Sunday mornings in the church pew I learned guilt before I learned my own body. I knew sin and salvation. Hymns and hellfire. All those sacred rules about who I was supposed to become. Then Saturday nights happened. The parties and the dim hallway where someone pressed me against the wall and kissed me slow enough that I forgot every verse I’d memorized that morning. The feeling of someone’s breath against my neck whispering things that would make the congregation faint. I spent years trying to reconcile the girl who closed her eyes during prayer with the girl who kept them wide open at 2am in someone else’s bed. Then I heard Carrie Baxter’s ‘Change’ and realized I’ve been fighting the wrong battle. The math never added up because I was trying to make it add up. You want holiness? Fine. You want heat? Also fine. Wanting both at the same time? That’s not a crisis to solve.
This neo-soul blend has jazz and R&B woven through it so smoothly you almost don’t notice how fucking sensual the whole thing is. Then that gospel-tinged chorus hits and suddenly you’re in church again except this time the hymn is about your own patterns and how you keep sabotaging yourself. Carrie opens with “Promises made that I can’t keep / It was instant, when I saw the break of dawn / Regrets I’m keepin to myself / Now I’m distant, I don’t wanna answer your call.” That instant recognition, that pull toward something or someone followed immediately by the retreat? She’s describing the whole cycle in four lines. You make promises at dawn when everything feels possible, then by afternoon you’re already pulling back and keeping secrets. That’s the pattern.
The next lines get more specific about what’s actually happening. “1990, I was chillin / Picked up and my legs swimmin / Now I’m sinkin in the bathtub thinking it through.” The bathtub as the place where you finally sit with yourself? Perfect. That’s where all the hard realizations happen. You’re alone with your thoughts, the water, all the ways you’ve been avoiding the truth. Carrie’s vocals here are so smooth they slide right into your nervous system. She’s not performing the breakdown, she’s living it.
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Then comes the chorus that fucking destroys you. “You don’t have to change at all for me / you been working hard nothing comes free / I only wanna build you up, I’m just tryna build you up / Pacify and rethink / Coz You are everybody, everything.” Wait. This is the moment where someone tells you that you don’t have to become somebody else to deserve care. That the work you’ve been doing on yourself already matters. That building yourself up in increments counts even when you’re still messy. The gospel energy here makes it feel redemptive without demanding you erase who you are. That line right there did it.
Carrie Baxter is a singer-songwriter from Waterford making waves with this jazz-soul-R&B fusion that people keep comparing to Amy Winehouse and Erykah Badu. Fair comparisons. She’s got that same sultry vocal control and ability to make every line feel personal. Her debut EP ‘Placebo’ dropped in 2020 and showcased how she mixes genres while keeping her sound cohesive. Then ‘What Now’ came in 2021 and solidified her as someone who writes songs that resonate. She’s been building this career on passion and perseverance and ‘Change’ might be the track that cements her place.
The second verse is where Carrie gets real about the spiritual crisis. “I find it hard to be myself / I’m a sinner, and the temples just don’t wanna know / My body’s stripped covered in lust / And it’s funny, coz all I ever wanted was love.” This fucking verse. She’s stripped down to lust when all she wanted was love and the temples don’t want anything to do with her because she’s already labeled herself a sinner. That tension between what your body wants and what you’re supposed to want spiritually? That’s the whole goddamn struggle. The way she admits it’s funny because the disconnect is so absurd? Brutal honesty. She feels unwelcome in sacred spaces because her desires don’t fit the approved narrative.
Carrie said “this song didn’t come easily to me.” No shit it didn’t. When she talks about how it forced her to sit with the parts of herself she’d avoided for years, the patterns she carried from childhood that she had to face? That’s real work. She continues, “For a long time I treated healing like something that needed fixing.” Right there. We’ve all done that. Treated ourselves like broken things that need repair instead of whole people who are just figuring it out. “As I’ve grown, I’ve realized it’s not about fixing at all. It’s about walking alongside my younger self, letting myself feel everything and choosing who I want to become.” The idea of walking alongside your younger self instead of running from her? That’s the whole revelation. “That’s what the chorus is. An honest conversation with myself.” She’s not lying. You can hear that conversation happening in real time.
The bridge section is where Carrie really breaks it down. “Reminiscing in the kitchen / On my patterns I’m sippin / Too much to feel the difference oh / In increments I’m Feelin / Better bout my decisions / Take another glimpse and carry on.” She’s in the kitchen sipping on her patterns and trying to feel the difference between who she was and who she’s becoming. That “in increments” line? She speaks, I nod, God claps. Growth happens in increments. You don’t wake up healed. You make small adjustments, take another look, carry on. The production here stays smooth and jazzy while the lyrics get into the work of self-examination.
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Then it shifts into the darker territory. “When it gets dark I’m dreamin / Bout all the wrongs I’m schemin / Pick ’em , take em , run / I run and run I’m screamin / Too much too bear I’m seen in / Daylight, come up, oh.” At night she’s dreaming about all the ways she could sabotage herself again. She’s running and screaming because there’s too much to carry and then daylight comes and she’s seen. Exposed. The darkness offers cover for all your worst impulses, but morning makes you visible. Carrie’s delivery here gets more urgent, more raw. You feel the panic of being seen when you’re still carrying all that weight.
She circles back to that bathtub moment later in the track. That stillness where all the thinking happens. The sinking. Being alone with yourself and what you’ve done. It’s the same cycle on repeat – you start out fine, something picks you up, and then you’re underwater again trying to process it all.
Honestly this track is what happens when you stop pretending your faith and your desires live in separate rooms. The gospel-tinged production makes it feel redemptive like you’re allowed to hold both things at once and still move forward. Carrie admits she’s messy and spiritual at the same time. That’s the reality. The sensuality in the production, the honesty in the lyrics? This is sexy because it’s real. There’s nothing hotter than someone who knows exactly who they are, patterns and all, and chooses to keep building themselves up anyway.
I still can’t sit through a full church service without feeling like I’m lying by omission. The girl who prays and the girl who embraces the carnal is the same person. Me at different hours of the same weekend. Carrie’s sitting in that same tension on ‘Change,’ except she’s done apologizing for it. Growth doesn’t require you to erase the messy parts. Walk alongside them and choose who you want to become next. The gospel energy doesn’t demand perfection. It asks you to keep showing up. I’m showing up. Carrie’s showing up. Maybe that’s enough.
