You can’t stop me talking about Beauty Sleep and their emotionally whiplash-inducing latest single, ‘We Don’t Talk About It’, the fifth single from their 2025 release The Whole Damn Cake, but also their first explosion of musical flavour for 2026.
Its dreamy sound and shoegaze notes initially feel like an unexpected contrast to the core backstory of growing up within Irish Catholicism while secretly and excitedly exploring the kinky side of things, because what’s sexier than being clandestine under a rigid regime? But perhaps that is the point of the disparity between lyric and sound: portraying the facade of being pure and sweet when your sexual awakening would make a nun clutch her rosary.
https://youtu.be/S4b6NG1cnh0?is=UoNx5ppcj1prih9g
Lead vocalist and bassist Cheylene Murphy’s prominent bass hooks you in and maintains a comforting pace throughout, while backing vocalist and guitarist Ryan McGroarty adds complementary licks to the hazy rhythms. As the choruses hit, proclaiming that no one talks about the unmentionables, the point of view shifts. Murphy moves from singing “why don’t you shut your mouth?” to her own perspective with “why don’t I shut my mouth?”, before the final proclamation, “we don’t talk about it”, arrives accompanied by gentle background harmonies.
It feels both deceptively upbeat and undercut by sadness: a poignant look at growing up within sheltered indoctrination and breaking through that forced “everything is fine” pretence to ask what the big deal is with discovering yourself. One of Beauty Sleep’s calmer and more affecting tracks, it is another example of the band tackling society’s absurdities through swaying beats and swooning strings.
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