“I take after my mother, I fall in love with stupid men” is a starkly candid admission from Denmark’s Theresa Rex and in the very first line of ‘Fall in Love (To fall apart)’. And that’s not the half of it. Later she adds “I take after my father, I’m also not that nice to me”, and then the coup de grace: “And if I had a daughter I know I’d let her down”.
She sounds like the stuff of a social worker’s nightmares. And we probably all know a dysfunctional family like that, just around the corner. Maybe even ours.
It’s an unusual subject for a song but then Theresa Rex is an unusual artist with a penchant both for intelligent pop and baring her soul.
She’s ranged over subjects such as the need to have her voice heard all the time, then in contrast her decision to cut herself off from the world when she was undergoing treatment for a serious illness, and also the anxiety that arose from it, something she also mentioned in an interview with Nordic Music Central (see link below) and which she identified as not exactly being conducive towards performing in public.
Even though Oscar Wilde was referring to a different type of person altogether when he noted that “they know how to live”, Theresa Rex certainly does know. These aren’t the musings of a bored teenager on her laptop in her bedroom. She’s been there, done it, and wears the T-shirt with pride.
There’s a certain inevitability about the concept of falling in love to fall apart. As if the way your cards have been dealt means you can never escape your destiny. As she says, “it’s just the way I was made.”
Musically, the song starts with a funereal organ against which in a childish, Regina Spektor-like voice Theresa delivers a eulogy and then swiftly shifts up-tempo as if she’s preaching a Sermon from the Mount, or mounting a defence in a court of public opinion.
She has the musical nouse of an Aurora allied to the lyrical virtuosity of an Emmy the Great. The total package.
One of the most riveting songs I’ve heard this year. Q.E.D.
She’s had 1.5 billion streams of her co-written songs and contributions. She deserves that sort of response just for this one.
And some radio airplay in the UK, pretty please.
(Continues after the Spotify link).
‘Fall in love (to fall apart)’ was written by Theresa Rex together with South African artist and songwriter Craig Lucas and Danish producer Nikolaj Pellegrini.
It is the first single from Theresa Rex’s forthcoming EP, ‘These songs hurt my feelings’, which chronicles her upbringing in a family heavily affected by alcohol abuse, having a father who was in prison for much of her childhood and the helplessness that comes with watching a parent lose their life to addition.
Offhand, I can only think of one artist that has tacked this subject in depth on an entire album, and that is St Vincent on her 2021 long player ‘Daddy’s Home’. It’s a challenge, and one only for the brave. Theresa Rex is exactly that.
Find her on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheresaRexMusic
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theresarexmusic/
NMC interview with Theresa Rex (August 2025) – https://www.nordicmusiccentral.com/rex-is-a-good-dog-name-for-a-good-dog-in-conversation-with-denmarks-theresa-rex/
