Hiding in plain sight

There’s a certain kind of exhaustion that comes from constantly managing how much of yourself you let the world see. It isn’t dramatic. It isn’t loud. Most people would never even notice it. But it’s there, sitting just under the surface, shaping how you speak, how you react, and how much you’re willing to reveal.

When he sings, “I don’t want the world to see me,” it doesn’t sound like shyness to me. It sounds like protection.

Because the world isn’t always kind to depth. It isn’t always patient with sensitivity. If you think too much, feel too much, or carry more beneath the surface than people expect, it can make them uncomfortable. And when people are uncomfortable, they tend to judge. Or mock. Or reduce something complicated into something simple enough to dismiss.

So you learn to edit yourself.

You don’t talk about the things that actually bother you. You soften your opinions. You hide the parts that are intense, or strange, or vulnerable. You build a version of yourself that feels safer to present. A version that won’t be picked apart or laughed at. A version that won’t give anyone an easy target.

Over time, that version starts to feel automatic. You don’t even realise you’re doing it. You just know when to hold back. You know when to nod instead of explain. You know when to let something slide rather than risk being misunderstood again.

That’s what Iris feels like to me. Not a love song in the traditional sense, but an admission. A quiet confession that there are parts of you the world hasn’t earned the right to see. Not because they’re ugly or shameful, but because they’re real. And real things get mishandled all the time.

There’s something deeply honest about that.

Most people pretend they’re fully open. Fully themselves. But the truth is, a lot of us are hiding in plain sight. We’re walking around in daylight with whole sections of our personality tucked away, locked up, protected. Not because we want to deceive anyone, but because we’ve learned that not everyone handles honesty well.

And that kind of hiding doesn’t mean you’re fake. It means you’re careful.

It means somewhere along the way, you were shown that being fully visible comes with risk. That showing too much can lead to judgement, assumptions, or people taking the piss out of something that actually matters to you. Once you’ve felt that enough times, you stop offering it freely.

You don’t want the world to see you.

Not because you’re ashamed.

Because you’re guarding something

The fear of being seen

Being seen sounds like a beautiful thing in theory. People talk about authenticity like it’s freedom. They tell you to be yourself, to speak your truth, to stop caring what others think. It sounds simple when it’s written on a quote card.

In real life, it’s not simple at all.

Being seen means being exposed. It means someone looking past the version of you that’s polished and controlled and getting close enough to notice the cracks. And once someone sees the cracks, you don’t get to control how they interpret them.

That’s the risk.

If people see your depth, they might call it dramatic. If they see your sensitivity, they might call it weak. If they see your overthinking, they might call it strange.

It doesn’t take much for something meaningful to be reduced into something small. And once that happens, you can’t un-hear it. You can’t un-feel the sting of being misunderstood.

So you adapt.

You keep conversations surface-level. You let people assume they know you. You play along with versions of yourself that feel easier to carry. You laugh things off that actually bother you. You keep the heavier thoughts for quiet spaces where no one can twist them.

There’s a certain loneliness in that.

Not because you’re alone, but because no one is fully meeting you. They’re meeting the edited version. The manageable version. The one that doesn’t challenge or unsettle them. And after a while, even you start to forget where the performance ends and the real thing begins.

That’s what gives Iris its weight.

It’s not just a line about not wanting the world to see you. It’s the admission that if they did, they wouldn’t understand. That something essential would be lost in translation. That the world, loud and opinionated as it is, doesn’t always know what to do with raw honesty.

And that fear isn’t irrational.

We live in a time where everything is judged instantly. Opinions are formed in seconds. Depth is skimmed over. Nuance is ignored. People don’t let you explain fully because they don’t want to be proven wrong, or if they can make everyone laugh at your expense then their short comings get overlooked. The loudest voices tend to win, not the most thoughtful ones. In that environment, keeping parts of yourself hidden feels less like weakness and more like strategy.

