Perfect pin-up curls just like Ashe’s, red lipstick smudged beyond saving, and you’re tucked into bed, pressing play on Girl of Your Dreams. Produced by Noah Conrad (Conan Gray, Olivia Rodrigo), if our girl built the perfect celestial soundtrack, the least we can do is give it the nightly slumber it deserves. This 11-track lullaby channels Ashe’s 50s-style allure and issues a PSA to all runway brides-to-be: ‘Stop the Wedding!’ (but only because you’re about to fall into a deliciously healthy love with ‘Funeral’). And that’s before you get to everything in between, from the smooth-talking criminal in ‘Love Bomb’ to quite literally leaving ‘Stardust’ in someone’s wake.
But did you know we all dream in different colors? Most of us get full motion-picture technicolor, while a rare few drift through grayscale, which makes ‘Blue Hour’ the perfect place to start. We’re taking three dream tracks and giving each the synesthesia treatment: the color you’d dream in if the song were playing while you slept.
‘Love Bomb’
Forget the ticking clock on this song being over. ‘Love Bomb’ has our hearts going “boom, boom, baby.” Ashe hands us the playbook of a high-luxury charmer, then flips it: if he’s quick, she’s quicker, and she’s not sticking around to play his game while he rolls the dice. He’s all designer promises and dinner reservations booked three weeks out, and she’s already clocked the exit. The melody sways country-chic, with an infectious 50s-style earworm hook that makes it impossible not to sing along, even while the lyrics are quietly drafting a restraining order. Add a hint of that situationship energy, where your thumb is hovering over the block button but not quite pressing it, and you’ve got a track that flirts with danger and looks fabulous doing it.
If this song is your lullaby, then you’re dreaming in red, the color that fits every red flag, plus passion, danger, and the lipstick you’re about to regret. It’s a dream with a velvet booth, a smooth talker, and a very bad idea glowing in neon. You know it’s too much, too fast. You’ve seen the warning signs, color-coordinated and everything. And you’ve already replied “u up?” with a smiley face.
‘Blue Hour’
Obviously, this longing, melancholy mood already has its dream color built into the title: ‘Blue Hour.’ The song leans into the slow anticipation of 1950s jazz, with unhurried hooks, twinkling, soft guitar riffs, and Ashe crooning about the hour when it dawns on you that you’ve outgrown a relationship. It’s the kind of arrangement that sounds like a smoky lounge at closing time, where the last couple sways in the dark and everyone pretends not to notice that the song is about them.
Blue is so many things. It’s the tears soaking your pillow. It’s stumbling over their favorite things, like the show you scheduled together on Netflix and now can’t bring yourself to open. It’s the playlist you swore you’d delete and the half-empty side of the bed. Ashe reminds us that nothing can start without an ending, but this ‘Blue Hour’ doesn’t stay in its lane on the clock. It loops back around whenever something leaves our lives, forever on repeat, much like grief and the way it nags at you.
If this is your lullaby, you’re dreaming in blue, which means you’re up at dawn, staring at the ceiling and rehearsing everything you never said. You’re not thinking ahead to the next surprise or how the thrill of something new might repaint your dream in a brighter shade. Instead, you’re caught in a daze, holding on to everything you’re about to lose.
‘Swan Lake’
ABBA meets Swan Lake (quite literally, since the track is called ‘Swan Lake’) with Ashe’s vocals preening through an obsession-laden number you’ll probably drop into your crush’s DMs right before hurling your phone across the room. Sure, it’s more of a dark fixation, and the source material is no different.
The ballet, composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, has been around since people were still tucking flowers in their hair, and it follows Prince Siegfried, who’s stuck in an arranged-marriage situation and expected to wed for politics rather than love. Then he stumbles onto an enchanted lake and meets Princess Odette, who’s under a curse: swan by day, human by moonlight. Like most curses, it can be lifted by true love, and Siegfried is more than willing. Unfortunately, the sorcerer who cast the spell, Von Rothbart, disguises his own daughter, Odile, as Odette. Siegfried, thinking she’s the real thing, vows his love to the wrong girl; the curse never lifts, and the ending is very much not happily ever after (in some versions, anyway; in others, the lovers are reunited and the curse breaks, so it’s a redemption arc after all).
We don’t know how this lullaby could possibly put you to sleep (we’d be too busy dancing), but if it does, you’re dreaming in black. You’re Odile in someone else’s story, the one they can’t stop looking at, bringing secrets, mystery, and a little bit of menace.
What color are you dreaming in? Do you have the plot mapped out? Maybe you’ve cast yourself as the said girl of your dreams, a casting decision we fully endorse. Consider our socials (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) your dream journal, and spill the lucid dream breakdown before you hit replay on Ashe’s new album.
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT ASHE:
FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | SPOTIFY | TIKTOK | TWITTER | WEBSITE | YOUTUBE
