Guide
Sometimes a song arrives at exactly the right moment, saying something you’ve been trying to put into words for years. That’s what Lora Kelley has done with “If You Let Me,” the latest single from her upcoming album “Where I Am Now.”
I’ve been sitting with this track for a while now, and what strikes me most is how brave it is. Not in some grand, performative way, but in the quiet courage it takes to sing about the messy, complicated work of actually loving someone and letting yourself be loved in return.
Kelley’s Voice
Kelley’s voice has this warmth that draws you in immediately. There’s an intimacy here that reminds me of early Natalie Merchant, that same blend of folk textures and raw emotional honesty. The instrumentation is understated, mostly acoustic, which gives her words room to breathe and hit you where they need to.
The song opens with a simple offer: “If you let me, I will forgive you… If you let me, I will love you.” It sounds straightforward, but as the track unfolds, you realize how much weight those words carry. This isn’t about romantic gestures or grand declarations. It’s about the harder stuff: the fear that you’re too damaged to deserve love, the wounds we inherit from our families, the patterns we repeat even when we know better.
“This song is a little bit about negotiating with our wounds, our capacity to love and receive love,” Kelley explains. She talks about shared love as something that has to be felt by both people, where you can actually impact each other at the same time. When that’s not happening, she asks what’s standing in the way, and whether we can face it together.
That question sits at the center of “If You Let Me.” It’s not just about wanting to love someone. It’s about asking what stops them from feeling it, and whether you’re both willing to work through whatever that is.
Kelley recorded this with the same team from her previous release “Man Behind the Curtain”: Jeremy Casella producing, with Matt Stanfield on piano, Josh Hunt on drums, Jacob Lowery on bass, Nate Duggar and Mike Payne on guitars, and Evan Redwine engineering. They’ve created something that feels lived in and honest, no flash or production tricks trying to paper over the vulnerability at its core.
Easy Answers
What I keep coming back to is how the song doesn’t offer easy answers. It’s not telling you that love conquers all or that everything will be fine if you just try hard enough. Instead, it’s acknowledging that sometimes the hardest part of love is letting it in, allowing yourself to be seen fully, trusting that you won’t be rejected for all the broken pieces you carry.
Kelley lives on a conserved farm in Virginia and has a background in narrative based trauma care. That shows in her writing. This isn’t therapy set to music, but you can tell she understands how people carry pain and how relationships become the place where we either heal or keep hiding.
“If You Let Me” is out now as part of the upcoming album “Where I Am Now,” which arrives November 7th. If you’ve ever struggled with feeling worthy of love, or wondered why it’s so hard to let someone truly see you, this song will probably mean something to you. It certainly did to me.
Listen To “If You Let Me” By Lora Kelly
- Lora Kelley, “If You Let Me” – New Music - October 29, 2025
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