But strategy comes at a cost.

When you’re always filtering yourself, you start carrying tension you can’t quite name. You become hyper-aware of how you’re coming across. You measure your words before they leave your mouth. You rehearse conversations in your head. You question whether you’ve said too much or too little.

That constant monitoring is exhausting.

And yet, for a lot of people, it feels safer than full exposure.

The song captures that tension perfectly. The push and pull between wanting connection and fearing what connection requires. Because to be truly known, you have to risk being misunderstood. And once you’ve been misunderstood deeply enough, you don’t rush back into that fire.

You become selective.

Not cold. Not detached. Just careful.

That’s not weakness. It’s self-preservation.

But the longer you live like that, the heavier it feels. Because somewhere inside, there’s still a part of you that wants to drop the guard. That wants to stop editing. That wants to exist without calculating every reaction in advance.

And that’s where this song starts to ache.

It sits in the space between protection and longing. Between hiding and hoping that one day, it won’t feel so dangerous to be fully seen.

The relief of being understood

For all the hiding, all the editing, all the carefulness, there’s still a part of you that wants to be known.

Not by everyone. Not by the crowd. Just by someone.

That’s what gives Iris its quiet power. Beneath the guardedness and the fear of exposure, there’s a deeper admission. It’s not that you never want to be seen. It’s that you don’t want to be seen by the wrong people.

There’s a difference.

The world can feel loud, judgemental, quick to label and slow to understand. But every now and then, you meet someone who doesn’t rush to define you. Someone who listens without trying to shrink what you’re saying. Someone who sees the intensity or the sensitivity or the overthinking and doesn’t flinch.

That kind of recognition is rare.

And when it happens, something shifts.

You stop measuring every word. You stop rehearsing every sentence in your head. You don’t feel the need to dilute yourself to make things easier. There’s relief in that. Not dramatic relief. Not fireworks. Just a quiet unclenching.

The line about not wanting the world to see you lands differently in that context. It isn’t isolation. It’s selectivity. It’s saying the world hasn’t earned this version of me. But you might have.

That’s not weakness. That’s trust, and trust is heavy when you’ve spent years protecting yourself.

Letting someone see you fully means lowering the shield you’ve carefully built. It means risking misunderstanding again. But when someone actually understands you, without you having to explain every layer, it feels like oxygen. Like being able to stand upright instead of constantly bracing.

It doesn’t fix everything. It doesn’t erase the fear entirely. But it proves something important.

It proves you weren’t “too much.” You weren’t “too sensitive.” You weren’t “too intense.”

You were just seen by people who didn’t know how to handle depth, your depth.

That’s the fucking difference.

The song doesn’t scream that message. It carries it quietly. It understands that being known by one person can outweigh being accepted by many. That genuine understanding is more powerful than surface-level approval.

And when you’ve lived hidden for long enough, even a small amount of understanding feels enormous.

It doesn’t mean you suddenly open up to everyone. It doesn’t mean the world becomes safe overnight. But it reminds you that hiding isn’t your only option. That there are moments, rare and real, where you don’t have to shrink.

That’s what makes this song move people decades later.

Because most of us know what it feels like to hide.

And most of us know what it feels like, even briefly, to finally stop.

When hiding becomes who you are

There’s a danger in hiding for too long.

At first, it’s protection. It’s something you consciously choose. You decide what to show, what to hold back, who gets access and who doesn’t. It feels controlled. Smart, even. You’re not naive. You’re not oversharing. You’re managing yourself.

But over time, something shifts.

The version of you that was meant to be temporary starts to feel permanent. The edited one becomes the default. The quieter one. The less reactive one. The one that doesn’t let too much slip.

And then one day, you realise you don’t actually know how to switch it off.

That’s the part no one warns you about.

When you spend years protecting yourself from judgement, you get very good at it. You become measured. You become composed. You become unreadable in ways that feel safe but also isolating. People think they know you, but they only know the outline.

