Ruel has spent the past few releases edging further away from polished pop neatness and into something more conflicted. New single ‘Debbie Don’t Cry’, released ahead of his upcoming album, Kicking My Feet & Screaming: Part Two, (due out on 12 June) continues that shift, balancing glossy 80s textures against lyrics tangled up in guilt, attachment and emotional exhaustion.
Opening with little more than synths and Ruel’s voice, the track moves patiently rather than rushing toward a chorus payoff. Warm guitar lines and blurred backing vocals slowly creep into the arrangement, giving the song a hazy, late-night atmosphere that suits its uneasy emotional centre. Even at its most melodic, ‘Debbie Don’t Cry’ feels unsettled, caught somewhere between reassurance and regret.
Stream ‘Debbie Don’t Cry’ HERE.
Ruel says the track began almost accidentally during a late-night writing session that started “kind of as a joke” before quickly turning into a favourite. That looseness remains embedded in the recording itself. There’s a sense that the song is allowed to breathe rather than being compressed into radio precision, helped along by a slightly rough-edged guitar solo played by Ruel himself.
The single follows the darker alt-rock leanings of ‘Hate Myself’ and the success of ‘Don’t Say That’, both of which hinted that Kicking My Feet & Screaming: Part Two would push beyond the melodic warmth of the album’s first half. Across the forthcoming release, Ruel appears increasingly interested in emotional contradiction: tenderness sitting alongside frustration, nostalgia bleeding into self-destruction, devotion tangled up with resentment.
It’s a noticeable evolution from the artist who first broke through as a teenager with tracks like ‘Dazed & Confused’ and ‘Younger’. Since then, Ruel has steadily built one of the more substantial international profiles of any Australian pop artist of his generation, amassing billions of streams while gradually broadening the edges of his songwriting.
