There’s something wonderfully affecting about the way Brett Ashby approaches ‘Over’. Instead of treating the song as a conventional breakup narrative, the Australian multidisciplinary artist lets it sit in the more complicated space between loss, acceptance and whatever happens after the dust settles.
Written originally for Sarah during a difficult post-COVID period, the song began at his typewriter rather than in a studio. That detail matters because ‘Over’ feels less engineered than many tracks of a similar ilk. The words emerged first, before structure or arrangement, and that gives the finished track a confessional quality that feels unusually direct.
Guest vocalist Queenie’s presence adds another layer to the song. Her vocal broadens the emotional perspective, turning something intensely personal into a conversation about the universal difficulty of knowing when to let go.
But what makes ‘Over’ especially interesting is how naturally it fits into Ashby’s wider creative practice. His visual work has always been concerned with movement, mark-making and process, and here that same instinct is translated into songwriting.
Even the title itself carries the song’s central contradiction. “Over” sounds final, but the track never feels entirely closed. Instead, it asks what remains once something ends, and whether the act of making art from that ending can become the first step towards something new.
Intimate, reflective and emotionally open, ‘Over’ captures the point where his visual language and musical instincts finally begin to merge into something distinctly his own.
