Review: Sleeping At Last offers calming, emotional music

Musical artist Sleeping at Last produces calm music perfect for a lazy afternoon of relaxing or studying. Sleeping at Last is the moniker of Ryan O’Neal, a Chicago-based singer-songwriter.

When the band first formed, it consisted of three members, Ryan O’Neal, Chad O’Neal, and Dan Perdue. Sleeping at Last has been producing music for more than 12 years and was formed in 1999.

They started off as a teenage garage band in Wheaton, Illinois with Ryan playing the guitar and on the lead vocal, Chad playing on the drums, and Dan as the bass guitar and keyboard. In November 2008, Chad announced that he would step down to go and pursue other interests. A couple years later in 2011, Dan also announced that he would step down to pursue other interests as well, making Ryan the only permanent member left. Their music genre is Alternative, Indie, Rock, and Pop and can enrich your playlist.

According to their website, Sleeping at Last has released a number of three full length albums, “Ghosts,” “Keep No Score,” and “Storyboards” as well as 14 albums along with 96 singles. Their most popular song yet is “You Are Enough” released in 2014 in the album Atlas: I. “Already Gone” is their most played song with more than 250 million plays on Spotify, being released in 2016. 

By far my favorite song by Sleeping At Last is “Turning Page.” You might have heard it in the movie “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1.” Ryan was inspired by his friend who suggested he try to make a song for the movie. He decided to make a love song based on the movie being a love story, so it just made sense! Ryan worked very hard on this song, buying all the previous films in the series to study them. He watched the films over and over again to find the right tone and chords for a song. The lyrics in the songs also relate to parts of the movie. Fortunately, his song was accepted and made it into the movie as part of the soundtrack.

According to Concert Archives, the sole remaining member O’Neal has not had any concerts in a while, with the last concert being a little over 8 years ago in 2014. When he would do concerts, he traveled all around The United States going to different states such as Illinois, California, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, Vermont, New York, Virginia, Texas, Florida, and Kansas. From 2000-2014, he had done at least 1 concert each year, with the exception of 2011. The most concerts he has ever done in a year was in 2003 when he did 20 concerts. So far Sleeping At Last has no scheduled concerts in 2023.

I feel that this artist’s songs can make a deep connection with the listener, which is really important because then the listener will enjoy it more. Although any song can make a connection, in my opinion it depends on the lyrics and the meaning behind the song. It also helps make a connection that can trigger memories that listeners will never forget.

For example, you can probably guess the meaning behind the song “You Are Enough.” It is basically reassuring someone that they are worthy and basically enough. This is why people can get emotional while listening to this song because a lot of people in the world feel that they aren’t as important as others, that they aren’t “enough,” but after some reassurance from a song like this, they can start to grow more confident about themselves and start realizing that they are just as important as others, that they are “enough.”

It’s important to have that connection to music like this, otherwise the song will feel like just all the other songs that don’t mean as much. Sleeping At Last is such a good artist because their songs have a lot of emotion in them that can connect with a person on a deeper level.