint speaks to Copello’s broader philosophy at Art House, where he’s shaped records for Jennifer Lopez, Alejandro Sanz, Marc Anthony, and Ricky Martin. The producer has a gift for knowing when to pull back, for letting a song breathe instead of burying it under layers. With “Freno,” every element exists in service of Joaquina’s voice and the emotional weight she carries. The synths hover rather than push. The drums keep time without demanding attention. It’s the kind of production that sounds simple until you try to replicate it.

Joaquina’s Latin Grammy win for Best New Artist wasn’t a fluke or an industry bet on potential. “Freno” and the rest of “Los Mejores Años” showed an artist who arrived fully formed, with a clear perspective on love, loss, and the messy space between. She writes like someone who’s lived more than her years would suggest, finding specificity in moments that other writers would gloss over. The image of watching someone look at another person from across the room, knowing it shouldn’t hurt but feeling it anyway, that’s not a generic heartbreak lyric. That’s observation. The Recording Academy recognized what listeners already knew: Joaquina isn’t building toward something. She’s already there.

That maturity shows in her songwriting instincts. The best breakup songs don’t dramatize the ending. They capture the long, frustrating middle, where you’re still stuck with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake. Joaquina, barely into her twenties, already knows this.

The Quarantined are released their third studio EP, “Aversion to Normalcy,” today, and it’s not the kind of record you put on for background music. Created by Sean Martin, a former airborne infantryman and Iraq War veteran, the album confronts trauma head-on, pulling from his experiences in combat and the disorienting aftermath of trying to rebuild a life once you’re home. It’s grunge-heavy, emotionally direct, and built around the idea that “normal” is just a polite lie we tell ourselves. What makes it work is that Martin isn’t trying to package his experience into something digestible. He’s just refusing to look away.

The album arrives with momentum that’s hard to ignore. The Quarantined have racked up over 30 million views across TikTok, with one clip of “Skeleton Chair” alone hitting 1.1 million+ views. On Spotify, they’ve pulled in 500,000 streams, and their viral reach has sparked conversations about trauma, forgiveness, and what it actually means to heal. For a band working outside the traditional industry machine, those numbers say something about how their message is connecting.

Martin doesn’t soften his subject matter. Tracks like “Skeleton Chair,” “Shadow (on my back),” and “Nemesis (friend of mine)” trace a path through chaos, self-destruction, and the slow, unglamorous work of choosing to survive. He’s not writing from a place of having figured it all out. He’s writing from the middle of it, which is what makes the record feel urgent rather than reflective. There’s no tidy resolution here, just the raw acknowledgment that some battles don’t end when you come home.

The album was recorded at Blackbird Studios and Sound Emporium in Nashville, two facilities known for handling heavyweight rock projects. Producer Nathan Yarborough, who’s worked with Alice in Chains, Korn, Halestorm, and Evanescence, handled engineering and production. The lineup includes Jerry Roe on drums, Luis Espalliat on bass, and Zack Rapp from Dream Theater on lead guitar and violins, with Martin covering vocals and guitar. It’s a setup that balances aggression with precision, letting the songs hit hard without losing their emotional core.

In a Veterans Day post on Facebook, Martin didn’t hold back about what this album means and what it cost. “You know, the things you thank us for today, have lifetime consequences for those who carry the burden,” he wrote. “I always thought if you’re gonna thank someone, better be specific about what and why, otherwise it has no meaning except as a false absolution for yourself.” It’s a pointed critique of performative gratitude, and it underscores what “Aversion to Normalcy” is actually about: rejecting easy answers and comfortable narratives in favor of something messier and more honest.

Martin pulls from punk rock, grunge, and metal, but what ties it together is his refusal to romanticize any of it. This isn’t protest music in the traditional sense. There are no slogans, no clear villains. Instead, it’s an invitation to sit with discomfort, to look at the parts of life that don’t fit into neat categories, and to find meaning in survival itself.

The Quarantined also support the Free2Luv movement, working on anti-bullying efforts, mental health advocacy, and music education for veterans and their families. It tracks with what the album’s already doing: making room for people who are still figuring it out, still fighting through it.

“Aversion to Normalcy” doesn’t offer answers. It offers witness, which might be more valuable anyway. In a culture that constantly demands we move on, heal up, and get back to normal, Martin’s album asks a better question: what if normal was never the goal in the first place?

“Aversion to Normalcy” is available now on all streaming platforms. You can follow The Quarantined on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook at @thequarantined, visit their website here, or stream their projects on Spotify.