British novelist and essayist Zadie Smith once said “the greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.” I immediately thought about her work while listening to ‘All Those Things’ by Julia Faulks, a devastatingly girl-coded soul pop confession about love and all the beautiful messy shit that comes with it. Because here’s the thing, falling for someone doesn’t free you from anything. It locks you in. You become this version of yourself who checks their phone too much and replays conversations in your head at 1am trying to decode what “see you soon” actually meant. You start noticing the way they lean into you when they laugh and wondering if that means something or if you’re just fucking delusional. Julia Faulks wrote a three-minute soul pop track about that gap between what you feel and what you’re brave enough to say out loud and honestly the song might be more efficient than therapy.
The production on this is gorgeous as hell. There’s acoustic warmth underneath these funky pop edges that feels like sunlight coming through bedroom curtains on a Saturday morning when you’re tangled up in someone and neither of you wants to move. Julia opens with “I don’t know if you know / all those things about me / yeah it’s true, I can be a little needy / loving you is so bittersweet” and that admission lands with this gorgeous vulnerability. She’s putting herself out there before the second verse even hits. Calling yourself needy in a song takes guts because we’ve been conditioned to act like we don’t care and wanting someone too much is embarrassing. Julia says it with her whole voice. The bittersweet part is what kills me. Loving someone when you’re not sure they’re all the way in with you tastes like the best mixed drink you’ve ever had that you know is going to wreck you tomorrow.
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And listen, the way she follows that up. “If you knew all those things about me / would you stay or would you leave / I’m reaching out, I’ll keep looking for / those hearts upon your sleeve.” That question lives in every single relationship that hasn’t had the defining conversation yet. You’re showing someone your too-much and your 2am anxiety spirals, and the whole time you’re watching their face to see if they flinch. Julia’s looking for hearts on his sleeve, trying to read him the way you read a text message fourteen times before deciding what it means. I dated someone once who would trace circles on my wrist while we talked and I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to figure out if that was intimacy or just a nervous habit. You become a detective of someone else’s body language when you’re falling and it’s maddening and addictive and so fucking sexy all at once.
The chorus is where Julia really lays it out. “I’ll take the highs and the lows / if I get to be with you / it’s the view from my eyes / and the way you change the room.” Let’s talk about “the way you change the room.” That line is seductive as fuck. You know that feeling when someone walks in and the air shifts? Julia nailed that magnetic pull in six words. And then she follows with “I don’t know if you love me like you say you do / some things I’ll never know about you, yeah” which is the kind of honest admission that would make most people uncomfortable. She’s saying I want whatever version of this you’re offering but I’m also aware you might be full of shit. That tension between desire and doubt is so goddamn intoxicating.
The second verse gets playful and I’m living for it – ” I don’t care if you think that I’m a little crazy / you say it’s cute, when I call you baby / can’t help it, you’re stuck in my brain. “ The flirtation here is so confident. She’s owning the crazy label and turning it into foreplay. He thinks it’s cute when she calls him baby? That’s the dynamic right there. She’s the one who texts first and shows up with energy and he loves it because let’s be real, a woman who isn’t afraid to want you out loud is attractive as fuck. The “stuck in my brain” part is what every crush feels like when it goes from casual to consuming. You can’t eat without thinking about them. You can’t listen to music without hearing their voice in every love song. Your brain becomes a hostage situation and you’re somehow enjoying the captivity.
Julia Faulks has been quietly stacking credits from Surrey, UK for years. She’s put her vocals on everything from dance and trance collaborations to indie features, released her own singles plus a debut EP called ‘Sweet Harmonies’ in 2022, and fronts two cover bands, New Dawn Soul and Best Chilled, that keep her gigging regularly around the Surrey circuit. She’s signed with Aztec Music Publishing & Sync. But 2026 is a shift. This is the year Julia starts performing her originals with a full band, starting with her debut gig at the Boileroom in March. BBC Radio 1’s Jodie Bryant picked her to perform at the Ned for the New Music Monday event in April. So she’s been doing the work in the background for years and this track sounds like someone who finally said okay, I’m ready to show you who I actually am. That energy lives in every note of ‘All Those Things.’
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The bridge is where this whole song cracks wide open. “Do you know all those things I try to hide / do you see them when you look into my eyes.” The vulnerability here is so raw it almost plays like eavesdropping on a private moment. She’s asking if he can see through her – if all the walls and the cool-girl composure and the playing-it-casual act is actually transparent. I swear the scariest part of falling for someone is realizing they might already know everything you’ve been trying to keep hidden. Then Julia pushes further with “I wonder if you ever feel it too / those things I never say to you.” All the unspoken shit that sits between two people who want each other and are too scared to say the full truth. The words you rehearse in the car on the way to see them and then swallow the second they smile at you.
And the way she closes the bridge, trust me, this is the moment. “Maybe in time we’ll know what’s right / and all those feelings we’ve tried to fight / love is a moment that belongs to two.” That last line wrecked me. Love is a moment that belongs to two. Julia wrote this from what she calls “that chaotic romantic space where you’re falling for someone but still wondering if they feel the same,” and you can hear every second of that hesitation in her voice. She said this one’s for the overthinkers, the soft hearts, and anyone who’s ever loved a little too loudly. Her vocals sit so close in the mix it sounds intimate, like she’s singing directly to one person in a room full of people and everyone else just happens to be listening.
Zadie Smith called love a lie about freedom, and maybe she’s right. Maybe falling for someone is the opposite of free. Maybe it’s choosing to be trapped in someone’s orbit, stuck replaying their laugh, wondering what they meant when they touched your arm like that. Julia Faulks made a whole song about that beautiful captivity and it sounds like the warmest cage you’ve ever wanted to stay in. ‘All Those Things’ doesn’t pretend love is simple or figured out. It sits in the uncertainty and makes it the most honest place you could possibly be. And honestly, I’d rather be locked in with the butterflies and the doubt and the wanting than free from any of it. Julia gets that. She wrote the damn soundtrack for it.