You’ve kept the colour for yourself.

The problem is, the longer you live like that, the harder it becomes to separate what’s real from what’s rehearsed. You start questioning whether you’re being authentic or just consistent. You wonder if you’ve grown calmer, or if you’ve just learned how to mute yourself more effectively.

Iris sits right in that tension.

Because when he says he doesn’t want the world to see him, there’s weight behind it. It’s not casual. It sounds like someone who has thought about it deeply. Someone who knows that being fully visible would cost something.

And when hiding becomes habit, visibility starts to feel threatening.

Even when you’re around people who might understand you, there’s hesitation. A pause. A split second where your instinct is still to hold back. To soften what you’re about to say. To protect yourself from a reaction that might not even come.

That hesitation is learned.

It doesn’t mean you’re closed off. It means you’ve been careful for so long that careful feels natural. And unlearning that takes time. It takes conscious effort. It takes small risks.

There’s also a strange comfort in hiding. If people don’t see the full version of you, they can’t fully reject it. They can’t criticise what they don’t know exists. It’s a way of keeping control over the narrative.

But control isn’t the same as connection.

At some point, you start to feel the gap. The distance between who you are internally and what the world sees externally. And that gap can get lonely. Not loud-lonely. Not dramatic-lonely. Just a steady awareness that something is being held back all the time.

That’s exhausting.

The song captures that exhaustion without spelling it out. It feels like someone who’s been carrying themselves carefully for years. Someone who knows the world isn’t always gentle, so they’ve learned to be guarded. But you can hear, underneath it all, the weight of that guard.

Hiding keeps you safe.
But it also keeps you separate.

And when separation becomes identity, it’s hard to remember what it feels like to be fully present without scanning the room first.

That’s why this song still resonates. Because so many people live this way quietly. Not hiding in dramatic ways, but in subtle, constant ones. Adjusting. Editing. Protecting.

And somewhere inside, there’s still that question.

If I stopped hiding, even for a moment, who would I be?

“I don’t want the world to see me”

I keep coming back to that line.

“I don’t want the world to see me.”

It doesn’t feel poetic to me. It feels exposed. Almost like he’s saying something you weren’t ready to admit out loud yourself. It hits in a way that feels uncomfortable, because it’s too accurate.

He doesn’t say he doesn’t want people around him. He doesn’t say he wants to disappear. He says he doesn’t want the world to see him. Not fully. Not properly.

Because they won’t understand.

That’s the part that lands like a punch.

There’s a difference between being unseen and choosing not to be seen. One is loneliness. The other is protection. And when you’ve spent enough time feeling misunderstood, that protection becomes instinct.

The world can be brutal with anything that doesn’t fit neatly. If you think differently, feel deeply, question things too much, carry old scars, or move at a different emotional pace, people notice. And not always in a kind way. They judge. They label. They make assumptions. Sometimes they laugh.

So you decide it’s easier if they never see the real version.

That line feels like someone who’s already tried being open and paid for it. It feels like someone who knows that if the world really saw their depth, their intensity, their doubt, their insecurity, their softness, it would be mishandled.

It feels defensive, but also tired.

There’s something raw about admitting you don’t trust the world with who you are. It’s not arrogance. It’s not superiority. It’s vulnerability wrapped in armour.

And that’s why it feels personal.

Because a lot of us know exactly what that means.

We’ve all had moments where we’ve pulled back instead of leaning in. Where we’ve chosen silence instead of honesty. Where we’ve kept something important inside because we didn’t want to deal with the reaction.

That line captures that exact instinct.

It doesn’t say the world is evil. It doesn’t say people are cruel. It simply says they won’t understand. And sometimes misunderstanding hurts more than rejection. At least rejection is clear. Misunderstanding twists who you are into something you’re not.

That’s why the song doesn’t feel like a typical emotional anthem. It feels like a confession. A quiet admission from someone who has learned to keep parts of themselves guarded.

