ISHANA Turns Heartbreak Into Self-Reckoning on “The Odyssey”

Montreal indie-pop artist ISHANA isn’t interested in making heartbreak sound neat. On “The Odyssey,” she leans directly into the confusion, self-doubt, and uncomfortable questions that surface when a relationship begins slipping into another familiar cycle.

Written, recorded, produced, mixed, and mastered by ISHANA herself, “The Odyssey” is a deeply personal mid-tempo track that pairs melancholic undertones with a gradual instrumental build. Pulsing synths and pensive production give the song room to breathe, allowing ISHANA’s distinct vocal tone and emotionally exposed songwriting to take center stage.

At its core, “The Odyssey” reads like a diary entry caught somewhere between heartbreak and healing. ISHANA examines what happens when love grows cold, turning the lens inward as she questions her own choices, mistakes, and tendency toward self-blame. Rather than positioning herself as either the villain or victim, she lets the mess exist as it is. That lack of easy resolution is exactly what makes the track hit.

There’s also more happening beneath the surface. References to Greek mythology add another layer to the song’s introspection, expanding a deeply individual experience into something more universal. The result feels cerebral without losing its emotional pulse, a balance that fits naturally within ISHANA’s refreshing approach to indie-pop.

Following previous releases including Coconut Cowboy and “Bubble Gum,” “The Odyssey” further establishes an artist comfortable taking creative ownership of her work from beginning to end.

ISHANA ultimately turns uncertainty into something strangely freeing. “The Odyssey” doesn’t pretend to have heartbreak figured out. Instead, it finds beauty in questioning it, sitting with it, and eventually finding the nerve to keep moving.

“The Odyssey” explores the tendency to blame yourself when a relationship starts falling apart. What did writing this song reveal to you about the difference between accountability and taking on blame that isn’t yours? This is an interesting question! I’m not sure I can answer it - I think it’s something I’m still trying to figure out, as I am super overly apologetic in life for some obscure reason from my past (dun dun dun!) and in the process of healing blaming tendencies. But here’s what I can say! I learned that blame and accountability are different - I don’t think it was clear to me before! Writing the song cleared up some stuck feelings in me that were driving a tendency to blame. I was blaming myself and blaming others. (But why!) Writing the song helped create a safe space to feel my emotions, which is what I think true accountability is (feeling our emotions and letting them pass through). I also found that when it’s self-inflicted, it’s often also aimed towards another, and vice versa. It’s a two-way street with no solid middle line separation. I found that sometimes blame is used to try to get someone to admit accountability, or it can be used on yourself to avoid real accountability (real accountability: feeling all our emotions about things we did, things we didn’t do, etc., without fighting against them). I think we can also use self-inflicted blame to punish ourselves and explain not being loved how we wanted to be (an addictive thing). I think that blame is not the same as accountability or related to it at all. Accountability is a personal thing you do on your own emotionally; blame is an angry type of projection onto another or onto yourself. I also noticed that in the song, the blame appears when “the narrator” (that’s me, hello!) is alone in her head.

The blame disappears whenever the other person appears in the narrative (the chorus starts with “then you speak,” and the narrator (that’s me again, hello!) goes straight from self-blame in her own mind into vulnerability with the other - which is an interesting switch that I cannot explain). Maybe self-blame was used as a faulty way to cope when missing someone’s external validation, and the blame disappeared when the external validation had a chance to appear. So it has to do with blaming oneself for not receiving “perceived” love. So it comes down to the belief that love is earned (it is not!) and that you can change things and receive love by punishing or blaming yourself or another (you can’t!). I think that real accountability has to do with feeling all the difficult emotions and letting them pass, which allows progress. I think accountability has a calmer underlying feeling too as it’s happening, which grounds the other emotions so they can flow out in a healthy way. Songwriting helps find that more grounded space that I find otherwise hard to find sometimes! This is a really interesting question and something I’m going to mull over for some time!

You handled every stage of “The Odyssey” yourself, from writing and recording to production, mixing, and mastering. How does having that level of creative control change the way you translate something deeply personal into music? I get excited about working on something alone because that means I can let my imagination roam free and lay down ideas at a pace that feels best to me. I can let my ideas take over and run wild with them, which is a joy. But working alone also means that there is more weight to every decision you make (which can sometimes be heavy, but ultimately makes me feel more connected to a song, even post-release). So it is a balance of having the responsibility of the whole song on my shoulders, dealing with procrastination, while also having greater freedom through greater control and loads of fun… though alone at the computer. So it’s a balance! Working alone, more questions appear, like “is it missing something in technical terms/sonically here or there?” “Does this line actually make sense?” because there is no other physical person to bounce ideas off of or to help clarify the message, the idea. But there is also less fear of judgment and more space to feel, and the song feels a lot more like “me” at the end of the process. Most importantly, I feel deeply connected and bonded with the song when I am behind every step of the process (how can you not be?), vs. with a song that is a melting pot of multiple creative minds (it’s a different experience!). I know that lots of people really put emphasis on collaborating (especially as a female singer-songwriter). They say you should work with people for all sorts of reasons, from creative exaltation to community to promotion and networking - and collaborating can also be pure and so, so magical! But making music alone for me is like an introvert recharging her batteries! I need that space to safely express, in my bubble, to feel everything deeply, to process my emotions, to be fully myself. It’s deeply sacred, and sometimes I struggle to let other people into that process. Making music alone is like my little slice of heaven on Earth (when the sometimes-crippling-fear-of-opening-a-project-on-my-computer does not take over lol). It’s a process I want to protect and always preserve in some way (whether I ever double-down on the joy of creating with others again or not) for my own creative sanity. And when I share music from that bubble with the internet or a room at a bar, I am sharing a little slice of my heaven and sacred space, undiluted.

