Golden

The production opens with something like sunlight — a warm keyboard tone, percussion that bounces rather than drives, a general sense of ease that doesn't feel earned so much as decided upon, as though Scott sat down and simply chose to feel this way. Her voice here is in its most jubilant register, full and round and unhurried, the kind of singing that sounds like it costs nothing even though it contains everything. The song is an affirmation structured as an invitation: come into this feeling, it says, make room for the possibility that your life, as it actually is, is sufficient and worthy of celebration. What keeps it from tipping into platitude is Scott's specificity of feeling — she isn't cheerful in a generic way but in a way that acknowledges there was something to overcome, some other story that was told and rejected in favor of this one. The song belongs to early-morning routines, to the kind of day where you decide before it starts that it will be good. It ages unusually well, growing more rather than less resonant with time, because the thing it's pointing toward turns out to be harder and more necessary than it sounds.