Exploring Birdsong have shared their first music of 2026, and it’s a track that’s as vibrant as it is visceral.
Titled ’42’, it is as perfect a progressive pop song as you’re ever going to hear. A mesh of glorious chords, gorgeous vocal refrains and plenty of twists and turns, it showcases everything that the band do so wonderfully. Grandiose and infectious, you already know that it’s stuck in your head and will be forevermore. It also serves as an introduction to a universe full of intrigue and mystery, demonstrated through the video, personifying the feeling of powers beyond you following you through life.
Vocalist Lynsey Ward explains, “’42’ is a song about paranoia, conspiracy theories and confirmation bias – it is written from the perspective of someone who has lost touch with reality, seeing patterns in their day to day life that are leading them to some answer, or a warning – but never quite getting the full picture of what it could all mean. Thematically, the song was drawn from personal experience in childhood, where a few coincidences with numbers could spiral into a feeling of being ‘followed’ by a number or symbol, and like the storyline of the rest of your life was being written with this at the centre, or as a clue.”
She adds even more context, stating, “Conspiracy theories are more rife than ever, especially after spreading like wildfire during the pandemic. We wanted to present this as a sympathetic look at how something so simple can go so wrong, and where that desperation can lead; a state of anxiety, isolation, and losing touch with the world around you. The great irony is that, to some degree, we have now become the people in the story. We each notice the number 42 so regularly now that we update one another every time it pops up somewhere unexpected.”
It follows on from the fantastic ‘Romanticise’, which sounds a lot like this.
The band are set to play a string of headline shows later this year, following on from two sold-out performances at London’s St. Pancras Church last November.
Here they are:
SEPTEMBER
23 – GLASGOW Classic Grand
24 – LONDON Islington Assembly Hall
25 – BRISTOL Strange Brew
26 – MANCHESTER Gorilla
