When Coldplay released “Clocks” in 2002, piano in rock became legitimate. By 2008, every other band had a keyboardist and dreamed of landing on The O.C. or Grey’s Anatomy soundtrack. Then came The xx with their minimalism, Bon Iver with Auto-Tuned falsetto, and the industry decided the era of big melodies was over. Bedroom pop devoured guitar bands, trap conquered the charts, and piano rock was shipped off to wherever skinny jeans and Motorola Razrs go to die. Matt DeAngelis, apparently, missed that memo. Or simply decided he didn’t care.

His new single “In This World” ignores the last fifteen years of musical evolution. The question is: is this stubbornness, nostalgia, or an attempt to prove that a good melody outlasts any trend? Let’s find out. The track opens with a piano part, and the first thing that strikes the ear is the recording quality of the instrument.

Kennedy, who took on the producer role, clearly spent time finding the right sound. The piano here is recorded to convey its physical nature: you can hear the resonance of the strings, feel the weight of the hammers striking them, and there’s that sense of space.

DeAngelis sounds tired, yeah, but there’s steel in there too—the voice of someone who’s taken hits and keeps walking. It’s vulnerability without the collapse, resolve without the bravado. His musicians play solidly, the production is clean, the melody is memorable, the lyrics sincere. “In This World” is a song for the ages. Kennedy produced the track so it could sound relevant even 100 years from now.

Because there’s a difference between blindly copying a formula and consciously using tradition. DeAngelis, after all, manages to catch this subtle distinction. He takes the tools and techniques that worked for his predecessors but applies them with enough sincerity and technical mastery that the result sounds alive, and the task is to understand whether that’s enough in 2026.

Great artists take tradition and reimagine it, find new meanings in familiar forms, make listeners hear the old in new ways. A good craftsman knows how to make something right. Matt DeAngelis is exactly that kind of craftsman, and “In This World” proves that craftsmanship never goes out of style.

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