Esthy’s latest single, “What’s it Gonna Take”, feels like the sound of rain falling on a sun-drenched cactus. You’re never quite sure if it needs saving—thriving in its dryness or quietly gasping for water.
Heartbreak bruises softly here. It doesn’t shout, it observes. The lyrical questions spin on a slow axis: “Was it me? Did I miss that crack in the windshield when the road looked perfect?” Yet, here’s the killer—Esthy knows the car crashed miles ago. Or maybe it’s still veering off in slow motion. Who’s to say? But boy, does she wish she could rewind to that dizzy twist of fate that wasn’t quite yet fated.
Vocally, Esthy hovers like smoke, but with resolve—the kind of voice that carries both weight and wind at the same time. It matches the thick, spatial production underneath. A lot of pop-RnB these days is glossy and vacant, but the production here feels rich like the inside of a thousand-year-old tree. You know it’s been through some stuff.
Dead End. Those two dreadful words hang heavy in the song, yet Esthy is still tip-tapping around the perimeter, knocking on windows pretending she can bypass the inevitable. And who hasn’t been there? Desperation’s game is begging when words feel small.
Did anyone else think of the haunted desperation in the paintings of Edward Hopper when hearing this? Relationships slipping through fingers, two people occupying space in totally different timelines. Esthy’s voice feels like someone standing under a fluorescent diner light, staring outward at a static world where a lover once was and never will be again.
In the swirling mess of everything, the track daringly asks, what if love is just bad geography—terribly, irreversibly misplaced?
All that’s clear in “What’s it Gonna Take,” though, is that some questions were never meant for answering.
Figuring it out is exhausting, but maybe there’s beauty in the ache.
