There is something quietly magnetic about Saul Damelyn’s music.
Damelyn’s latest single, “We Broke the Rules,” featuring Phoebe White, tells a story that feels both personal and universal. The song begins with a gentle melody and gradually unfolds into a reflection on defiance and desire.
Damelyn’s lyrics speak to the moments in life when we step outside of expectation, guided by instinct rather than convention.
White’s voice weaves through the track like a thread of light, highlighting the emotion behind every line. Vanessa Brassey’s lyric video mirrors this narrative, with flowing visuals that let the story emerge naturally.
Produced by Paul A. Harvey, the song balances classic instrumentation with modern sensibility. Each note feels deliberate, each pause meaningful. The track is part of Damelyn’s forthcoming debut album, Kings, Queens and Dream Machines, and it reinforces his reputation as a songwriter capable of marrying depth with accessibility.
We chat with Damelyn below, as he dives into his latest work.
The image of a “Museum of Love” is striking. When did that metaphor first come to you, and what did it unlock in the writing process?
Would you believe that 10 years ago, I had the idea of exploring the longevity of relationships – what price you place on them, without necessarily providing an answer? I also had the idea of trying to get back to a relationship that the singer has lost touch with (“Got to find a way / got to find a way back to your door”). Then I developed it over time, with artefacts in the museum.
And then the man in the story realizes what he’s lost and the years that have gone by – that’s the “halls of birthday cards.” There are lots of other themes in the song, and it’s not about one thing. The hook came to me later.
This is a duet with Phoebe White. How did you approach writing from two perspectives without losing emotional clarity?
Well, I definitely had it as a duet from the start. I think in the first verse and the first build, before you get to the first chorus, they are both arriving at the museum. Or it’s one voice, maybe with the man arriving at the museum. The song is more about the man.
With Phoebe’s voice singing to me – especially in the second build (“He fumbles with the audio / a fallen impresario”). But the two singers come together in the third verse – this idea of stripping back and starting again. The themes are meant to be universal.
The lyric video feels deeply connected to your original graphic vision. How involved were you in shaping the visual world of the museum?
Yes, so a fair amount, but more at the beginning and the end. The first thing is that I left the filmmaker, Vanessa Brassey, to play the song, and she loved it. That was important to me. I explained to Vanessa how I saw it. We both envisaged the museum, but in different ways. She broke down the song into small sections. I had some pretty fixed ideas from carrying it around for 18 months since we mixed and mastered it.
Vanessa interpreted some of them differently, but in designing it, Vanessa made the overall song come to life. I think it’s important you explain your own ideas, but then leave it to the film director or artist to interpret in their own way. She came up with lots of things herself – like the two women. People don’t talk about that; are they different or manifestations of the same? The label “Natural love guide.” The whole thing was presented to me. Vanessa asked me for 10 seconds of footage of me playing and singing in an open mic – that’s how she got the graphic for the video! Then I was involved in refining, but really it was done at that point.
Vanessa Brassey’s painterly animation gives the piece a tactile, almost handmade quality. What drew you to that aesthetic instead of something more polished or digital?
I wanted it to be an artist’s video. An artistic interpretation of the song. Life is messy, I think she did a brilliant job, but I didn’t want the aesthetic of the song to be lost through something that looked too produced. The sepia thing and the font and the whole thing really was her idea.
The production balances intimacy with sweep. What was it like collaborating with Paul A. Harvey, who has worked with artists such as Tom Robinson on shaping the final sound?
Paul is a gentle genius of a musician. He interpreted the song with these lovely guitar licks that are woven all through, but especially at the end. He plays a mean bass guitar too.
There are echoes of classic English songwriting in the track. Which artists most influenced you while creating this song, and in what specific ways?
So that’s a hard one for this particular song.
Musically, I guess, I see it as closest to a modern country song. And I have a whole heap of influences there – Gram Parsons looming large among them, but in a way I think it’s more feminine influences for the song, such as Emmylou Harris, and Lucinda Williams. Lyrically, though, it’s the English fraternity that influenced me, Elvis Costello being the stand-out and also Chris Difford of Squeeze.
The song reflects on shared history without bitterness. Was that restraint intentional, or did it naturally emerge from the story you were telling?
Yes, intentional. There’s no bitterness in the song at all. There is memory. There are questions – what to do? The song doesn’t provide all the answers, so there are naturally gaps for the listener to fill.
As the debut single from Kings, Queens and Dream Machines, how does “Museum of Love” set the tone for the rest of the album?
Well, funny you should ask that. When the album comes out, you’ll see that the theme of travel is represented differently in many of the songs.
Having recently gone through a divorce, I had written songs building up to that about fulfilling dreams and being who you want to be. And then, closer to recording about coming to terms with your decision and looking forward to the beautiful and exciting, but daunting, new world.
So you might say that’s completely different to finding your way back. But in some ways, there’s a commonality – the steaming and scraping of the walls and taking down the artefacts at the end of the song. The implication being, to start again. It could be with the same person or a different person.
When listeners walk through your “museum,” what do you hope they recognize about their own relationships and memories?
Themes, I hope. Different ones.
Excitement at the start, the unknown, and wanting to delve deeper. Memory, the artefacts collected over time, photographs, etc. Boredom–that’s a part of it also. Stepping away and coming back, or trying to find a way back.
The different people that the same person can be, or perhaps the enticement of another partner outside of your marriage. It's left unclear.
Maybe valuing but also questioning what you’ve built and ultimately seeking a resolution in some form, it’s not quite clear what form, but it’s not quite the same as where you were at the start of the journey.
