she’s too much!
“Too much” usually means someone would prefer you to be less inconvenient. Less excited, less upset, less willing to say what you want. For teenage girls, the difficulty is working out which version of themselves will pass inspection today. Confidence can become arrogance halfway through a sentence. Showing you care risks embarrassment; pretending you don’t can leave you feeling worse. When we last covered Piper Connolly’s “beautiful life”, we were interested in her willingness to be openly enthusiastic about liking someone. Now that track opens her six-song EP, she’s too much!, and the title brings another side of that openness into view: what happens when the feelings you were happy to share become the things people criticise you for? Connolly is 15, an age when you can be expected to know who you are while still needing permission to go out. The EP’s framing leaves space for affection, resentment, confidence and uncertainty to coexist. “bubblegum with razorblades” is a particularly pointed title in that context, putting sweetness and the capacity to hurt in the same mouthful. Still, reclaiming “too much” comes with a potential trap. The pressure to be agreeable can easily become pressure to be permanently defiant, which sounds exhausting too. Sometimes you want to argue; sometimes you want to be liked; sometimes you realise you were wrong. None of those possibilities should cancel the others. That is the useful tension in following Connolly from “beautiful life” to this release. The enthusiasm that first caught our attention belongs within a messier picture, where being direct does not guarantee being understood. she’s too much! gives us a reason to return to that conversation. Who gets to decide when someone’s excitement, ambition or hurt has exceeded its allowance, and why are girls so often expected to keep track?