TIMES – The Meaning Behind the Song

There is a word that appears in the English language more than almost any other. We use it without thinking. We say it in passing. We measure our lives by it.

Time.

TIMES is built entirely around that word – not just as a theme, but as a structural device woven deliberately into every line. Familiar sayings, phrases we have all heard a hundred times, repurposed and repositioned to tell a story about something most of us already know but rarely stop to feel.

Time’s a healer. Time will tell. Time flies. Times can be tough. Times to remember.

You already know these phrases. That’s the point.

But there’s another layer. One that is more personal.

I took a twenty five year break from music. Twenty five years of corporate life, of practicality winning out over passion, of the singer in me going quiet while the rest of life got loud. When I came back to it – really came back, recording, releasing, building something from nothing – I had to make peace with the time I’d lost. Or rather, I had to stop thinking of it as lost at all.

Because here’s what I’ve learned. Time is never wasted if you’re paying attention. Every difficult period, every version of yourself that didn’t quite work out, every time you woke up feeling blue – it all becomes material. It all becomes something you can use.

TIMES is that realisation made into a song.

When I was nineteen I met someone who would become one of the most important people in my life. Nicky. We lived together in London, then years later in Sydney. We went through everything together – the kind of friendship that doesn’t need explaining, unconditional and constant. She came home one day and told me that at the shop where she worked, they played S Club 7’s Reach for the Stars every morning before opening as a motivator. We laughed about it. But somehow, years later, when I was writing the chorus of TIMES, that song found its way in. Not copied – echoed. The spirit of it. Reach for the skies. Because some songs belong to people, and that one belongs to Nicky.

The other line that means everything to me is a new day has come. When I was twenty two I boarded a flight to Australia to start a completely new chapter. Celine Dion – my favourite artist since I was fifteen – came through my headphones somewhere over the world, and that song was playing as I looked out of the window wondering what came next. Nicky met me at the airport. We moved to Bondi. And what a chapter that was.

That’s what TIMES is really about. Not just time as a concept, but what we fill our time with. The people. The moments. The songs that were playing when everything changed.

I am also a psychotherapist. I sit with people every week who are struggling with exactly this – the weight of difficult times, the fear that things won’t change, the quiet desperation of feeling stuck. And what I know from that work, and from my own life, is that the turning point rarely announces itself. It just comes. A new day. A moment of clarity. A decision to find a way.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t sometimes wonder whether my time has passed. Whether the gap was too long, the start too late, the industry too crowded. It’s a thought that visits. But I keep going anyway – because if there’s one thing I know, it’s that time will tell. And I’m not done yet.

Find a way. Seize today. Feel the highs. Reach for the skies. A new day has come. You’ve come far. Shine like a star.

These are words you should be able to shout. Words that feel bigger than one person singing them – which is why the production, built with Jay Dixie, stacks vocal upon vocal, harmony upon harmony, adlib upon adlib, until by the final chorus it becomes something collective. Like everyone who has ever had a hard time and kept going anyway.

The bridge nods to Viva La Vida. Not accidentally. That song carries the same feeling – something earned, something survived, something worth celebrating.

This is my fourth release of 2026. Each one has been a step further into something I walked away from for longer than I should have. But then – time’s a healer. Time will tell.

TIMES is out 3 July. It’s a summer song. But the message belongs to every season.