Jonathan Baxter Navigates Love’s Illusions on Haunting New Single “Piracy”

Review By Glen Parkes

Emerging Belfast-based artist Jonathan Baxter delivers a quietly devastating reflection on emotional deception with his cinematic second single, “Piracy” (out August 29). Known for crafting soul-etched alternative songs, Baxter leans deep into lyrical vulnerability, creating a track that is both intimate and expansive in its emotional reach.

“Piracy” explores the aching cost of counterfeit love—those illusions and myths of intimacy we’re taught to believe, only to discover how hollow they can be. Anchored by the haunting lyric “I don’t know what to believe,” the song gently unravels a metaphor of emotional forgery: the false connections we cling to and the quiet clarity lost in their wake.

At the song’s emotional core is a childhood memory—Baxter throwing a message in a bottle from Benone Beach in 1990, answered months later by a stranger in Liverpool. It’s a symbol of true connection, of pure intention. As an adult, Baxter contrasts this memory with the emotional distortions he’s had to survive and unlearn.

Carried by restrained instrumentation and evocative vocal delivery, “Piracy” is a poetic reckoning—deeply personal yet universally resonant. And in its final breath, with the line “No man’s an island,” Baxter offers not despair, but quiet hope.