Let’s talk about the kind of heartbreak that doesn’t leave you sobbing in bed with a pint of something frozen and self-pitying. I’m talking about the kind that lingers—years later. The kind that catches you off guard at 2 a.m. with a name in your mouth and a memory you swore you were over. Lisa Goldin’s “How Love Can Start” gets that heartbreak. And she doesn’t try to dress it up or shake it off—she sits in it. Quietly. Honestly. With a voice that doesn’t need to beg, just breathe.
From the first line—“Isn’t it funny how / We remember different things”—I felt my own past creeping in. The version of the story I kept in my back pocket vs. the one he told at parties. And maybe that’s the point. There’s a kind of electricity in knowing you’re both holding different memories but still feeling the same shake in your hands when you reconnect.
Lisa doesn’t over-sing it, doesn’t over-build the production. It’s piano-led, minimal, delicate. The restraint makes it hurt more, honestly. Her voice is soft, but there’s steel under it. You can feel it in “No one stole your heart / And I’m still lost at sea”—like she’s naming the exact distance between two people who’ve never fully let go but still can’t reach each other.
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This track isn’t about screaming for closure or burning the past down. It’s about that almost. That slow dance with maybe. That whispered question: “Is that how love can start?”
The chorus is deceptively simple: “And what if we made / This moment last / Put time aside / Wiped out our pasts”—and by the third time she sings it, you’re not just hoping she gets her second chance, you’re thinking about your own. Like, what if I hadn’t ghosted him when I got scared? What if we’d both just said what we needed to say?
But she’s not delulu about it. The bridge is all quiet self-protection: “Try not give too much away / Hold back look the other way”—and damn if that didn’t feel too real. The push-pull of wanting something and not trusting it. Of being older, wiser, but still a little raw.
Lisa Goldin isn’t new to this. She’s a South African-born powerhouse with twelve songs already airing on international TV and radio. She’s shared stages with Ed Sheeran, Jessie J, Scouting for Girls… yeah, the resume’s stacked. But what makes this song hit isn’t the name drops. It’s the intimacy. It’s the feeling that she’s lived this, carried it across time zones—from London to Ibiza to Dubai—and still finds herself circling back to one boy from school.
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I could list her awards—the Best Band win in Beijing, her theatrical work in Dubai, the Golden Visa from UAE Culture—but here’s what matters in this moment: she wrote a ballad that sounds like the inside of your chest when you see him again after all these years, and you still know his smell, his smile, and exactly how it felt the last time he touched your arm.
So yeah. If you’ve ever laid in bed at night, wondering if you’d get a do-over—and not the chaotic kind, but the kind with open eyes and scar tissue—you need to hear this. Lisa’s not asking for fairy tales. She’s asking if they can finally meet in the same memory and maybe, just maybe… see how love can start.
For fans of Lisa, check out her GoldinShop to access her music directly.
