Your Existential Life Anthem With Depui
Norwegian singer/songwriter Bent Ivar Depui Tverslansd has the perfect song for that mood when you just need to sit and think. “Is This a Life?” features Depui’s gravelly voice, accompanied by a beautiful violin arrangement that carries the same emotional power as his voice, pleading for an answer to what exactly life consists of.
He currently has three albums out — Start Healing in 2010, Manhood in 2012, and Growing Wild in 2014. “Is This a Life?” is his newest single from 2016, and it is his first song to hit 100,000 streams on Spotify, and rightly so. This song deserves 100,000 more, and every other song he records as well. His songs set the perfect tone for existential contemplation, his signature sound capturing the weight of the world by making your heart simultaneously light and heavy.
Whenever I hear Depui sing the bridge into the chorus, “Is this my tune / waiting for a life that never change / stranded down alone / left out in the cold / is this a life?” I get chills as my soul cries cathartically through his croons. The struggles of his life come to life in this song — as alive as the “the monsters in my head / I greet them in my bed.” There is nothing more real than when he pleads, “I’m about to go insane / please eat my brain,” and nothing more indicative of the aging in life than the line, “I see them children run / I don’t recall the meaning of fun.” Depui covers life in a nutshell.
These lines are poetic honest truths by themselves that might be hard to handle, but when they are sung by Depui’s charismatic voice, it makes them a little easier to bear. Whenever I begin to question where my life is headed, I crank up this song and let Depui sing all my sorrows away. Now, let him do the same for you.
