Between Doubt and Devotion: The Quiet Power of Ben Rankin’s With You

Every artist has a moment where their life begins to bleed directly into the music, where songs stop being performances and start becoming personal documents. For Ben Rankin, that moment feels crystallised in With You, a track that doesn’t just tell a story, but quietly carries the emotional weight of someone learning how to navigate doubt, attachment, and the fragile architecture of trust.

Growing up in Canberra, Rankin has steadily built a catalogue defined by emotional honesty and stylistic duality. Known for blending heavy rock and metal influences with the sensitivity of modern pop songwriting, his work has always existed between two worlds, intensity and intimacy. With You leans firmly into the latter. It is the sound of someone pausing the chaos and turning inward, choosing reflection over confrontation.

The song unfolds around the slow erosion of certainty inside a relationship. Rather than dramatise betrayal, Rankin focuses on the internal conflict, the mental loops, the unanswered questions, and the quiet paranoia that creeps in when reassurance starts to feel unreliable. His vocal delivery mirrors that tension, controlled but unsettled, as if he is holding back something that could easily spill over.

Musically, the track sits in a restrained alternative rock space, driven more by atmosphere than force. You can trace emotional lineage back to bands like Palaye Royale and My Chemical Romance, with hints of the grounded melodic structure associated with Foo Fighters. Yet Rankin’s songwriting instincts, shaped equally by artists like Ed Sheeran and Lewis Capaldi, steer the song away from theatricality and into something far more human.

What makes With You particularly compelling is its sense of proximity. Recorded in Rankin’s home studio, the production feels deliberately close and unfiltered. The mix leaves room for emotional space rather than sonic excess, allowing subtle vocal inflections and lyrical pauses to carry just as much weight as the instrumentation. It feels less like a polished single and more like a late night confession that happened to be recorded.

Positioned within his upcoming album In Memoriam, With You functions as a moment of emotional stillness. While much of the project leans into heavier and more aggressive themes, this track acts as the emotional core, the song that exhales. Fans of Asking Alexandria, Black Veil Brides, I Prevail, The Devil Wears Prada, Avenged Sevenfold, or EDEN will recognise the emotional DNA, not in sound alone, but in the willingness to be vulnerable without offering easy answers.

With You does not resolve its narrative. It simply tells the truth as it exists in that moment, uncertain, exposed, and quietly powerful.

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