Wyn Starks’ new single ‘Coco’ is a track calling you to sit in its comfort. It isn’t chasing a hook for the sake of it, or leaning on studio polish to do the emotional heavy lifting. Instead, it sounds like something Starks needed to say, and happened to set to a beat you can’t help but move to.
Warm percussion, a groove that swells rather than explodes, and vocal layering that feels communal. Lyrically, the track works as a kind of blessing. Starks addresses the listener directly, the way an elder might speak to a child they’re trying to protect from a world that hasn’t earned their softness yet. There’s an ache underneath the joy: an acknowledgment that the road ahead is hard, that tears are allowed, that storms are coming. But Starks never lingers in the difficulty. He uses it as a launching pad. Each verse trades its vulnerability for resolve, and each chorus cashes that resolve in for something closer to euphoria.
What’s most impressive is how naturally Starks moves between those emotional registers without the transition ever feeling manufactured. Plenty of songs try to go from tender to triumphant in three minutes and end up sounding like two different songs stapled together. ‘Coco’ doesn’t have that problem, the celebration feels earned because the tenderness came first.
Vocally, Starks continues to prove he’s one of the more underrated technicians working in mainstream soul-pop right now. He doesn’t oversing the track, which is a discipline a lot of artists with his range struggle to exercise. He lets the melody breathe, saves his power for the moments that need it, and trusts the song’s rhythm to carry the rest.
If there’s a criticism to make, it’s that ‘Coco’ is so instantly likable that it risks being underestimated, filed away as a “feel-good record” without listeners sitting with what it’s actually doing thematically. That would be a shame, because underneath the danceable surface is a song genuinely wrestling with inheritance, resilience, and what it means to tell someone their existence is already enough.
‘Coco’ is unguarded in a way that some will find refreshing, but sincerity, delivered this confidently, is its own kind of risk, and Starks expertly pulls it off.
