(July 25, 2025) Singer Abi Farrell recalls listening to the music of luminaries like Aretha Franklin, Candi Staton Chaka Khan, and Carole King during her formative years in Oxfordshire. “Never Be,” Farrell’s latest single, is a joyful anthem of self-discovery and the realization that living in someone’s shadow is too high a price to pay for companionship.
“Never Be” has that same “to thine own self be true” spirit that made Staton’s “Young Hearts Be Free” an anthem for women’s self-actualization in the 1970s. “Never Be” is upbeat, and defiantly so. The song finds Farrell moving through her stages of relationship grief and quickly arriving at “over it.” She opens the song setting the scene of being stood up on a date, sitting alone at a table as the candles burn out.
That’s the last straw. Farrell tells this shaky fellow about himself, and that she’s done being treated like spare parts. There is joy and summoning the strength to stand up for yourself, and Farrell embodies that joy in her performance of “Never Be.” Check it out here.
By Howard Dukes
