There’s something about Sid Dorey that stops you in your tracks.
It could be the way their voice wavers, steady but aching, as if every lyric is stitched from a moment they barely survived. Or maybe it’s how they write songs like confessions — raw, unfiltered, and somehow still comforting. In their new EP Middle Seat, Dorey doesn’t just invite us into their world — they crack open the door, hand us a seat, and say, “This might hurt, but I’m right here with you.”
That balance between discomfort and trust is the emotional backbone of the EP. From the gut-punch lines of Cannibal — a song that explores emotional overconsumption in relationships — to the fragile yearning of Isn’t This Just So Us, Dorey navigates themes of abandonment, queerness, and the search for chosen family with disarming precision.
Born in Florida and now rooted in Nashville, Dorey came up through musical theatre — a background that explains the EP’s almost cinematic quality. But their songwriting leans far from the dramatic for drama’s sake. Every track feels lived-in. There are no caricatures here, just one queer person trying to make sense of who they are without losing the softness they fought so hard to reclaim.
“Middle Seat is about letting go,” Dorey shares. “Letting go of people you thought would stay. Letting go of identities that were handed to you. And choosing — actively choosing — to stay anyway.”
It’s that refusal to abandon oneself that defines not only the EP but Sid Dorey as an artist. In a genre often obsessed with detachment and irony, Dorey is doing something radical: telling the truth — even when it shakes.
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