And maybe the power of Iris isn’t in romance at all. Maybe it’s in that tension between hiding and wanting to be known. In acknowledging that the world at large might not be safe for the real you, but that doesn’t mean the real you doesn’t exist.

It means you’re selective.

It means you’ve learned.

It means you’ve survived enough judgement to know when to step back.

That line keeps hitting because it’s honest. It doesn’t dress the feeling up. It doesn’t apologise for it. It just states it plainly.

I don’t want the world to see me.

And if that feels like a personal attack, maybe it’s because it’s a truth you’ve been carrying quietly for a long time.

When everything feels like it’s breaking

As the song builds, it doesn’t stay small.

It opens up.

The music swells. The voice stretches. And suddenly it isn’t just about hiding anymore. It’s about what it costs to keep hiding when everything around you already feels fragile.

There’s a line about everything feeling like the movies, and there’s something almost detached in that. Like you’re watching your own life from slightly outside yourself. Going through the motions. Playing the part. Performing normality while something underneath is cracking.

That’s what long-term hiding can do.

You become good at playing functional. You show up. You do what’s expected. You say the right things. But internally, there’s a sense that none of it feels fully real. Like you’re participating in your own life rather than living it.

And then there’s that line about everything being made to be broken.

That’s not romantic. That’s resigned.

It’s the realisation that nothing is as solid as it pretends to be. People change. Situations shift. Trust fractures. The things you thought were stable prove they weren’t. When you’ve seen enough of that, vulnerability starts to feel like stepping onto thin ice.

Why expose yourself when everything cracks eventually?

If everything is breakable anyway, hiding doesn’t protect you from that. It just delays the impact. It keeps you safe from judgement maybe, but it doesn’t shield you from life itself.

That’s where the emotional volume of the song comes from.

It isn’t just sadness. It’s frustration. It’s someone standing in the middle of a world that doesn’t feel solid, wanting to be known but not trusting the ground beneath them. It’s the conflict between needing connection and fearing the damage it might bring.

The later part of the song feels almost like surrender.

Not surrender in weakness. Surrender in honesty.

Admitting that beneath all the editing and protecting, there’s still a simple desire to exist without distortion. To not feel like a character in someone else’s interpretation of you. To not constantly manage perception.

The music rising mirrors that internal build-up. Years of carefulness. Years of holding back. Years of calculating how much is safe to reveal. And underneath it all, a quiet voice that just wants relief from the effort of hiding.

That’s what the song captures so well.

It doesn’t give you a solution. It doesn’t promise that the world will suddenly understand you. It just holds that tension in full volume. The fragility. The frustration. The exhaustion of pretending everything’s fine while guarding your core.

And that’s why it lasts.

Because it doesn’t resolve neatly.

It just tells the truth about what it feels like to live half-visible in a world that doesn’t always feel safe enough for the full version of you.

Every time you hear it

The truth is, this song doesn’t resolve anything.

It doesn’t promise that one day you’ll feel safe enough to be fully seen. It doesn’t guarantee that the world will suddenly understand you. It doesn’t even suggest that hiding is wrong.

It just leaves you there. In that space between wanting to be known and knowing what it costs.

And maybe that’s why it sticks.

Because most of us don’t get a clean ending to this feeling. We don’t wake up one day completely unguarded. We don’t suddenly stop calculating what we say. We don’t magically stop protecting ourselves from judgement.

We just get better at carrying it.

When you hear this song, years from now, it won’t just remind you of hiding. It’ll remind you of the times you almost said what you really meant but didn’t. The times you let someone believe a version of you that was easier. The times you walked away instead of explaining yourself again.

It’ll remind you of the energy it takes to exist in a world that doesn’t always handle depth well.

But it might also remind you of the moments you didn’t hide.

