The Greatest Light Is the Greatest Shade

A track from The Joy Formidable's first album, "The Greatest Light Is The Greatest Shade" has rather poetic lyrics written by frontwoman Rhiannon Bryan. She often expresses inner turmoil in her songs; this one finds her singing about a "childish heart that won't wait," and a person who is both the greatest light and the greatest shade. It's a nuanced look at how those how have the most emotional impact on us can be both the light and the darkness, all in one person.

In a Songfacts interview with Rhiannon Bryan, she described this as one of the songs that defines the band. It was a milestone in their songwriting - Bryan writes the lyrics and bass player Rhydian Dafydd composes the tracks. Said Bryan: "I felt that was the point in the band where Dafydd and I were really starting to build this really special chemistry in terms of writing together. Just because, just very concisely, he'd written that - all the music - as a demo in one night, and I came back to find he'd written all of it musically. He left, and when he came back, it was fully constructed, lyrically."