Sorry’s “Key To The City” is striking in its solitude

Photo by Iris Luz

In stark contrast to the euphoria of “Let The Lights On”, Sorry’s latest single “Key To The City” looks at the bitter end of a relationship, rather than the exhilarating start. Meant as a “tender ‘fuck you'”, “Key To The City” has a dark loneliness to it — a feeling that is amplified by the accompanying video directed by FLASHA. Reduced to a small part of a much bigger apartment complex, filled with many other people living their lives and experiences, to be feeling something so deeply with little to no impact or importance to those around you is incredibly isolating. There are alluring vices and vanities holding people’s attention, rather than the pain our narrator is experiencing.

Of the single, Asha shared, “‘Key to the City’ is a song that stemmed from a very specific situation in my life but that I hope has a more universal resonance. It’s meant as a kind of tender ‘fuck you’ at the dying moment of a relationship you don’t necessarily want to end – when it’s hard to reconcile feelings of anger, jealousy, resentment etc. with the undeniable love you still have for that person. That crossover of pride and vulnerability led me to an image of a deer in the headlights. It’s about trying your hardest to retain control when you know you’re exposed emotionally, sexually, spiritually, everything. In the nude of the headlights, in the nude of someone’s love.”

There is something really beautiful and painful about the track and Asha accomplished the goal of having a more universal resonance with it.

Catch Sorry on tour in North America this fall