The production aesthetic here is deliberate archaeology. Working with collaborator Myke on Yamaha synth duties and mixer Fumez from Eastlondonrecordings, Williamson has excavated the particular grain and hiss of early home recording, that analogue warmth that digital purists spent decades trying to replicate. It's the sound of Heart's "Alone" playing through car speakers on a rain-soaked motorway, of Kate Bush leaking through headphones on the night bus home. The keyboard work channels the earnest melodicism of the New Romantic movement without slavishly imitating any single progenitor, while the production choices suggest someone who understands that authenticity sometimes means embracing imperfection.

But surface shimmer means little without substance beneath, and Williamson grounds her retro-fitted sound world with genuine emotional weight. The song addresses her friend Donna's struggle with arthritis following the death of her mother—territory that could easily collapse into mawkishness or heavy-handed sentiment. Instead, Williamson performs a deft sleight of hand, wrapping profound empathy in propulsive, danceable arrangements. The lyric "I don't want to see you drown or make a mistake" carries the quiet desperation of watching someone you love navigate impossible circumstances, yet the musical setting refuses melancholy. This juxtaposition—grief transmuted into movement, pain converted to dance—recalls the great pop tradition of emotional camouflage, where the brightest melodies often house the darkest sentiments.

Williamson herself acknowledges the bridge as the track's lynchpin, and she's not wrong. It's here that the song lifts beyond competent pastiche into something more urgent and personal. The vocal performance sheds its studied cool and reveals genuine passion, that moment when technique gives way to necessity. You hear an artist discovering what their song is actually about, even if they wrote the words months earlier.

The DIY credentials add another dimension. Recording vocals in a walk-in cupboard while sourcing keyboard parts through TikTok radio connections might sound like the setup for diminished expectations, but the final product suggests otherwise. The home recording movement has always thrived on resourcefulness, from The Smiths' bedroom demos to Burial's nocturnal laptop excavations. Williamson joins this lineage not through mimicry but through shared spirit—the understanding that limitations can be liberating, that intimacy sometimes demands the smallest possible rooms.

The 1980s influences declare themselves proudly: the arpeggiated synth patterns, the gated reverb suggestions, the vocal delivery that splits the difference between Stevie Nicks's mysticism and Kate Bush's theatrical intensity. Yet "I See You" never feels like karaoke or cosplay. Williamson has internalized these reference points and made them serve her own narrative purposes. The decade is a palette rather than a prison.

Does the track reinvent the wheel? No, and it doesn't pretend to. What it offers instead is sincerity, craft, and emotional intelligence wrapped in irresistibly tactile production. It's a song that understands how pop music can honour difficult experiences without being consumed by them, how the dancefloor and the wake aren't necessarily opposing destinations.

For an independent artist working outside traditional industry structures, Williamson has created a remarkably complete artistic statement. "I See You" announces a voice worth following—someone who understands that the best pop music doesn't choose between head and heart, between now and then, but finds ways to make these supposed contradictions dance together.