The strange journey that sparked Lewis Parke's most addictive song yet

There is something about a song that defies genre norms. It arrives heavier, stranger, and more urgent, like a flare in the night sky. For Ōtautahi songwriter Lewis Parke, that flare is her cigarette. A track that twists pop, hip hop, and R&B into a restless reminder that originality is the edge that makes a song memorable.

His influences, Talking Heads, Muse, even Kanye - ripple through the production , but what defines her cigarette is not genre so much as an almost stubborn refusal to sit still. Breathy hip hop cadences run into sticky pop hooks, while an R&B groove keeps the whole thing smouldering. It is both playful and strangely addictive, much like the memory it captures.

Written on a bus ride through Scotland while backpacking, her cigarette carries the rhythm of movement, words flowing like water as Parke personifies the pull of a lost lover. The metaphor is sharp and intimate, turning the mundane act of smoking into a symbol for something harder to shake. There is a tension in the way he sings it, a blend of melancholy and swagger that makes the song hard to pin down.

With her cigarette, Lewis Parke proves that defiance can provide a spark, one that smoulders long after the song ends.