Breakup songs almost always default to one of two moods: wrecked, or defiantly over it. “Ohio Song” finds a third option, and it’s the harder one to pull off — genuinely warm, even a little upbeat, while still telling a story about a love that didn’t end the way it was supposed to.
Julia Campbell grew up in Pennsylvania and now works out of a home studio she built inside a walk-in closet in Los Angeles — which tells you something about the DIY instinct running through this whole project. She’s been writing since she was 14, and a decade in, that self-taught foundation shows up as confidence rather than roughness. The vocal performance here is the reason the song works at all: intimate, close-mic’d, delivered like she’s talking directly into your ear rather than performing at a distance. That closeness is what lets a melancholy lyric sit comfortably inside a genuinely catchy melody without the two fighting each other.
Production-wise, this is a song built for headphones rather than a car speaker — there are small details tucked into the arrangement that reward a closer listen rather than announcing themselves on a first pass. That’s a mark of someone who’s spent real time learning to produce her own work rather than handing it off entirely, and it shows in restraint more than in flash.
Where the song earns its keep is in refusing to pick a single emotional lane. An upbeat breakup song shouldn’t work as a concept — sad content, bright delivery — and yet the tension between the two is exactly what makes this one stick with you rather than blending into the pile of mid-tempo heartbreak songs already out there.
If there’s a knock, it’s a small one: the song is confident enough in its hook that the verses occasionally feel like they’re just waiting their turn to get back to it. That’s a minor complaint against a song that otherwise knows exactly what it’s doing.
You can find more of Julia Campbell’s music and follow her at @juliacampbellmusic on Instagram.
