I discovered Sleeping At Last‘s work by accident – a chance encounter on YouTube with the Enneagram project, which offers a different song for each of the nine Enneagram personality types.
I’ll be honest – I had zero exposure to this test before. Genuinely. I had no idea it exists.
My own skepticism at personality categories aside – actually that’s misleading. I don’t need to set it aside for this. The premise is that each song is inspired by a type, but within that they’re just… character studies. An exercise in perspective. Each song’s narrator has their hopes and their fears laid out and entangled and untangled in a familiar balance of loose metaphor and straightforward existence. A slow dance of introspection, vulnerability, and just enough pretty imagery and wordplay to make the prospect of those less intimidating.
“Seven,” for instance – spoilers, I guess? If that’s a thing that applies? – has a travel theme, which shows up in hopes (“‘What about danger?’ So what – ‘what about risk?’ / Let’s climb this mountain before we cross that bridge!”) and in pitfalls (“So I look to the future, and I book another flight / When everything feels heavy, I’ve learned to travel light”) – and it sounds fun enough that even if this doesn’t apply to you, you can just bop along! A lot of the others are gentler in pace, which is matched pretty impressively with the subjects – as are the official lyrics videos! “Seven” – restlessness – has short sections before the text turns over, while “Five” – which has a science theme to its metaphor – is one massive wall of text, like an essay. The attention to detail is truly the icing on the cake.
