Loyle Carner & Jorja Smith | ‘Loose Ends’

The One Song of The Year, 2019.

Hard work gathering them all together, but somehow, he managed to do it. The invitations couldn’t be sent by post; he didn’t know where half of them actually lived and besides, asking for addresses would seem suspicious. And so he did as he’d always done, showing up at their places of work with crisp envelopes, freshly licked, sealed and smoothed over again, delivered directly into their hands.

He’d written each name in thick black script using a Sharpie he’d stolen from an office he didn’t remember working at. Covered them in festive stickers from the post office like he was a nine year-old because he didn’t really have much to lose. Half a day wasted trying to recall if Niel was ‘Neil’ or ‘Niell’, debating adding a surname to even up the alignment. He’d always left room for stamps like his mother taught him, everything trending left even when he tried to write the names big and bold in the center.

These regulars were his friends because realistically there was no one else. It is not our lot in life to look out for those slipping through cracks unless they wave and scream and let off flares in the right direction at precisely the right time and after a year or so of that he was tired. Honestly he preferred honesty to sympathy, the type that came from those that didn’t…