Joy Oladokun proclaims "sorry isn't good enough"

Heartbreak stings. It can feel like a betrayal when the person who made time for you, and situated you on a pillar, seemingly never meant it the whole time. You start to question what was real and what wasn’t, if things were misconstrued on your end or if they were playing a part to get what they wanted from you, when what they wanted didn’t truly include you at all. There’s pain, confusion, hurt – an entire smorgasbord of emotions – and in order to absolve themselves of guilt, the other person says, “I’m sorry.”

A soft, weak and meaningless, “I’m sorry.” Empty words to fill in the moment so they can make it easier for themselves to move on while leaving you in the dust.

In Joy Oladokun’s “sorry isn’t good enough,” she rejects the notion of hearing those words by boldly firing back at the one who twisted her heart. “Stop your begging and your pleading,” she sings a minute and a half in, “‘cause I know you regret it, but now it's just too late for words. Nothing you can say to mend it; nothing new will stop the hurt.”

Oladokun’s lyrics are elevated in the accompanying video, directed by Sophia Matinazad, where the singer wrestles with her emotions in a black-and-white interpretation of her home. It hardly feels like a performance, but rather as if we’re watching her go through the motions many of us have: where we imagine what it would be like if we had the strength in us to say all the things plaguing our mind while protected by the privacy of the darkness holding us in.

She masterfully creates a visual narrative that both speaks to those who hold those emotions deep down, swallowing the words while struggling to make it through another day of heartbreak, while also being able to break away from that all-too-common circumstance by transforming that emotion into art.

”sorry isn’t good enough” is the third track to be released from her upcoming album.