Premiere: Elle Christine Grapples With Possibility On “Rabbit Hole”
New year, new you? The burning question each time we prepare for the ball drop, and the stinging taunt that follows months later when we survey our broken promises and wayward ambition. Each time around the sun, we convince ourselves that this year will be different. We’ll end the doom scrolling, eat healthier, rid our lives of toxins, and solve everything else that frustrates and bothers us. Some of these resolutions become public pledges in order to raise the stakes and foster accountability, while others remain secret and intimate, for your mind only, lest the world know your struggle or, worse yet, your failure. Whether they’re shared or guarded, though, the result is the same: goals left unrealized and self-esteem bruised and battered.
Romanticizing the end of December certainly doesn’t help. Countless works of fiction that use New Year’s as a turning point. The parade of feel-good viral stories of resolutions that truly stuck, and how you can do the same in just twenty-three easy steps. Even trendy alternatives like “past year reviews” and “one-month resolutions” add to the mania. It all makes the challenge loftier. Even talking about it in this deconstructive sense is bound to induce anxiety in people already panicking over their resolutions, or the ones they haven’t bothered to make yet.
Ultimately, it boils down to change. Change is always scary. Maybe scary in a thrilling sense, maybe terrifying, but always intimidating in the end. Each choice opens up a floodgate of scenarios, while each inaction only creates more, a crippling thought that borrows from the equally puzzling notion that infinities come in different sizes. The web of possibilities, some might say; or, as folk-pop artist Elle Christine prefers on her new single, a “Rabbit Hole.” Using Lewis Carroll’s famous chapter title-turned-idiom as a jumping-off point, the song explores the feeling of being overwhelmed by the branching walkways before us, while trying to hold on to the fact that every moment until now has faced the exact same problem. Today, The Auricular is proud to premiere “Rabbit Hole” ahead of its official release on Tuesday, January 6, with an exclusive stream and further insight into its creation and vision.
“Rabbit Hole” has been a fixture of Elle Christine’s live repertoire for several years now, whether at solo open mic slots or full band performances, with its origins dating back to the 2020 pandemic, which Christine described as “a time of uncertainty with ample time to dawdle.” As alarming and unsettling as the period was, there were many parallels to New Year’s with a chance for change. Try something new, cut something out, or reinvent your day-to-day life altogether. “It felt overwhelming to have the world at my fingertips without a clear direction of where to go with my work and my passions,” Christine said, thinking back to a time when so many paths were open in front of her.
“I worried about being stuck in a loop,” Christine explained, “not taking advantage of this opportunity to create and redefine myself.” And that viewpoint gave way to “Rabbit Hole,” a song she described as “for the people who feel stuck in life and want to change, but might not know how to go about it.” It speaks to the overwhelming nature of change and how our fixed timeline has made it both essential and monumental. “We’re on the precipice of something new every day,” Christina stated. “The question now is, ‘Can I take the leap?'”
The lyrics embody that hesitation, matching further queries (“Is it too late to change?\ Is it too far to go?”) with the nagging inner critic that’s never satisfied (“I should do more, I should say more\ I should try harder, I can do it all”). It’s a free-fall of push-and-pull dynamics that lends itself to plenty of abstract theories of analytic philosophy, whether summed up in classic aversion proverbs or more modern habits like analysis paralysis, but zoom out and you can find that descent all within a rabbit hole of our own making. As Christine sings, “there are too many other paths I could roam” and just examining all of them will create endless more.
It’s not just the tense quandary that the lyrics bring to life; it’s the unacknowledged loneliness that comes with it. As we debate the change or prepare for it or fight against it or whatever, all we’re really doing is retreating inward, rooting out the solution as if there’s a perfect option we just haven’t uncovered. Before we know it, though, we’ve been left to our own devices for too long (“Sittin’ on my own day after day“) or frozen by the realization of how much time has truly passed (“When’s the last I saw a friend?“). You can feel the shared trauma of quarantine in these lines, but without that backstory, they would still pierce with their observation. Who among us hasn’t felt the need to turn down invitations or isolate themselves when lost in thought? And how easy is it for those single moments to multiply uncomfortably? Change isn’t just scary, it seems. It’s lonely too.
Like the pair of singles Christine released in 2025, “The Roses” and “Changes,” “Rabbit Hole” is pensive, though it takes a different musical approach. This is not the sound of someone spiraling alone in front of a mirror or day planner. Instead, it feels like the melody the ambience makes around a scenic stroll through a park: bright, jaunty, carefree, and buoyant. Not only does it beautifully counteract the fretful sentiments of the lyrics, but it also subconsciously reframes the whole thought process as one of hope, not dread. It doesn’t just tell you that there’s light at the end of the tunnel. It illuminates the whole pathway so you can see all your choices in clear, equal light.
This design makes “Rabbit Hole” a timeless song for anyone grappling with a decision. Big or small, it doesn’t matter because you’ll never be able to track the consequences of it fully. We are our own butterfly effect on our timeline, whether we realize it or not. The best we can do is make sure none of us feel alone or wrong in struggling with a new passage, no matter when they’re feeling that way. Today, though, on the first Monday of the new year, as the majority of society returns to the grind, it provides careful guidance for realizing that these changes do not need to be stressful… and they don’t need to happen just because some fickle countdown reached its end.
“Rabbit Hole” is out everywhere on Tuesday, January 6, 2026. Make sure to follow Elle Christine on social media to keep up-to-date on her next release and performance.
