I’ll be honest, when Julia Thomsen first put out “Amour” with the full string arrangement, I thought that was it. Incredible song, nice production, moved on with my life. Then she dropped the piano version and I had to completely rethink what I thought I knew about this track.
The piano-only version changes everything. It’s not just a stripped down take on the original, it’s almost like hearing a completely different song. All the lush strings are no longer and what’s left is just Thomsen and the piano having this really intimate conversation.
You can tell why her music has hit 15 million streams when you hear how she handles these quieter moments. She’s not trying to impress anyone with flashy runs or complex arrangements. Instead, she just lets each note breathe and finds all this emotional weight in the simple stuff.
The opening is pretty understated, just these gentle phrases that ease you into the whole thing. But there’s something about the way she plays it that makes you want to pay attention. Maybe it’s the timing, or how she lets certain notes hang in the air a bit longer than you’d expect.
Where the original version built up into this big orchestral moment, the piano version goes somewhere completely different. Instead of expanding outward, everything turns inward. Thomsen finds these interesting harmonic spots within just the piano’s range that somehow feel just as full as the string section did.
By the time it wraps up, you realize you’ve been pulled into something pretty special.
You can listen here.
