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For Irish Singer Rosie Carney, 'Winter' Is Coming

Rosie Carney's new song is titled "Winter."
Kim Benson
/
Courtesy of the artist
Rosie Carney's new song is titled "Winter."

November means different weather to different places, so it's presumptuous to assume that everyone is looking forward to an evening spent bundled up in front of the fireplace with a pile of fleece blankets and a cup of hot cocoa. But if you want to simulate the spirit of a cozy November night, you could do far worse than "Winter," the tenderly rendered new single from Irish singer-songwriter Rosie Carney. Coming from a musician who so effectively articulates alienation and thwarted desire, it's no surprise that "Winter" paints a delicate, bleakly beautiful picture of seasonal isolation.

Writing via email, Carney herself describes "Winter" as "a confessional song written about knowing when something is over. It's inspired by the brutally honest truth experienced when realizing something is coming to an end, whether or not that's what you want. It captures the true, cold essence of winter, which can be felt when letting go. It was, of course, written in the winter: The instrumentation and production were very much inspired by the cold and bare landscapes around me. Everything is raw and minimal."

"Winter" is .

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Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)