At just 14 years old, Lily LiCausi arrives not with a safe, watered-down entrée but with a full-blooded declaration: “Broken Record”. Released in June 2025, this debut single is an intimate alt-pop/indie/rock confession that translates the raw, disorienting experience of social anxiety and panic attacks into a sonic architecture of urgency, hush and release. It’s rare for a first single to feel less like an audition and more like an offering-honest, urgent, and impossibly human.
From the opening notes, “Broken Record” stakes its claim as a song about containment and rupture. The production is restrained where it must be, allowing Lily’s voice-simultaneously fragile and clenched-to carry the emotional center. When the arrangement swells, it’s not to show off; it’s to mirror physiological escalation: the quickening heartbeat, the room that suddenly tilts, the internal loop that refuses to let go.
Lyrically, Lily LiCausi sketches anxiety without melodrama. Rather than cataloguing symptoms clinically, she compresses the lived sensation into repeated motifs that act like both symptom and truth. The recurring image-“spinning like a broken record”-is poetic and precise: it captures the nauseous repetition of intrusive thoughts and the shame that often accompanies them. Elsewhere, short, jagged refrains hint at the public gaze that social anxiety magnifies-an imagined scrutiny that tightens the chest and shortens breath. These are not theatrical flourishes; they are tiny, exacting observations that invite empathy rather than pity.
Vocally, Lily demonstrates maturity beyond her years. There’s a duality to her delivery: a confessional softness when the narrative turns inward, and a raw, almost defiant projection when the chorus arrives. The crescendos and abrupt pauses are masterclasses in emotional pacing-she makes silence mean something, and when the sound returns it lands with the weight of authenticity. For listeners who have lived with panic, the vocal choices will feel like recognition; for those who haven’t, they function as a lucid primer.
Musically, the track walks a careful line between alt-pop accessibility and indie-textured grit. The instrumentation frames rather than competes: discreet guitar lines, a rhythm section that alternates between heartbeat-like thumps and breathless fills, and subtle piano motifs that echo Lily’s training. The production choices respect the song’s vulnerability-effects are used sparingly, dynamics are purposeful, and the mix keeps Lily’s voice as the lodestone. The result is a song that can sit beside mainstream pop on a playlist yet retains an emotional honesty that many polished tracks lack.
What makes “Broken Record” particularly noteworthy is the way it converts private struggle into communal language. Mental health awareness has become a ubiquitous conversation, but Lily’s song stands out because it refuses sentimentality. There’s no neat cure, no tidy resolution-only lived moments that swing between collapse and recovery. The final moments of the track, where the panic eases only to leave the singer “back in place,” are quietly devastating; they acknowledge that healing is not a one-time event but an ongoing negotiation.
Lily’s biography deepens the context. A dedicated student at Lakehouse Music Academy in Asbury Park, she studies voice, piano, guitar and songwriting-and it shows. Her regular performances with the vocal group Given, appearances at Lakehouse‘s Big Gigs, and her role in the Trinity Church Choir speak to a young artist steeped in diverse musical environments. Her stagecraft was honed early-performing in Hoboken Children’s Theater and appearing in The Aristocats at age four, later starring as Grizabella in Ranney School‘s production of CATS-all of which help explain the assuredness of her interpretive choices in the studio.
Beyond music, Lily’s life is full and varied: a freshman at Trinity Hall, a cross-country competitor, and an honors student with a history in Model UN, Tri-M and athletics. That breadth-academic, athletic, theatrical, musical-feeds a songwriting perspective that refuses to be one-dimensional. It also makes her willingness to sing about anxiety all the more courageous: she’s not seeking sympathy but connection.
For a debut single, “Broken Record” is both a manifesto and an invitation. It proclaims that a young artist can be emotionally literate, artistically ambitious, and socially meaningful at once. The song offers solace to listeners who recognize its loops and jolts; it offers clarity to those who don’t. Most importantly, it announces a voice we’ll want to follow-an artist willing to lean into discomfort and render it into something that resonates.
If anything, Lily’s greatest asset is her refusal to mask complexity. “Broken Record” is not an easy listen in the sense of escapism; it’s a brave listen. And in a musical landscape that often mistakes polish for depth, that bravery feels revolutionary.
Keep an eye-and an ear-on Lily LiCausi. With the courage to put such a candid song into the world at 14, she’s already doing the work that marks enduring artists: she’s creating music that matters.
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