A month ago, I was introduced to Industrial Pop idol Danny Blu when he performed on the Hot Goth Tour in Los Angeles. He tends to write very upbeat danceable songs, and the people in the crowd loved it. But one song really stuck out to me was his incredibly emotional ballad “Stranger.” Even hearing the song for the first time live, you could hear how much weight the lyrics carried. The message of the song has to do with losing connections with people who don’t accept you or approve of the path you are taking with your life.
Danny sings about feeling lonely, either by yourself or in a room full of people you call friends. These friends who have very strict ideas of how people should be, act, or even who they should love. And though these are the people that should be the closest to you and accept you for you, staying connected with them causes you to hold back on who your true self is. Creating a spiral of self-doubt and doubling down on loneliness, because if they knew who the true you really is, they would ostracize you.
However, when the song reaches its chorus, Danny seizes control of the narrative with anthemic lyrics that preach “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll be the stranger!” Instead of letting people decide who he is and whether they want him in their life, he takes control of his own destiny. Choosing to remove the negativity in his life that holds him back and cutting out the people who will never accept him. What starts out as a self-loathing look at someone who may be choosing the wrong path, turns into a statement of self empowerment and taking hold of the reins of your own life.
Before performing this song live Danny opened up to the crowd that this song was written about his Dad, and while performing it you could see just how much heartbreak this song still brings him as he was shedding tears singing to us. That’s what helps make this song as powerful as it is. The artist knows how much it can hurt to remove people from your life that you call family. Yet, this song is about how much stronger you can be if you stand up for your true self. To anyone that has self doubt about who they are because of people they keep around them, I implore you to listen to this track and truly take in its message. You have so much more to offer the world once you stop letting people hold you back.