Irrelevant To You

Gena Rose Bruce “Angel Face”

“Angel Face” is a song about unrequited love, but it’s sung from the perspective of someone who has clearly moved on from being heartbroken about it to a state of bitter acceptance. It’s not an angry song but there’s certainly some resentment in Gena Rose Bruce’s voice as she sings about the object of her desire feeling like “God’s gift to the world,” and while they could be just as arrogant and egotistical as she’s making them out to be, it might just be a matter of her taking them off a pedestal she put them on while she was caught up in infatuation. The composition of the track is brilliant in the way it gradually builds from just a mildly nervous pulse and her fragile, lovely voice up to a sort of muted rock catharsis at the end. In that final sequence she repeats a very familiar line from pop history – “I can’t make you love me” – and her phrasing strips out the usual pathos and replaces it with a cold resolve, like she’s finally just killing the feeling forever.

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