Eliza McLamb is a LA-based writer and musician that has been making music since 2020. After four years of anticipation, McLamb released her first album titled Going Through It. Every song is a moment in her life, the good and the bad, that McLamb tells the story of with similarities close to Kacey Musgraves, Taylor Swift, and many others before her.
Her debut album showcases the highs and lows of a woman’s life trailing from the teen to young adult years. The emotional conception of this album relays to listeners the turmoil of processing events, to which McLamb found her outlet through her creative skills of naturally writing lyrics and curating the instrumentals.
One of the first singles released to welcome the era of her album was “Glitter” back in 2023. “Glitter” illustrates through the lyrics and sounds of the deep affection and trust of female friendships. McLamb uses her lyrics to express the unforgettable connection that comes with the intense mixture of platonic and romantic feelings. She sings “DSLR flash / Looking past the lens / A teenage imitation / Now just a picture of a picture I’ve taken” and continues with the title of the song, “Glitter closing my eyes / Falling asleep with your hand in mine / Every moment has a touch of goodbye / We were watching it leave while we still had time.” McLamb’s maturity in her lyrics dives into true tales of a friendship that becomes more, when they become a part of just being.
Another detailed single from 2023 was “Mythologize Me” where McLamb sings about being put on a pedestal and its unhealthy gratification. The lyrics “Make me in your perfect image of a girl” and “Your needs to give me meaning / Oh what a relief from feeling” is accompanied by sounds of early Taylor Swift pop country, but has the edge of McLamb’s soft tonal voice.
Reaching the midway point in the tracklist, “16” has a much different sound from the previous songs. McLamb keeps the instrumentals light with elements of bass and drums while remaining rich with heavy synthesizers. By doing so, this leaves ample room for her lyrics, where she sings about some of her self-destructive actions, and trying to find forgiveness through it all. From The title, indicates a timeline in her teen years – where being a teenage girl rarely had its perks. The scraps of emotional burdens led her to write a very detailed song on the album.
“Anything You Want” has a more light-hearted and bright sense with the bass, guitar, and drums, but still has the harsh lyrics. The describe what it is like to be seen through the eyes of others, when she knows exactly who she is to them, making the judgment call for them. “I’m a hard person to unravel / I’m an endless ball of yarn / I’m a labyrinth in the dark / I’m not anything you want” are the old wounds of self-deprecation, the act of trying to keep people away.
Immediately after, “Modern Woman” plays the same way as “Anything You Want” musically, but jumps into another theme in the album. McLamb uses this song as an outlet for the sad girls, lyrics following along “Sad girl sings a simple song / All the others sing along.” To her the ‘modern woman’ is the sad girl who feels her emotions and takes her life day by day.
Wrapping up the album is “To Wake Up.” The song is filled with acoustic guitar repetition where she finds her semi-answer to her troubles, quite literally being the lyric “Isn’t it enough to wake up?” In the bridge she expresses “Every line on my face is a gift / Every roll on my side is a gift / Every time that I cry it’s a gift.” She sees her just being as the answer to her problems that she sang about through the album, and getting to the point of being happy with her livelihood.
Going Through It is the perfect debut album under the discography and direction of Eliza McLamb. She pours every thought and feeling into her work, and it’s clear this is where more of her music will be heading with her excellence.
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