Tess Clare – “Never Gonna Not Want More” |Review

Tess Clare’s “Never Gonna Not Want More” is a heart-wrenching, late-night confession wrapped in glossy pop production—a song that captures the quiet chaos of wanting something bigger when nothing ever feels quite enough.

From the opening line—“Did happy pass me?”—Clare lays bare the emotional toll of ambition, tracing the lines between drive and disillusionment with poetic precision. The track lives in the tension between restlessness and resignation, its shimmering soundscape a bittersweet contrast to its existential core.

There’s a duality here that defines Clare’s songwriting: cinematic yet intimate, catchy yet devastating. The chorus hits with haunting clarity, a mantra for the relentlessly striving:

“Never gonna not want more

I think they’re lying, it isn’t timing

I’m just never gonna not want more.”

Built for both the 2AM spiral and the 2PM rebound, this is a song that dances through emotional fatigue without minimizing it. It’s as much about survival as it is about desire—a recognition that ambition isn’t a flaw, but a feature of the human condition.

Inspired by the glamor and gloom of Old Hollywood and the emotional stillness of French New Wave cinema, “Never Gonna Not Want More” feels like a film in song form: lush, longing, and achingly self-aware.

Tess Clare isn’t just telling a story—she’s giving us permission to sit with our dissatisfaction, to find power in the not-yet. And in doing so, she delivers one of the year’s most quietly powerful pop statements.