“Chained” by The xx

"Chained" was the second single from Coexist, the xx's 2012 album, and one of the first songs the trio wrote for it. Romy Madley Croft and Oliver Sim put it together face to face in one room, her on keyboards, him on bass, and then Jamie xx slid his beat underneath and the whole thing veered off somewhere neither of them had planned.

What's left is a lament for a couple drifting out of reach of each other, with Croft and Sim finishing each other's lines as if neither can quite say it alone. Jamie xx produced it, the band recorded it at their own studio in London, and he mixed it with Rodaidh McDonald, leaving so much air around the pulse that every beat lands like a held breath. Critics praised exactly that: the minimalism and the back-and-forth of the two voices.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.