"It's Never Easy (Leaving Someone Behind)" - néomí | Review

With her latest single, It’s Never Easy (Leaving Someone Behind), Surinamese-Dutch singer-songwriter néomí offers a hushed and heart-wrenching meditation on the quiet pain of parting. The track unfolds with gentle acoustic textures and ambient stillness, letting her delicate voice guide listeners through the emotional weight of choosing to let go. It’s not the chaos of a breakup that she captures, but the haunting stillness that follows—the slow untangling of two lives once closely bound. There’s something I find so refreshing about breakup songs where the singer can acknowledge that the action is painful and that they are not the only ones hurting. As the lead single from her upcoming EP Another Year Will Pass, the song signals a more expansive yet emotionally grounded chapter in her career.

“The soil you crave is finished, there’s no growing left to bloom.” – These lines perfectly encompass the feeling of not wanting to leave someone but knowing that there is no point in staying with them.

néomí, born Neomi Speelman, grew up in Zwijndrecht, Netherlands, and has been writing songs since her teens. Inspired by artists like Bon Iver, Ben Howard, and Phoebe Bridgers, she emerged in 2022 with her debut EP before, followed by after in 2023—releases that established her signature blend of poetic folk and cinematic pop. Her music has drawn widespread praise for its emotional intimacy, introspective storytelling, and atmospheric production. Now signed to Nettwerk, and following the Edison Award-winning success of her debut album somebody’s daughter, néomí continues to evolve while staying rooted in sincerity and softness.

The surrealist video for “It’s Never Easy,” directed by Dirkje Duwel, adds a layer of emotional disorientation to the track, portraying néomí as an alien in her own home—trapped in the in-between of leaving and staying. It’s a powerful visual metaphor for the internal conflict she sings about. I thought that the visual metaphor of feeling alienated in your own home perfectly mirrors the quiet estrangement that often comes before a breakup. What stands out most in both the song and the video is how much emotional room she gives to complexity. There is no blame, no resolution—just the ache of what has to happen. In contrast with the music video, the simple production of the track leaves space for the listener to sit with their memories and really take in the song. As she prepares for a UK tour with Seafret and a special headline performance at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw this fall, “It’s Never Easy” feels like a defining moment in néomí’s artistic journey. If this is a taste of what’s to come on Another Year Will Pass, it could be her most emotionally resonant project yet.