If you had TikTok during quarantine, you’ll probably remember the hit song “Backyard Boy,” that became one of the 2020 songs of the summer. Claire Rosinkranz, the writer of this viral TikTok, released her new debut album “Just Because” on October 6th. Her discography is filled with lots of other singles and EPs, but this is her first actual album. She begins her first track ‘123’ with a slow and breathy dreamlike sentiment with a quiet melody, but then abruptly cuts it off with a short drum cadence into a fun upbeat tempo. 

In the second song, ‘Sad in Hawaii,’ she uses that iconic sound with a slide guitar that sounds a bit like the closing theme song for Spongebob or something you would hear at a luau. This song is about when she went to Hawaii and couldn’t distract herself from this sad feeling even though she had all the beautiful scenery and relaxation of Hawaii around her.

The third song “Never Goes Away” has a variety of different tempos and styles. In some verses, the lyrics are overlapping each other as Rosinkranz moves from thought to thought very quickly. But then, in the next verse, she moves from thought to thought much slower and stretches out certain words or phrases in each line. In between verses, she softly hums the melody with a snapping sound in the background, then cuts back into the upbeat tempo.

In “Dreamer,” my personal favorite, she goes from line to line with sarcastic and witty remarks. The chorus is flowy and catchy and she says, “aren’t we having so much fun?” and then echoes “so much fun” in a funny, almost sarcastic tone. 

“Swinging at the Stars” is the fifth song of the album. She says in her “Just Because” announcement video on YouTube that the “heart of the concept” was “experiencing beautiful things with somebody else.” 

The sixth song is about the years when she was just growing up and how time is taking that from her so she’s saying “Screw Time.” Claire says in her YouTube album announcement video, “I wrote that song so I could step back into a time where I was just messing around.” 

“Gum” starts out very calm but builds and builds until it switches into an upbeat, faster-paced tempo. She names some things you’d see at a beach and says “keep namin’ things that keep you on my mind.”

The second sentence of “Wes Anderson” is the only part that has anything to do with the film director it’s named after, even though it’s the title of the whole song. She’s giving herself a hard time and telling herself to get over it because she’s feeling like she should toughen up.

“Banksy” also has nothing to do with the graffiti artist it’s named after, except for one line. Instead, it’s about being surrounded by your thoughts and the loneliness that can come with that.

Claire wrote this song about a falling out she had with a friend where they had very “Polarized” views on a certain situation. She said that it made her very angry and she says in the album announcement video on YouTube that “I still was just like ‘how in the world do you see it this way and I see it this way?’” 

In the eleventh song “Jupiter” she talks about when there’s too much going on and that everything is getting so loud, so just wants to go to Jupiter and escape from it all. In the chorus, her words are very spread out and she starts to slow down, making you feel like you’re in outer space and floating.

The dystopian-feeling “Pools and Palm Trees” has a different style from the rest of the album, although she does switch her tempo between slow and fast very frequently and suddenly.

The final song, “Mess,” is very different from the rest of the album since it’s very slow and soft compared to the upbeat songs of the rest of the album. The soft guitar melody slowly builds but swells more and more towards the end of the song then stops abruptly.

Overall, Claire Rosinkranz’s album tends to make the most out of her bad experiences and she turns these experiences into something good: music.