“Cold” by Greg Dallas and Catey Esler: After a Crisis, Life Goes On

Songwriter/composer Greg Dallas released the alternative rock album The Storm on May 1st, 2021, featuring vocals from Catey Esler as heard on the song “Cold”. The album as a whole seems to encompass a heartbreak. The song “Cold” zooms in on the loneliness felt after a difficult decision or a situational crisis, possibly involving the end of the relationship.

“Oh, what a mess

The kind you can’t clean up

Forced into a situation

You want no part of”

While we don’t hear the details of exactly what’s happened, we know from the writing that songwriter Dallas doesn’t want to be in the situation that he’s in, and we know the severity of what has happened. We’re told in the next few lines that friends and family have been lost because of what has been experienced.

“Goodbye to friends

Goodbye to family

Goodbye to the concept of the rest of your life”

The singer will no longer be surrounded by the loved ones he thought he would always be with in the future, possibly from a partner’s family or the family he would start with this person. Due to whatever has happened, the narrator will have to reimagine an entire future without the people he cares for, and without the person he once pictured his life with. While once he was surrounded by love and warmth, the temperatures have now changed.

“Over here it’s cold

Not like it used to be

If hasn’t felt warm for a while

For a while”

Esler beautifully repeats the line “for a while” over and over. The line almost echoes, emphasizing that this coldness and loneliness isn’t a new feeling. Due to the repetition, it seems that Dallas wanted the listener to remember that time has been passing and nothing has changed or gone back to the way it was before.

While the song ends with no hope of things getting better or loneliness dissipating, there is a resolve in terms of the acoustic guitar we hear throughout the piece. While lyrically we hear about cold and loneliness, nothing about the song musically feels this way. You can feel the warm guitar playing thick acoustic chords, churning the song forward, signifying in a way that life goes on.