TAWANDA CHARI
SAIIREN’s latest single What You Made Me (out September 20, 2025) is an emotional exorcism. She channels the raw energy of heartbreak and betrayal into a performance that is cathartic.
At first listen, the lyrics carry a sense of contradiction. “I’m glad you had your fun,” she sings, even as the rest of the song seethes with pain, bitterness, and disappointment. But it’s in this tension that SAIIREN’s song shines. That line isn’t about forgiveness or acceptance—it’s a cutting remark, a sarcastic closure offered to someone who thrived on playing with her emotions. It’s a bitter acknowledgment of wasted love, twisted into fuel for transformation.
Across the track, SAIIREN moves through the shadows of manipulation, being gaslit, feeling like a fool yet the delivery never feels defeated. Instead, her voice rises with a controlled fury, as if reclaiming space that had been denied to her.
The repetition of “play with my head, play me like a damn fool” hammers home the exhaustion of a toxic cycle, while the chorus crystallizes her defiance: “Look at what you’ve done. Look at how you made me.”
Musically, the song blends the warmth of soul with the sharp edges of R&B, laced with a jazz sensibility that makes it both timeless and fresh. In her own words, SAIIREN frames it as “finding my voice again after losing it.” That sense of rediscovery bleeds through every note.
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