Every week on triple j’s Like A Version segment, artists perform their own take on a current hit or a classic song.

triple j's Like A Version

Toxic (triple j Like A Version)

Love Is in the Air (triple j Like A Version)

Knowing Me, Knowing You (triple j Like A Version)

Rush

Rush (triple j Like A Version)

Too Sweet

Too Sweet (triple j Like A Version)

“When I Feel Small” is a deeply intimate song about the return of old inner voices — and the courage to stay present when they appear.

It explores the moments when self-doubt resurfaces, not as a failure, but as part of a healing process.
The song opens with harsh, familiar whispers:
voices that question worth, strength, and identity.
They are echoes from the past — learned judgments that once shaped survival, but now challenge growth.

Instead of fighting these voices, the narrator listens — and recognizes them for what they are:
not truth, but memory.
Not reality, but repetition.

The chorus delivers the core insight:
feeling small does not mean being lost.
It means turning inward, learning oneself anew, and allowing vulnerability to become a source of strength.

In the second verse, the song names a powerful realization:
smallness was learned — it was never the truth.
What once felt like weakness was a role shaped by pressure, not by identity.
The bridge marks a decisive shift.
The old self resists, afraid of losing control, demanding silence and submission.
But the new self rises — calm, clear, and grounded — and claims self-knowledge as power.

By the final chorus, “When I Feel Small” becomes an act of self-rescue.
The narrator chooses to hold himself, give himself space, and define his future on his own terms.
This song doesn’t deny pain or doubt.
It reframes them as signs of growth.

“When I Feel Small” is a quiet anthem of self-compassion —
a reminder that becoming whole often begins in the moments when we feel most fragile.

When I Fell Small

Railroad Folk Horror | Building legend to dread realization

Old-timers at the depot tell the story after dark:  
a man walks the rails with a lantern that don't burn with fire,  
checking his list for who's next.

He passed me by last night.  
Looked right at me.  
And kept walking.

Train-rhythm acoustic → tremolo dread → full doom march.  
Old cracked walnut voice, zero vibrato, spoken legend to gravel confession.

Tempo: 58 BPM | Time signature: 4/4

Death has a schedule.  
And it's walking toward somebody.

#RailroadFolkHorror #DarkAmericana #GothicCountry #ManWhoWalksTheRails #DeathLegend #FolkDread #RailWalker #58BPM #4/4

The man who walks the rails

This song is a stark and moving portrait of a family using the relentless rhythm of manual labor to build a barrier against an all-consuming grief. The narrative opens with the mending of a literal fence, a day's cost measured in tired muscles, but the chorus immediately reveals the true purpose of this constant busywork: it is a fragile defense against a pain they feel too weak to face. The "fences" they fix multiply—from roofs to hinges, to peeling doors—each chore a desperate attempt to hold their world together when a central piece, their daughter Cathy, has vanished from it.

The devastating core of the song is slowly revealed through spare, haunting details: Cathy was a "ray of sunshine" who was "hard to manage," and her departure was as quiet and final as a bus stopping outside their door. Her absence has rendered the children quiet and the parents silent, circling each other, unable to "break the ice." They are "attached to peeling doors" because focusing on a tangible, fixable problem is easier than confronting the unfixable void she left behind.

The song fades out on a cyclical and hopeless note, returning to the mended fence as if the entire painful journey has led them right back to the beginning of their avoidance. The final, repeated lament—"if only we could fix / the life we're living"—hangs in the air, a quiet testament to the truth that some ruptures are beyond any repair, no matter how many fences they build to try and contain the hurt.

Fixing Fences....we don't talk about Cathy

I Will Always Love You (triple j Like a Version)

A Thousand Miles (triple j Like A Version)

Super Rich Kids (triple j Like A Version)

Hey, Ma

Hey, Ma (triple j Like A Version)

Everything I Wanted (triple j Like A Version)

Hearts a Mess (triple j Like A Version)

Lights & Music (triple j Like A Version)

Charlie (triple j Like A Version)

eat more greens 

management:
peter.mcgaughrin@redlightmanagement.com & caroline.trout@redlightmanagement.com

Super Rich Kids (triple j Like A Version)

Nilüfer Yanya

Related tracks