Shannon Tehya lights a path ahead of her, her positivity and hope shining through music that provides commentary on the world around her. A self-professed ‘soft girl pop’, allows her to lean into her folk roots, commanding performances from an acoustic stage, a melting pot for the dreamy. As her debut album emerges, Shannon laments the woes of a broken heart and pushes through the trials she faces as a woman. Starting the year as she means to go on, Shannon goes from strength to strength.
Shannon Tehya‘s ‘Bitter Boys’ has been released as the final stepping stone towards her album Tangled String. Shannon’s voice is soft, delicate, and vulnerable, but never weak, the strength in her words around broken men perpetuating a cycle of poor values. The speech comes off as purposeful, morphing from what could be seen as a poem of complaint into a narrative of hope and progression. It’s even more impressive that Shannon delivers these thoughts over a sparse instrumental arrangement, the piano and electric guitar intricately designed to light up the music with a subtle bounce or roaring distortion.
Shannon explains, “Bitter Boys is a satirical letter to all the men who have ever tried to break my spirit. I started dancing in a strip club when I was 18 years old. In a weird way, that choice saved my life. However, it also exposed me to a lot of really unwell people and toxic masculine energy, which is what this song speaks to.”