Raphaela’s new single, Muse, doesn’t come in screaming. It slips through the door soft and smiling, with that slow-rolling sweetness that doesn’t need to prove a damn thing. It’s the moment you realize love isn’t supposed to feel like war. It’s supposed to feel like this—the song that played the first time that I kissed you… the notebook on the TV when I miss you. Tender. Playful. Confessional. The track flirts with Taylor Swift’s style—think Lover era—but it’s filtered through something older, deeper, and just a little bit more grown.
She wrote Muse on a summer afternoon, and it feels like one: skin warm from the sun, bodies still slick from whatever happened in the bedroom before the dancing in the kitchen started. The production is clean, pop-forward, and nothing fussy—just the right amount of shimmer to let the lyrics breathe. When she sings you’re the high that I’m always chasing, it doesn’t sound like a drug. It sounds like the calm after a long night of kissing and crying and finally getting your shit together enough to want love again.
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That’s the part that hit me hardest. Because Raphaela’s not naive, this track is coming from someone who’s already lived the mess, the ache, the performative bullshit of chasing people who didn’t see her. And she’s done. “Muse” is a celebration of simplicity after struggle, she says. The kind of love that makes you realize you never had to fight so hard in the first place. You hear it in every line. She’s not chasing anymore—she’s being chosen.
There’s something romantic as hell about how she builds the intimacy. When you take me slow dancing and walk me down my street—it’s cinematic, but not in a way that feels like she’s acting for the camera. It’s skin-on-skin, lips-on-neck, real-feel sensual. And, yes, inspirational because that’s what your muse is supposed to do – inspire you to be your best. And then she whispers the words “I love you” written on the sidewalk, like even the fucking pavement knows he’s hers. The chorus keeps looping back—you’re the muse, the only view, I’ll never need another inspiration—and each time, it sinks in deeper. Not repetitive. Reinforced. Like saying “fuck me” a little louder each time you know he’s listening.
Raphaela’s voice carries it all. There’s something clean and unpretentious about it, but still heavy with emotion. It gives just enough—the breath before the moan, not the moan itself. That restraint is sexy. That control, that ease. She’s not begging to be seen. She knows exactly how good it feels to be desired and safe.
Raphaela didn’t just stumble into this. Her mom’s an opera singer, her dad raised her on the classics, and she grew up in Beirut with music filling the walls. She cut her first EP as a teenager, but it sat in a drawer for years while she tried to figure out the business side. She was writing in English, dreaming way bigger than the scene around her could hold, so at 19 she moved back to Ottawa. Studied journalism. Got sharper with words. Waited. And when the world shut down for COVID, she stopped waiting. She started putting music out on her own terms. You can hear all of that in Muse—not just the polish, but the patience. The control. The quiet flex of someone who didn’t rush it, and didn’t let anyone else shape her sound.
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When she sings the smell of paper from our favorite book shop, I picture her holding his hand, pressed against the shelves, maybe stealing kisses behind the poetry section—horny in a quiet, sweet way. This isn’t a hookup track, but don’t get it twisted—it’s still about chemistry, just not the kind that explodes. It’s the kind that hums under your skin, steady and slow, that fucks you soft and stays until morning.
Muse is a soundtrack for the girls who’ve healed. Who’ve done the hot mess phase, the blackout sex, the desperate crushes, the breadcrumbing assholes. It’s for the ones who’ve stopped trying to make bad men feel like home. This is what it sounds like when love doesn’t hurt. When it holds you. When it feels good.
Let’s lock this one in. Let’s let it stay.
