Belfast-born singer, songwriter, and producer Gareth Dunlop returns on July 31st with his tender and deeply personal new single, “Freewheeling”. The song is about memory, growing older, and the parts of ourselves we never quite leave behind. “Freewheeling” finds Dunlop at his most reflective, reaching back into childhood to make sense of who he’s become. The single was born from an ordinary afternoon that turned into something much bigger. What started as nostalgia became a meditation on identity, how the distance between who we were and who we are now can feel enormous, even as something essential stays exactly the same underneath. Reflecting on childhood memories Speaking on the track, Gareth said, “I wrote Freewheeling after spending a day driving around my old neighbourhood. I had all these memories of my childhood come racing back. The differences between my life then and now felt massive. Looking back, I probably thought I’d have it all worked out by now. In a lot of ways, I’m still making it up as I go. “I wanted to write about that feeling. How so much around me has changed, but there are parts of me that are still on those streets without a care in the world. The kid recording the top 40 on his Hi-Fi, cycling around the streets on his BMX and watching action movies with his dad is still in there. I think that’s true for a lot of us. We grow older, take on more responsibility, and the world keeps changing. Deep down, we never really stop carrying the people we used to be” It’s a song about permanence hiding inside change. It’s about the idea that growing older doesn’t mean growing into someone new, but learning to carry every version of yourself at once. That sense of double vision, the adult and the child occupying the same body, runs through every corner of the song. Dunlop paints his younger self in vivid, specific detail: a boy shaped by ’80s action heroes and taping the charts off the radio, blissfully unaware of the responsibilities waiting for him down the road. Against that innocence, he sets the disorientation of adulthood, the strange, almost dizzying realisation that the kid who once had the whole world figured out is now the one trying to keep the lights on. And yet, as the song’s soaring, repeated refrain insists, nothing essential has really changed at all. Underneath it all, he’s still that same boy, still freewheeling. One heartfelt song at a time “Freewheeling” arrives as the latest chapter in what has become one of the most creative periods of Dunlop’s career. Since the release of his acclaimed third album, “Welcome To The House Of I Don’t Know”, Dunlop hasn’t slowed down for a moment. He has delivered a steady stream of music that has deepened and expanded his emotional palette. He followed the album with standalone singles “Goodbye All Over Again” and “Worlds”. This year alone has already brought two further releases: “Find Myself” and the raw, aching “Wish I Couldn’t Feel A Thing”. The latter marked a striking creative turn for Dunlop, pulling him into alt-R&B territory. The song’s unflinching honesty about grief and the strange comfort of numbness and its willingness to sit inside heartbreak rather than resolve it. “Freewheeling” feels like a natural evolution from that moment. It trades the aching grief of “Wish I Couldn’t Feel A Thing” for something gentler and more affectionate. Together, the recent run of singles paints a portrait of an artist unafraid to sit inside difficult, tender emotions and translate them into songs that feel universal. Dunlop will bring “Freewheeling” and the rest of his catalogue to audiences across the UK and Ireland this year. It begins with an intimate single-promotion show in his hometown before joining Canadian favourites Crash Test Dummies for an extensive co-headline run. With “Freewheeling”, Dunlop adds another chapter to a body of work that keeps returning to the same central question: how do we hold onto who we were, while becoming who we’re meant to be? It’s a question he seems determined to keep asking, one heartfelt song at a time. Upcoming Live Shows 1st August — Around The Tabletop, EastSide Arts, Belfast, UK (single promotion) 1st October — Wylam Brewery Tap, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK 2nd October — Glasgow, UK (with Crash Test Dummies) 3rd October — Edinburgh, UK (with Crash Test Dummies) 4th October — Morecambe, UK (with Crash Test Dummies) 7th October — Belfast, UK (with Crash Test Dummies) 8th October — Vicar Street, Dublin, Ireland 9th October — Liverpool, UK (with Crash Test Dummies) 10th October — Manchester, UK (with Crash Test Dummies) 11th October — Leeds, UK (with Crash Test Dummies) 12th October — Norwich, UK (with Crash Test Dummies) 14th October — Islington Assembly Hall, London, UK 15th October — Trinity Centre, Bristol, UK 16th October — O2 Academy Oxford, Oxford, UK 18th October — The Brook, Southampton, UK
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