The times you let something real slip out. The times you spoke honestly and didn’t apologise for it. The times someone actually saw you properly and didn’t flinch.

That’s the part that matters.

This song isn’t just about not wanting the world to see you. It’s about what happens when you realise you’ve been surviving by staying half-visible. It’s about recognising that protection kept you safe, but it also kept you small.

And that’s a hard thing to admit.

Maybe you’ll always be selective. Maybe you’ll never be the loudest person in the room. Maybe you’ll never feel fully comfortable being completely exposed.

But every time this song plays, it will ask you the same quiet question:

Are you hiding because you need to…
or because you’ve just forgotten how to stop?

That’s why it stays with you.

Not because it’s romantic.
Not because it’s dramatic.

But because somewhere in it, you recognise yourself.

And once you’ve heard that recognition, you can’t un-hear it.

Your Songs This Week

This week was a lot.

In the best possible way.

So far Music Monday’s playlist has 56 songs, weighing in at 3 hours 30 minutes long. Todays additions add an extra 33 songs weighing in at an extra 2 hours and 12 minutes. that fucking huge. That’ll be 89 songs from today, 5 hours and 42 minutes of songs. Also an extra one from a brand new release today, which I do not have at the time of writing this blog. So I shall add that song as soon as it releases.

The number of songs that came in was honestly a little overwhelming. My inbox was busy. My headphones didn’t come off. And I loved it. There’s something powerful about people trusting you with the music that means something to them.

The range this week is wild. Different genres. Different moods. A few brand new releases. A couple of debut tracks. And a whole lot of indie artists who deserve far more attention than they get.

And that’s important to me.

Monday Music isn’t about chasing the algorithm, it’s about changing the algorithm. It isn’t about pushing what’s already everywhere. It’s about giving space to artists who don’t have huge budgets, who aren’t backed by multi-million pound marketing machines, who aren’t being forced into your feed every five minutes.

This is where the real ones live.

The artists who are doing this because they love music. Because they need to create. Because they have something to say. Not because they typed a few prompts into a machine and let lines of code piece together something that sounds vaguely like someone else’s work.

I don’t want AI-generated music here.

That’s not what this is about.

Music, real music, comes from lived experience. From heartbreak. From frustration. From hope. From late nights and early mornings. From doubt and persistence. It comes from someone sitting with a guitar, or a piano, or a laptop, pouring something real into it.

It comes from people like the ones below.

A lot of indie artists don’t get exposure because they don’t have the money to go big. They don’t get playlisted because they can’t compete with the machine. But that doesn’t mean the quality isn’t there. In fact, most of the time, it means the opposite.

This is where the passion lives.

I genuinely hope one day I can look back at this series and say, I featured them when they were just starting. I hope some of the names below go on to do massive things. I hope this tiny corner of the internet becomes a small part of their story.

But more than that, I hope this gives them something right now.

A few more listeners.
A few more followers.
A few more people who actually hear what they’re trying to say.

So if you find something you love below, don’t just listen and move on. Follow them. Subscribe. Share their track. Let them know it landed. That stuff matters more than you think.

And while we’re being honest, I’ll say this too.

I love seeing my views climb. I love watching Monday Music grow. I love knowing the words I’m writing are reaching people. So if these blogs mean something to you, share them. Send them to your friends. Post them on your socials. Help me grow this thing while we grow these artists alongside it.

Make me happy.

Make them feel seen.

And thank you, genuinely, for being part of this. For reading my ramblings. For sending your songs. For building this with me.

Now go listen.

👉LINK TO SPOTIFY PLAYLIST👈

Also, any creators reading this, please also read this blog… A Place to Create, A Place to Be Seen, Why Creators Deserve Better. I want to create a place for us to beat the algorithm. I need your thoughts, and I need to know if it would be worth creating. Let me know at the email below. Thank you.

theplainandsimpleguy.enquiries@gmail.com

THEPLAINANDSIMPLEGUY

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