Wain: Still Colorful
Inside the Vulnerable, No-Filter World of WAIN’s 'Still Colorful'
by Jack Rush
Pop is in its over-produced era. Everything is airbrushed, precision-tuned, and curated to death. But WAIN clearly missed that memo, because his debut album Still Colorful feels like the complete opposite. It’s messy in the way real life is messy, intentional in the way vulnerability demands, and personal in a way that cuts straight through the noise. If most artists are building walls, WAIN is tearing them down in real time.
The producer, songwriter, and mix engineer doesn’t position himself as some mysterious figure behind perfectly coded metaphors. Instead, he hands you the emotional blueprint and trusts you to handle it with care. Still Colorful is an 8-track, self-produced album that reads more like a confession than a debut. It’s full of contradictions, soft yet punchy, intimate yet universal, grounded in realism yet cinematic in scope.
WAIN didn’t build the project alone, though. That’s what makes it stand out. Each of the eight tracks features a different vocalist and co-writer, creating an album that feels like a series of emotional snapshots told through multiple lenses. It’s not a solo monologue. It’s a shared journal. A collective heartbeat. An understanding that emotion doesn’t belong to one person, it moves, morphs, and finds new meaning depending on who’s telling the story.
At its core, Still Colorful is about rediscovering yourself after losing the plot for a while. It’s about remembering that life never actually goes grayscale, sometimes you just forget how to see the color. The title itself hits like a reminder you didn’t know you needed: wherever you are, however messy things get, the color is still there beneath the static.
The tracklist “Three or Four,” “Take Me Home,” “Hit the Ground,” “I Wish I Could Fly,” “Breathe,” “We Don’t Belong,” “The Yellow Sign,” and the luminous closing track “Colorful” forms a full emotional arc without ever telling you exactly what happened. The details are yours to fill in. Each song is nearly a standalone mood, a small reflection of a different version of yourself. You don’t need a backstory; the feelings do all the talking.
Sonically, the album sits in the folk-pop lane but refuses to be boxed in. Warm guitars, organic percussion, soft harmonies, and subtle electronic touches blend together like they were always meant to coexist. It feels handcrafted. Careful. Tender. There’s just enough space for each instrument to breathe, just enough lift for each voice to soar. One song feels like a long walk home. The next feels like floating in your own head. The next feels like closure you didn’t know you were chasing.
And the wild part? For an album with eight different vocalists, Still Colorful is shockingly cohesive. That’s where WAIN’s skill as a producer becomes undeniable. He doesn’t force artists into his aesthetic; he builds the sonic world around their emotional truth. That’s how you know he’s not just producing songs; he’s shaping them.
The man’s experience speaks for itself, with over 100 tracks released across the U.S., U.K., and Israel. You can hear that mastery in the delicate mixing, the intentional silence, the careful layering. But he’s far from predictable. While Still Colorful leans into acoustic intimacy, WAIN’s next chapter is a sharp turn into electronic dance music. His single, “Got Me Crazy” with YALI, co-written with Lian Shahar and Tay Lerner, shows him switching gears without losing the emotional DNA that defines his work. It’s vibrant, euphoric, and proof that genre is just another tool for him to play with.
What makes WAIN an artist worth paying attention to isn’t just his technical proficiency; it’s his intention. In a world drowning in algorithm-chasing singles, Still Colorful feels honest. Human. Necessary. Vulnerability is the heartbeat of the entire project, and WAIN treats it like a strength, not a risk.
Have a listen and connect with WAIN:
