Raven Numan has dropped another new single titled “Overwhelming” with a pairing music video. In the past year Numan has shared the introspective song “My Reflection,” the powerful and emotional song “Here For Me” and personal single “Going Down.” Each song has given insight into the life of Raven Numan, casting her out of the shadow of her father Gary Numan.
“Overwhelming” shares a story of Numan’s experiences with BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder). The lyrics take you on a journey through descriptions of the dissociative states that Numan experiences from BPD. There is a focus on noise, and how overwhelming it is to be in loud environments. Not only audibly loud, but anything that can overstimulate your senses, physically and metaphorically.
Directed by Jackson Ducasse, the music video is casted in the signature red gleam as her last music videos from this year. It features Numan in a hallway, anxiously escaping, yet stuck in a cycle of overstimulation. As she sings the song, her movements are slow and hypnotic, making the viewers feel trapped along with her. Aiding the viewer in understanding her experiences more.
Raven Numan describes the song saying, “‘Overwhelming’ is somewhat self-explanatory, it’s about being overwhelmed with everyone and everything, it’s also about growing up with a famous parent and how it’s affected me personally. My parents are incredible, they’ve done absolutely everything and more for me and I love them endlessly but a big part of their job is going on tour for long periods of time and that has quite obviously affected me negatively.
She continues by describing her childhood experiences in relation to the song, explaining, “The song is partially about that; how my parents going on tour as a child caused me to develop quite a lot of issues. It caused me to develop borderline personality disorder which involves the constant fear of being abandoned, severe mood swings, anxiety and it has also caused extreme social anxiety. The loudness of this lifestyle, the shows, my dad’s fame, the unpredictability, the fans, the unnecessary hate all because I was born caused so much stress and it was a lot for me to handle. It’s about totally shutting down and disassociating because everything was very overwhelming.”
The deeply emotional and personal piece takes the listener through a simulation, a full experience, to understand Raven Numan a lot more. It fits perfectly in the collection of songs she has been releasing.
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