30
Thomas Geelens · Pop / Indie
Reviewed 2026-02-24
The Roast
“"Do I dare to start again? Do I dare to start all over? Do I dare to love again? Do I dare to be a little bolder?" Thomas asked himself four questions and then repeated them approximately nine hundred times. This is a song about turning 30, anxiety, and growth — all of which are interesting topics — but it's structured like an existential crisis caught in a loop. The verses are honest and vulnerable ("I try to better myself with some professional help but I still worry") and then the chorus hits you with the same four questions until you start answering them yourself. Yes, Thomas. DARE. Please. So we can move on.”
Sally's not done with you yet.
Drop a URL, screenshot, or file and Sally will give you the honest truth.
The Bright Side
"Make peace with growing older" as the final line is a perfect landing. It reframes every "do I dare" from anxiety into acceptance. If you could hear this song in reverse — starting from peace and flashing back through the panic — it would be a masterpiece.
Hardest Sneer
“You asked "do I dare" so many times the word lost all meaning, which is technically a metaphor for your thirties.”
Think your work can survive this?
Drop a URL, screenshot, or file and Sally will give you the honest truth.
Issues (5)
"Do I Dare" Appears More Times Than Your Actual Thoughts
Receipt
"Do I dare" appears TWENTY times in this song. Twenty. That's not a motif; that's an anxiety spiral set to music. And while that might be the point, there's a difference between representing an anxious loop and BEING an anxious loop. By the third chorus, the listener has stopped feeling your anxiety and started feeling their own — about when the song will end.
Fix
Keep the repetition in the final chorus for maximum impact, but vary the earlier ones. "Can I dare" / "Will I dare" / "Should I dare" / "I dare" — show the progression from doubt to courage through the language itself.
"I Try to Better Myself with Some Professional Help" — The Clunkiest Line About Therapy Ever Written
Receipt
"I try to better myself with some professional help / but I still worry" — Thomas, this reads like a LinkedIn bio, not a lyric. "Professional help" is the most clinical way to say "therapy" since insurance forms. You're being vulnerable about mental health but using the language of an HR department.
Fix
"I've been talking to strangers about my parents" or "I pay someone to listen every Tuesday" — anything more human than "professional help." The vulnerability is there; the vocabulary is fighting it.
"Oh Oh I Can't Sleep, Oh Oh It's Hard to Eat" — Symptom Listing
Receipt
"I can't sleep / it's hard to eat / I count some sheep / but I slowly start to weep" — You just listed four symptoms of anxiety in rhyming couplets. This isn't songwriting; it's a WebMD page with a melody. Sleep, eat, sheep, weep — you're rhyming symptoms like Dr. Seuss covers mental health.
Fix
Show ONE symptom in detail instead of listing four. What does your insomnia actually look like? Staring at the ceiling at 4 AM replaying conversations from 2019? That's a song. A list of symptoms is a diagnosis.
"It's a Sunny Afternoon, I Don't What to Do"
Receipt
"It's a sunny afternoon / I don't what to do" — You literally forgot a word. "I don't KNOW what to do." The 'know' is missing. In a song about self-doubt, accidentally leaving out a word is either the most profound Freudian slip or the most basic proofreading failure. I'll let you decide which is worse.
Fix
Add 'know.' Then read every lyric out loud before recording. If your anxiety made you skip a word, that's poetic. If you just didn't notice, that's a first draft.
"Make Peace with Growing Older" Deserved Better Than the Last Five Seconds
Receipt
The final line — "make peace with growing older" — is the entire emotional resolution of the song. It transforms every anxious "do I dare" into a journey toward acceptance. And it gets... one line. At the very end. After twenty rounds of the same question. You buried the treasure under a mountain of repetition.
Fix
Build toward this line throughout the song. Let earlier sections hint at it — "I'm learning to" before "do I dare" — so the final "make peace with growing older" feels like an arrival, not a surprise ending.