Greek mythology plays a role in the world of “The Odyssey.” What drew you to that imagery, and how did you use it to give a larger meaning to such an intimate experience? No joke, I literally did not know what The Odyssey (the epic Greek mythology story) was until I heard that a movie had come out under the same name around the same time and saw it in theatres (which was later!). I think when songwriting, we activate a sixth sense of sorts, and we tap into the energies that are going on in us and in the world around us. My antennae must have caught onto some frequency that was going on in the world about that movie because I did not know about it being made or that it was coming out! Yes, I must live under a rock. There’s a line in the song that goes “film in the making, here at the edge of us”. You’d think I was referring to the movie - funnily enough, I was totally oblivious to the literal movie in the making and actually wrote the line as a wink to myself and to the experience I was writing about… (it’s a top secret detail!). When songwriting, I often let the free flow take over, and words tend to come out that I don’t even know the meaning of. I just feel like a pull to the words. I don’t know what they mean until I look them up post-deep-creative-part-of-songwriting-process, when I look over things and edit and tweak things. Sometimes, it is words or terms that I’ve never even heard of before (at least consciously)! Here, I thought that odyssey was a synonym for saga, and the word did feel movie-related, in the sense that I thought it must have been one of the Star Wars movies or the title of an episode of Star Trek or something.

I was sure it was something galactic if related to any actual story. My high school did not make us read The Odyssey by…that Greek philosopher person! (pardon my lapsus!) as apparently many people have had to! Maybe because I went to a French-speaking school, and let’s just say that it was not the most academically advanced school. (Unless this is another memory lapse of mine - but I’m pretty sure we didn’t read it!) So I googled “definition: odyssey,” and I got a definition about a long journey, which closely aligned with what I thought the meaning was - so I kept it! “The Odyssey”. Someone I know heard the track and told me about a reference to Greek mythology with the line “flew too close to the Sun”. I can say the line “girl-bossed too close to the Sun” from a Taylor Swift song popped and echoed in my mind when writing that! Now, I don’t know what was going on with all the Greek mythology stuff in my song, but I promise it was not intentional or conscious! Just the universe being weird sometimes for some unknown reason. (I shrug! and say “the timing is crazy.”)

The song doesn’t offer an easy resolution to heartbreak. Was it important for you to leave some of those questions unanswered rather than force the story toward closure? It was important to me to keep the song as effortless as possible. A lot of the process for writing the Odyssey and the creative decisions when it came to outlining a story were more conscious. I just wanted to express what I was feeling in my life, and emotionally, that’s where I was at. I did realize, though, when I began writing it, that it felt very natural. So I made the choice to stay tapped into the free-flow feeling and out of judgment or coming from too much of an analytical place as much as possible and for as long as I could, or until the song was done. So I guess yes, though unconsciously, because it was important for me to stay true to how I was feeling in that snapshot of my experience, which means that in the song, questions were to stay unanswered. I don’t think it’s necessary to force a story toward a clear closure in songs… (though in movies, that’s another story, for another time!)

As “The Odyssey” follows releases like Coconut Cowboy and “Bubble Gum,” what does this song reveal about where you’re heading next, both sonically and as a songwriter? I think that as a songwriter I’m headed to a more truthful place. Sonically, I’m always going to be inspired by many different genres, and many songs will gravitate towards different sonic universes style-wise, so I think the through-line is that I’m just going to be coming from a more empowered place, and the style is the result - I don’t want to overthink it! I’m heading to a more free-flowing place! I’ll be here making songs when it feels good to my body and soul, and finding the right collaborators when it feels right. The Coconut Cowboy album, The Answers So Far EP, the EPs that came before it, and some singles after it… a lot of it was already produced and mixed by me. Some collabs are in there, though (Cabin in the Woods has a gentle dose of metal influence, my feature on my friend’s The Professir’s Do you miss me (when you get high) is a little reggaeton, Ghost Rider and Canvas are pure pop, and Kaleidoscope is soft acoustic leaning into folk). I love exploring genres and feeling the undertones of each! So I think the palette is full now (for my capacity!), and I think I’ll start to notice recurring sonic patterns throughout my songs, and things will be more and more blended somehow. I’m excited to see how! After The Odyssey, I’m finding myself wanting to live and do other things, coming back to the computer occasionally to produce. I am feeling into when my body and mind are ready to bring another one to life. Because I don’t half-ass it (!), and producing and mixing music is one of the scariest things, but also so deeply fulfilling and fascinating to me - I know I’ll need to gather my energy for all that! And for when I’m ready to dive back in (sooner than later!)…maybe doing things myself will open doors in my exploration of sounds that I’ve yet to discover! Maybe knowing now that I can do A-Z myself will propel me forward creatively. Maybe it’ll help me work better with other producers and other artists when it feels right. I’ll always have my unique sonic blend inspired by all the genres that I love. As a songwriter, I think I’m coming from more personal and truthful places as time goes on. And I’ll keep gently digging deeper to find more of that when it's something that wants to be heard.