Dolce Blue gets ‘Sentimental’ on new single about love and longing
Dolce Blue writes love songs. The problem is, they don't always have happy endings. On her new dark alt-pop single Sentimental, arriving 25 September, the Perth-based singer, songwriter and self-described romantic takes a sharp turn inward, trading the femme-fatale theatrics of her previous single Waste Your Time for something more intimate, vulnerable and quietly devastating.
Written from the emotional aftermath of an intense connection that never quite became what it promised to be, Sentimental lives in the push and pull of wanting something you can’t quite hold onto.
For Dolce Blue, Sentimental captures the strange territory between two people who feel something deeply but can’t quite bring themselves to meet each other there. Love becomes a game neither person knows how to win.
“Sentimental is such a strong feeling to me,” says Dolce Blue. “It’s about holding onto people you have these really intense feelings of love and care for, and keeping them so close to your heart that it drives you a little bit mental. Which is probably fitting, because that’s literally the last half of the word.”
Rather than presenting heartbreak as a clean break, Sentimental inhabits the messy middle. It presents the surrender as seductive and romantic, but it isn't innocent. It is yearning with teeth; intimacy wrapped in distance; the fantasy of someone magnified by the fact that you never quite got to have them.
Sonically, Dolce Blue leans into a darker, sultrier side of her evolving pop sound. Drawing inspiration from The Weeknd, Melanie Martinez and Lana Del Rey, the track combines cinematic alternative pop with a slow-burning, emotionally charged atmosphere.
Produced by Dibs, a multi-Platinum producer, mixer, and mastering engineer with credits across major labels and artists such as Melanie Martinez and Carly Rae Jepsen, Sentimental pairs Dolce Blue’s dramatic songwriting with polished contemporary production.
The accompanying visuals continue the cinematic world established with Waste Your Time. This time, Dolce Blue appears as a bride beside a white Mazda MX-5, a continuation of the red car featured in her previous era, transformed from a symbol of escape into something more melancholic. Veiled, glamorous, and visibly distant, she looks like someone waiting for a wedding that may never happen.
Sentimental is the second single from Dolce Blue’s forthcoming mixtape Love in Retrospect, following Waste Your Time. Due in mid-2027, the mixtape is a collection of love songs about the people, fantasies and feelings we only understand properly once they’re over.
Where Waste Your Time explored jealousy, obsession and the darker side of wanting, Sentimental asks a quieter question: What happens when something feels like love, but you never find out what it could have been?
Dolce Blue already knows what she does with feelings like that. “I’m Dolce Blue, and I write love songs.” Sometimes they’re about falling in love. Sometimes they’re about losing it. And sometimes, they’re about the love story that never quite got the chance to happen.
Dolce Blue’s ‘Sentimenal’ is out 25 September via Auxiliary Records.