{shortcode-001ae354cd71b78792637f63acc4e3af67c7d955}

On his new single “Ghost of Chicago,” Noah Floersch bounces both into his verses and into our hearts with a song fun enough to dance to, but poignant enough to leave listeners pondering its story over and over again.

“I was never looking for her till I found her now I find her everywhere” opens “Ghost of Chicago,” first teased on TikTok earning almost two million likes. In his unique intro, Floersch describes the feeling of falling into sudden obsession with a love interest, and in doing so gives the listener their first taste of a song unlikely to escape hums and whistles for weeks to come.

In a mainstream industry filled with over-processed vocals, Floersch stands out — the first verse feels like it could be sung to you in your kitchen. Yet this only improves the effect of his honestly gorgeous voice; as he slips in and out of falsetto on the chorus line “She’s the Ghost of Chicago,” Floersch doesn’t just sing the words, he captures their lament. While not performing any vocal backflips, Floersch achieves a simple sort of expressive beauty throughout the track.

Paired with this emotion-filled singing, Floersch’s refreshing lyrics only complement his voice. Whether its playing cleverly with rhymes, as with the lines “She's haunting me and honеstly / I'm honored to be haunted by thе likes of she,” or giving the listener a taste of a compelling story, like the chorus does with “She's the ghost of Chicago / She got lost somehow / She gets married tomorrow / Oh, and I'm going down,” Floersch manages to extract surprising amounts of ingenuity out of only a few words.

Long time musical partner and producer Ross Grieb also performs his role well, with the build-up instrumentation of the song matching Floersch’s vocal buildup, and the seamless integration of different instruments creating a satisfyingly unified sound. To a lone piano Grieb adds a hi-hat, guitar, bass, and a wonderful muted trumpet — which began as a TikTok duet with @aliii.catt and ended with Floersch inviting the original creator onto the song. In its music and in its theme, “Ghost of Chicago” grows continually, with every step adding a reason for the listener to move along with the groove.

Scrolling through Floersch’s TikTok feels a bit like discovering little fields of gold: A beautiful melody here, some hard-hitting lyrics there, but “Ghost of Chicago” manages to combine all his best aspects into one, neatly packaged piece of art that just leaves one question — when do we get more?