Elley Duhé - Middle Of The Night

Since this song is more well known now, I feel it's my duty to share this ridiculous conspiracy theory I've half-jokingly been holding onto for the last 2 years.

As many may know, I am quite a fan of Australian singer-songwriter Owl Eyes. This means I'm quite accustomed to being starved for new content, especially during the mid-2010s. Though constantly nothing would quickly come from it, she's always posting on social media about writing new music. Some times with titles & lyrics on display. I certainly remember there being one called "Middle Of The Night".

In 2017 she posted her frustrations about getting ready to release a new song and finding out that a huge pop star has used the same title and thus accepting she can't do that (which has some history to it, since there sure were a lot of songs called "Hurricane" around 2012-2013). Based on when this was posted and what titles I was aware of, it seems fair to me to believe that she was talking about Taylor Swift who had just realised "...Ready For It?", which of course contains the repeated lyric 'in the middle of the night'. Owl Eyes has since released new music but not a song resembling anything akin to the title "Middle Of The Night".

A few years ago in an interview she mentioned that she had been writing toplines for other artists, which invites the notion that all over the place there could be songs that she has written and/or performed but doesn't have her name attached to ("Nothing Else Matters" by Matt Nash is one). A year later this song came out and I immediately got to speculating that it was one of those songs. Unless we get the unlikely event of Brooke saying anything about it now that the song is a big deal, I can't prove this (or alternatively, disprove it by having her actually release "Middle Of The Night", a potentially different song), but again, it sure does slide into the puzzle quite nicely. Also I think if you look just at the topline (musically the song's pretty far removed but that's common with this sort of thing) I can't help but sense her writing in this. There are echoes of "Diamonds In Her Eyes" or "On Me" in the song's longingness. Elley herself has said that she wrote the song for The Weeknd but it wouldn't be the first time that a TikTok viral hit has had a made up back story. This is my head canon anyway. I mean, being secretly an Owl Eyes song would explain why I took to an Elley Duhé song so immediately, right??