Young singer-songwriter Evie Healey has released three singles in just over a year; her latest, ‘Ain’t No Love,’ opens with the faint question of “Ready?” and two clicks of drum sticks before introducing smooth guitar and piano parts. Healey’s crooning voice is first heard asking What you doing on Sunday? Maybe I could listen to you talk.
After my original listen to the song, I heard a vocally and instrumentally complex ballad about someone who is trying to gain distance from her desire. In some ways I was right, but not for the reasons I believed. Healey tells me that this single is actually reflecting on the end of the romantic relationship she details in her first two singles, ‘Are You in Mine?’ and ‘Days’, both released in 2023. She explains to me that Sunday was always the day she spent with her ex, and that after they parted ways she still left her Sundays free for a while. “Once a relationship breaks down, it is the companionship element you miss, the everyday routine of seeing someone, doing life together and the rhythm your shared week took,” she says. “This is something I don’t think is talked about enough after a breakup – it’s part of the mourning period!” These revelations make this single particularly personal, something that Healey handles expertly in seeking to make the song intimate and meaningful.
Healey has listed jazz, soul, blues, and gospel as genres from which she often draws inspiration; these can all be heard prominently in ‘Ain’t No Love’. For this song, Evie said she was especially inspired by PJ Morton’s ‘How Deep Is Your Love’. “I love the gospel style, the chorus, harmonies and duet elements and knew I wanted to really build up the vocal layers,” she explains. “As it stands there are about 7 vocal harmonies on the chorus!”
When asked what she wanted to do differently than her previous singles, she says “I didn’t want to include any electronic elements like I did in ‘Days’ as I prefer a raw sound, like you’re walking into a jazz club!” Healey is originally from Manchester but has been living in Edinburgh for university; she says that the jazz scene in both of these places, home to venues such as Blues Kitchen and the Jazz Bar, have notably inspired her music and led her to incorporate jazz elements into this song.
Healey often also lists country as a significant influential genre to her music. “For this song I was definitely inspired by the duet parts in the country song ‘Do I Ever Cross Your Mind’ by Chet Atkins and Dolly Parton. I wanted to incorporate the intimacy and storytelling of country music that I had grown up with,” she says. To create this intimacy, she wanted to feature a male voice in order to allow the song to feel as though “two people in the relationship are talking to each other.” This appears in the second verse when an male voice accompanies her in singing What you doing on Sunday? Nevermind, I’m starting moving on now the love has gone / What you doing on Sunday, now that you’ve got no reason to stay? It’s just another day. The combination of these two textured vocals makes for a wonderful duet, introducing a dynamic relationship between both parties of the breakup.
The male voice featured in the duet is that of Healey’s producer, Cathal Murphy, who she’s worked with on all of her songs. They have an incredibly harmonious relationship, both literally and sonically: “Cathal. Just. Gets. It!’ she says. ‘He’s so talented musically but he also listens so well to the vibe I want to create and is able to make some really great suggestions. I’m very ADHD when I write songs – I tend to splurge everything out of my head and he is able to order it!”
The last minute or so of the song focuses on just Healey and Murphy dueting acoustically on the piano, stripped of the rich instruments previously featured, as they riff the lyric ‘Ain’t no love’ together, in order to re-emphasise the intimacy found in a duet. Listening to the song again, I now hear that outro as a representation of how, despite all of the chaos and intensity of a breakup, at the end of the day it comes down to you and the person you’re missing trying to understand the space and silence that is left by the other’s departure, occasionally at the same time but, more often, on your own.