Fire's Chill Pick - December 2025

 Hey guys, it’s Fire here with the final Chill Pick article of 2025!! I hope you guys are having a wonderful holiday season! I’ve been pretty busy with my year-end articles and I honestly am only writing this article the day it’s supposed to be up haha. But anyways, I’ve got a rather fitting song for the end of the year here!!



Nightbirde - New Year’s Eve

Release: November 27, 2020

Genres: Pop, Dance-Pop, Synthpop

You all know that I'm a fan of the late Nightbirde's music; "It's OK" and Nightbirde's battle with cancer were extremely inspirational to me last year and I've liked almost everything else I've heard from her. I don't really have kind things to say about her 2nd posthumous album when I post my Albums Around The Fireplace article in early 2026, but her music spoke deeply to me as someone also dealing with a massive health-related adversity.


I’ve already touched on “New Year’s Eve” when I reviewed Nightbirde’s posthumous debut album IT’S OK last year and it’s only grown on me since then. Musically, this song is incredible—the dance-pop synths, the drum machines, Nightbirde’s exuberant delivery, they all create a very celebratory vibe fitting for ringing in the new year. Even the admittedly cheesy countdown gimmick on the bridge just reinforces the joyful atmosphere. But where this picks up extra resonance is this lyric:


“It's been a hell of a year

But no, I don't really want to talk about it”


It’s the lyric that kinda grounds the song in the context that Nightbirde was battling this huge adversity. But she also says that there were “lots of highs and lows but you know that’s how it goes”. This prompted me to research a bit more and I realized that I was wrong when I called this a straightforward song welcoming in the new year. The context of this song being released in 2020 is significant because this was the year Nightbirde was initially declared cancer-free as well as, obviously, the pandemic, which was undeniably rough on the entire world. That background makes this read as Nightbirde celebrating her beating cancer. This honestly means her cancer returning in 2021 and her passing away the following year makes the song feel like the last bit of naive hope that was taken away from her. It’s like a 3 year-old kid seeing their parents fight for the first time, it’s like your bubble of hopeful naivety just burst. The song becomes much more heartbreaking with this in mind. Could you argue that this song is a bit too happy? Sure. But I’ve never been one to object to songs being “too happy” and this has grown to become my favorite Nightbirde song. In other words, I give this a strong 10/10, it’s a fantastic song, highly recommended!! RIP Nightbirde, you’re still an inspiration to me.

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