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CRITIC'S REVIEW
"Love Me, Love You, Love Us the Way We Do" — The Quiet Masterpiece you didn't see coming! Chicago’s Cultural Music Review— Spotlight Series Sasha Levine
If "Drown Me in Serotonin" was this songwriter's declaration of war against emotional numbness, then "Love Me, Love You, Love Us the Way We Do" is the peace treaty. And it is, without question, the most dangerous song of the two.
Anyone can write loudly. It takes genuine craft to write quietly and make it hit harder than anything played at full volume.
This is that song. This is unmistakingly, “Billy Mac, the Poetry Wizard”!
From the opening image — a jacket left on a kitchen chair, stolen not for warmth but for scent — the songwriter signals immediately that we are not in the territory of grand romantic gestures. We are somewhere far more honest and far rarer. We are in the territory of real love. The kind that doesn't announce itself. The kind that just quietly moves in and rearranges your furniture while you weren't looking.
What separates this writer from their contemporaries is a refusal to reach for the obvious. Where lesser songwriters would have given us candlelit dinners and declarations under rain, this one gives us arguing over nothing, crying at ocean documentaries, terrible morning jokes, and inside languages no one else speaks. These are not romantic clichés. These are portraits. And they land with the precision of someone who has clearly lived every single line before daring to write it.
The pre-chorus of the second verse deserves particular attention — "Nothing extraordinary, everything sublime." That is a thesis statement disguised as a melody. In seven words, the songwriter dismantles the entire mythology of modern romance and replaces it with something infinitely more compelling: the radical idea that the ordinary, witnessed with love, becomes the most sublime thing a human being can experience. That line alone justifies the song's existence.
The bridge is where the writer's emotional intelligence fully reveals itself. The shift from tender observation to raw confession — "I'd rather break beside you than be whole and still escape" — is the kind of lyric that makes you feel briefly, beautifully exposed. As though the songwriter, BILLY MAC THE POETRY WIZARD, reached through the speakers and said something you had been carrying alone for years. That is not a small thing. That is the entire point of music.
And then the outro. That devastating, perfectly placed outro. A single quiet image — the jacket on the chair, returned to, bookending the song like a breath — followed by the simplest possible conclusion: "Home isn't a place, it's a person." It sounds like something you've heard before. It lands like something you're hearing for the very first time. That is the mark of a writer operating at a genuinely elevated level.
As for the songwriter's frame of mind here? This is not someone writing from longing or from loss. This is someone writing from inside the love. From the warm, slightly terrifying middle of it. There is vulnerability here, yes, but it is the vulnerability of someone who has chosen to stay open rather than someone who has been cracked open against their will. That distinction changes everything about how the song feels. It doesn't ache — it glows. This is what separates a songwriter from a poetic master in songwriting!
Together with "Drown Me in Serotonin," this track confirms something increasingly difficult to ignore: this songwriter is not building a catalog. They are building a world. One that is scientifically minded and emotionally boundless, poetic without being precious, and deeply, stubbornly human.
Two songs in, and already the question isn't whether this artist will make something that matters.
The question is how long before everyone else catches up.
Rating: 9.6 / 10"A love song for people who thought they were too self-aware to fall for love songs. It will dismantle you gently, and you will thank it for doing so”.
Sasha Levine - Chicago’s Cultural Music Review— Spotlight Series
CRITIC'S REVIEW
"Love Me, Love You, Love Us the Way We Do" — The Quiet Masterpiece you didn't see coming! Chicago’s Cultural Music Review— Spotlight Series Sasha Levine
If "Drown Me in Serotonin" was this songwriter's declaration of war against emotional numbness, then "Love Me, Love You, Love Us the Way We Do" is the peace treaty. And it is, without question, the most dangerous song of the two.
Anyone can write loudly. It takes genuine craft to write quietly and make it hit harder than anything played at full volume.
This is that song. This is unmistakingly, “Billy Mac, the Poetry Wizard”!
From the opening image — a jacket left on a kitchen chair, stolen not for warmth but for scent — the songwriter signals immediately that we are not in the territory of grand romantic gestures. We are somewhere far more honest and far rarer. We are in the territory of real love. The kind that doesn't announce itself. The kind that just quietly moves in and rearranges your furniture while you weren't looking.
What separates this writer from their contemporaries is a refusal to reach for the obvious. Where lesser songwriters would have given us candlelit dinners and declarations under rain, this one gives us arguing over nothing, crying at ocean documentaries, terrible morning jokes, and inside languages no one else speaks. These are not romantic clichés. These are portraits. And they land with the precision of someone who has clearly lived every single line before daring to write it.
The pre-chorus of the second verse deserves particular attention — "Nothing extraordinary, everything sublime." That is a thesis statement disguised as a melody. In seven words, the songwriter dismantles the entire mythology of modern romance and replaces it with something infinitely more compelling: the radical idea that the ordinary, witnessed with love, becomes the most sublime thing a human being can experience. That line alone justifies the song's existence.
The bridge is where the writer's emotional intelligence fully reveals itself. The shift from tender observation to raw confession — "I'd rather break beside you than be whole and still escape" — is the kind of lyric that makes you feel briefly, beautifully exposed. As though the songwriter, BILLY MAC THE POETRY WIZARD, reached through the speakers and said something you had been carrying alone for years. That is not a small thing. That is the entire point of music.
And then the outro. That devastating, perfectly placed outro. A single quiet image — the jacket on the chair, returned to, bookending the song like a breath — followed by the simplest possible conclusion: "Home isn't a place, it's a person." It sounds like something you've heard before. It lands like something you're hearing for the very first time. That is the mark of a writer operating at a genuinely elevated level.
As for the songwriter's frame of mind here? This is not someone writing from longing or from loss. This is someone writing from inside the love. From the warm, slightly terrifying middle of it. There is vulnerability here, yes, but it is the vulnerability of someone who has chosen to stay open rather than someone who has been cracked open against their will. That distinction changes everything about how the song feels. It doesn't ache — it glows. This is what separates a songwriter from a poetic master in songwriting!
Together with "Drown Me in Serotonin," this track confirms something increasingly difficult to ignore: this songwriter is not building a catalog. They are building a world. One that is scientifically minded and emotionally boundless, poetic without being precious, and deeply, stubbornly human.
Two songs in, and already the question isn't whether this artist will make something that matters.
The question is how long before everyone else catches up.
Rating: 9.6 / 10"A love song for people who thought they were too self-aware to fall for love songs. It will dismantle you gently, and you will thank it for doing so”.
Sasha Levine - Chicago’s Cultural Music Review— Spotlight Series