By: Kevin Morris
There’s a man—a musician. Somewhere between Amsterdam, Mexico, and eternity, standing on a sonic cliff, guitar in hand, staring into the clouds. His name is Harry Kappen, and the song is “The Longing.”
Now, this isn’t just another rock track. No, this is a reckoning — the kind that happens when a heart refuses to obey the mind. “The Longing,” the opening track of Kappen’s new album FOUR, is a slow-burning confession that unfolds like a Dateline mystery. The clues are all there — desire, doubt, defiance — and by the end, we realize the story isn’t about anyone else. It’s about him. It’s about us.
The song begins like a whisper — a flicker of acoustic guitar, a soft tremor in Kappen’s voice. “Sometimes my brain’s on fire,” he admits, as if reading from a diary left open too long. The production is intimate, almost fragile. You can hear the space between the notes, the hesitation before the truth spills out. But then, the storm gathers. Electric guitars crash in. The percussion swells. Suddenly, we’re not in confession anymore — we’re in confrontation.
Because this song, like its title, is about longing. Longing for connection, for understanding, for peace between two halves of one self. Kappen doesn’t pretend to have found it. He’s too honest for that. What he gives instead is a musical map of the terrain — the quiet valleys of reflection, the roaring peaks of emotion. His voice, sometimes tender, sometimes defiant, rides that terrain like a survivor telling his story.
And oh, that guitar solo. It doesn’t strut. It aches. It rises from the song’s center like smoke from a long-smoldering fire. You get the sense it’s saying everything the lyrics can’t — a kind of primal scream disguised as melody. The orchestration swirls around it, lifting it higher, until the whole track feels airborne, alive, like a plane breaking through turbulence into sunlight.
Kappen’s influences hover over the track — Bowie’s drama, Lennon’s introspection, Zeppelin’s muscle, Alanis Morissette’s open nerve. But this is no imitation act. What Kappen borrows, he reshapes, forging something that feels entirely his own — cerebral, emotional, and cinematic all at once.
And fittingly, the lyric video mirrors that ascent — a flight through the clouds. Not escape, but perspective. As if Kappen wants us to see what longing looks like from above: small, human, beautiful, and endless.
He’s no stranger to complexity. His previous singles — “Courage,” “Break These Chains,” “Be Brave If You Can” — all wrestled with external forces: love, politics, resilience. But “The Longing” is different. This one turns inward. It’s a dialogue with the self — the head versus the heart, logic versus love — and neither side wins.
That’s the point.
Because in the end, Kappen seems to say, the longing never leaves us. It’s what drives the art, fuels the fight, keeps the music playing. “Only my heart can tell where I should be,” he sings — weary, wise, and wonderfully human.
And for all its turbulence, “The Longing” offers a curious comfort — the kind that comes when someone finally says out loud what you’ve been quietly living. The song doesn’t promise answers, but it does offer companionship, riding shotgun with your doubts as you navigate the winding road of your own inner weather. Somewhere in that shared uncertainty, in that fragile space between thinking and feeling, Harry Kappen captures the truth: longing isn’t a weakness. It’s the engine of the soul.
Harry Kappen’s “The Longing” is a soaring, emotional rock journey—balancing introspection and explosive energy as it explores the timeless conflict between heart, mind, and desire. A haunting, beautifully crafted confession of the human condition. The track’s intricate melodies and passionate vocals evoke a deep sense of vulnerability, drawing listeners into a raw and transformative experience. As the song builds, it captures the tension between personal longing and the search for self-understanding, making it both relatable and deeply impactful.