Until the Ribbon Breaks Celebrates His Sobriety With New Single ‘Everything Else But Rain’

The sense of freedom and self-forgiveness in “Everything Else But Rain” is palpable through its production and lyrics.

The single, dropped Wednesday, marks the musical return of Until the Ribbon Breaks after over five years. The Welsh musician, born Pete Lawrie Winfield, optimistically reflects on his growth and how he left behind the darkness he used to associate with his music career.

“During the decade that I was making music, I hadn’t realized the toll it took on me, emotionally and
physically,” he says in a press release. “I started questioning why I put myself through so much, and why I medicated myself so that I could deal with it. The addiction and Until the Ribbon breaks had become inextricably linked.”

Winfield stepped away from his career completely to see how things would change, but he understood that making music was something he loved and couldn’t let go of forever.

“At that time, performing was not an option. I was a raw nerve, and I could not consider performing without the perceived safety net of substances,” he says. “I thought producing and writing for other artists was the answer.” (He dropped a collab with Finneas in 2021.)

It wasn’t until the pandemic, and the isolation that came with it, that he started to make music again on his own — this time, in a more “authentic” way.

“No one was asking me to make music. No one was expecting me to make music. It was literally the naivety of pressing a button on a keyboard or a drum machine, hearing a sound, and thinking ‘Wow. You can do that,'” he explains.

It was there that “Everything Else But Rain,” his new song featuring Lucius was born. For Winfield, the song contrasts the “defensive” and “angry place” he used to sing from in his past projects.

“I’ve never written from a place of love. I always gave myself an out by creating these dystopian, ‘isn’t it all fucked?’ observations,” he says. “The thing that surprised me about when I started writing lyrics to ‘Everything Else but Rain’ is that I had no interest in that.”

“I wanted to write about forgiveness and hope and redemption,” he adds. “I wanted less distance in my writing, and more direct contact.”

Along with his collab with Finneas on “What They’ll Say About Us” in 2021, Winfield dropped the self-titled Until the Ribbon Breaks in 2018, featuring songs “My Love” and “Here Comes the Feeling.”