Eora/Sydney artist total tommy has unveiled her latest single, ‘Winona Forever’, a wistful slice of guitar-driven indie rock inspired by homesickness, identity and the strange dislocation that comes with living across continents and time zones.
Written in just four hours on the final day of a songwriting trip to London, the track finds Jess Holt channelling feelings of distance and self-reflection into one of her most vulnerable songs to date. Inspired by a photograph of actor Winona Ryder standing alone amid towering apartment blocks, Holt began to consider the ways in which people reshape themselves to fit unfamiliar environments.
“There’s a picture of Winona Ryder that I’d seen where she’s on a bike outside a block of high rise buildings, and the imagery of that inspired me so much of how small we all are in the expanse of a city,” Holt explains. “How it’s easy to lose your identity when you’re not surrounded by the people who really know you, and how we subconsciously shape shift to fit our environments.”
The result is a song that balances emotional honesty with the kind of soaring hooks that have become a hallmark of total tommy’s work. It follows recent single ‘Pretty Little Mouth’, a sharp and sardonic take on love-bombing that marked the project’s return earlier this year. To celebrate the release, Holt staged a sold-out secret show at Mary’s Newtown, giving fans an early taste of new material in an intimate setting.
As total tommy, Holt has steadily carved out a reputation for instinctive, guitar-heavy indie rock delivered with wit and emotional clarity. Praise from NME, Rolling Stone Australia, BBC Radio 1, triple j and 6 Music has helped fuel a growing profile, but ‘Winona Forever’ suggests there is even more to come.
Small in scale but rich in feeling, the track serves as an ode to home and the people who anchor us, even when the world around us feels impossibly large.
