Willem James Cowan Navigates Heartbreak and Displacement on Solemn Folk Single “Back to the City”
London, ON-based folk artist Willem James Cowan shares “Back to the City,” a sparse and emotionally heavy folk single that captures the strange disorientation of returning to a place once tied to love, comfort, and identity after everything connected to it has changed. Anchored by little more than voice and acoustic guitar, the track transforms post-breakup displacement into something deeply intimate and quietly devastating.
Written after Willem moved back in with his parents following the end of a long-term relationship, “Back to the City” reflects on revisiting Toronto after years spent building a life there with a partner. What was once familiar suddenly felt cold, distant, and emotionally unrecognizable.
“This song is about the feeling you get when you return to a place that you called home for so long, but now feels completely foreign,” Willem explains. “I still remember the lingering anxiety and dread that would well up inside me as I drove past the apartment buildings that line the Gardiner Expressway.”
At its core, “Back to the City” explores how memory reshapes physical spaces. The comfort and warmth once associated with a city become buried beneath grief and emotional residue, transforming everyday landmarks into reminders of absence and change. “It’s amazing how the good memories and feelings you associate with a place can be completely smothered by the bad,” he says.
The recording process mirrors that emotional directness. After unsuccessfully attempting fuller arrangements, Willem ultimately returned to the simplest version of the song: one live off the floor take featuring only voice and acoustic guitar, alongside a handful of subtle guitar swells added afterward.
“I think the sparseness serves the song much more,” Willem shares. “‘Back to the City’ is about loneliness, loss, and discomfort, and I think that shines through with just a voice and acoustic guitar.”
The single closes Willem’s upcoming album, What Should Happen Next?, out at the end of summer 2026: a collection of songs centred around loss, growth, transition, and the uncertainty of moving forward. As the final track, it functions less like resolution and more like quiet acceptance, sitting with discomfort rather than trying to outrun it.
First off, care to introduce yourself to our readers?
My name is Willem James Cowan, I’m a singer/songwriter from London, Ontario. I write and record wordy folk-rock songs and then I sing them in front of people.
“Back to the City” captures a very specific feeling of returning somewhere familiar that suddenly feels unfamiliar. When did you realize that experience was something you needed to write about?
I’m not sure I ever realized it, to be honest. It was just something that came out one day while I was writing. I find writing really helpful in trying to understand my feelings. I had felt kind of despondent while visiting the city but was never able to put to words what I was feeling, until I wrote this song.
The imagery of driving past the apartment buildings along the Gardiner Expressway is especially vivid. Were there particular places in Toronto that became emotionally difficult to revisit?
Driving along the Gardiner is the first time I remember feeling that pit in my stomach. It’s just such a statement, and a representation of how Toronto can feel. Those towering buildings mixed with the stress of traffic made me feel kind of insignificant. A little claustrophobic, maybe. Before I moved out of Toronto I was living in the Annex. There were definitely a few places that I used to frequent that were difficult to go back to because of the significance they held in my life, but it was really the sense of loss I felt in the city as a whole that inspired the song.
As both a songwriter and performer, how do you approach singing lyrics that are rooted in such personal memories? Has your relationship with the song changed over time?
I try not to write anything that feels too on the nose. I want to leave a little space for interpretation. A little space for the listener to insert themselves. It’s always a bit funny playing this song in Toronto, though. I don’t want it to come off as a hit piece on the city, because I do have a lot of love for it. Ever since I wrote this song, those feelings of anxiety when visiting have faded quite a bit. It feels a little less raw than it did a year or two ago, I guess. Especially when I perform it live.
“Back to the City” closes your upcoming album, What Should Happen Next? Why did this song feel like the right way to end the record?
I toyed with the production on this song for a while, but I was never able to capture the same energy as this version, with just voice and guitar. I like when records end on a lower note, energy-wise at least. I do think there’s also something to this being the end of the story. The rest of the songs on the record kind of chronicle my time in the relationship I was in, and living in Toronto, and I like that the last song deals with the aftermath of that with me returning again.
Was there a particular lyric from “Back to the City” that took the longest to get right or best captures the heart of the song for you?
I think the repeating lyric captures the heart of the song most, in my mind. “I went back to the city, but it didn’t feel the same.” That lyric came to me pretty quickly. It’s very unlike me, but most of the lyrics in this song are from the first pass. There was only one line that I had to re-write a couple times, “Spent the evening lit on fire, today I’m left alone”. It just took me a while to get it to sound right. I think I wrote it the night before I recorded it. It’s good enough. I’ll probably change it again.
With the album arriving at the end of summer 2026, what are you most excited—and perhaps most nervous—for fans to hear?
I think I’m excited for people to hear the range of this record. There are a couple songs that sound nothing like “Back to the City”. There are drum machines, synth bass, banjo, I think there’s something for everyone. Though you can decide yourself, I guess!