Single Review: Kitchen Light by Xana
Ready to be swept up and away into a track as staggeringly breathtaking and exhilaratingly euphoric as first love? Even if you think you are, nothing could truly prepare you for the beautifully chaotic warmth “Kitchen Light” envelopes you in, tugging heartstrings in every which way with recollections both infuriating and precious. Up-and-coming pop superhero Xana knows that that’s exactly what first love and all of the triumphs, aches, pains, and self-realizations it brings are about — and through combining her immense talent with her dearest memories in this track, she presents brilliant immortalization of that era in her own life for all the world to find comfort and a summer anthem within.
Xana
Photo by Lindsey Blane
Having made her debut in the fall of 2020, Canadian independent artist Xana has demonstrated a boundless talent and inviting relatability so captivating that she’s already accumulated over four million streams across platforms. She has forged a ferociously loving family within her fanbase, drawn to her artistry by the intimacy with which she writes and the heart with which she seamlessly blends genres in her work. With tracks that range from piercing emotion to empowering force, her music is a source of celebration of female strength, sexuality, finding oneself, and — most tenderly, as demonstrated in this latest track — the beauty that makes up LGBTQ love.
An 80’s-esque dreamscape that damn well should be the song of the summer, this track whisks listeners along through all of the magic and torment that made up Xana’s first brush with love of the head-over-heels variety. The fast-paced melody leaves you breathless right along with the singer in all of her frantic devotion, mesmerized by her own feelings and the way every hiccup posed by having to hide such devotion from the world only deepened her craving. Her vocals are full of soul with a touch of anxious desire, ebbing and flowing as the story of she and her very first true love unfolds. She rushes through moments that might’ve appeared brief or mundane but now weigh eternally on her mind and heart before standing still for a moment as she calmly, assuredly declares that nothing as all-consuming and beautiful as that feeling this life-changing girl gave her could be wrong.
“Kitchen Light” music video still
Two exhilaratingly heart-wrenching verses pass before the chorus lands, abandoning the bittersweet push and pull that’s been building up throughout the song in favor of a focus on some particularly tender moments the pair shared in times less frantic. Gentle synths and punching percussions blanket Xana’s impassioned outreach for her lover as it grows aching, conveying just how much of herself she invested into evading any containment threatening their love and all that she would’ve done to give their relationship the eternity it deserved.
The music video for the track is brimming with warm nostalgia and bursting with the passion such soul-rattling romance guarantees, acting as an enchanting tribute to all of the moments which saw Xana falling deeper in love for the very first time — and which saw both lovesick souls making the hesitant but gloriously inevitable transition from friends to lovers. It’s nervous glances interspersed with mounting intimacy in a friendship that deserves to be something more, followed by a gorgeous, cinematic kiss that grants the pair the shift they deserve, overflowing with wondrous chemistry and beautifully filmed scenes that will hold their impact on you for quite some time. The closing shots feature the pair wrapped up in each others’ arms on the beach beneath the setting sun, granting the everlasting love some semblance of that eternal burning it so deserved after all.
This beautiful ode to once-in-a-lifetime love is only one taste of everything that makes Xana such a brilliant artist to watch. Her command of pop music that bends to any number of additional genres keeps every release fresh and enthralling, and her powerful vocals glide across the most intimate storytelling and worldbuilding with intoxicating vibrance. Those of us here at Tongue Tied are in love, and you should be, too — we welcome you to join us in our unabashedly eager anticipation for new music hopefully soon to come.
“Kitchen Light” is available for streaming now — you can check it out here. For more on Xana, be sure to follow her on Instagram @xanaofficial_ and TikTok @xanaofficial.
Review by: Tori Coker
