Chris Lanzon

Sydney-born Chris Lanzon returns to the roof five years after his first session for New York, Falling Apart, stepping back onto the rooftop with a bigger arrangement and two songs for a proper reintroduction: Dinner Party and Weatherman.

By the time Chris Lanzon dropped New York, Falling Apart, he had already lived one whole music career in public and quietly started another. The Sydney artist came up on TV talent shows and teen pop with In Stereo, then walked away from that machine and rebuilt himself at home with a laptop, a guitar and a steadily growing online crowd. His solo run has unfolded across EPs Melancholy, Far From Perfect, Parkside and Angel Litany, leading to his debut album You’re Missing The Best Part hitting the ARIA albums chart in late 2025.

Where those early solo tracks leaned into hushed, bedroom-scale indie pop, New York, Falling Apart was a turning point. Written over Skype with LA musician Franco Reid during lockdown, it takes that diaristic writing and drapes it in a wider, more cinematic sound: woozy synth lines, a thicker drum pulse, guitar still sitting at the centre. He has talked about using the track as a chance to lean further into the electronic side of his listening diet while still keeping the indie bones intact.

Lyrically, the song plays in two frames at once. On the surface it is a love letter to New York, written by someone who only got a brief taste of the city and has been replaying it ever since. Underneath, it is about hanging onto a relationship that has already started to slip, using the idea of the city as a stand-in for everything you are scared to lose. That tension between romanticising a place and watching something fall apart in real time is what keeps the track from being just travel nostalgia.

Like most of Lanzon’s work from the Far From Perfect era, New York, Falling Apart came together in his bedroom studio, self-recorded and mixed, with mastering handled in New York to finish the loop. The EP it lives on charts life after the supposed happy ending of his first project, moving into doubt, self-interrogation and the awkward process of accepting that things rarely line up neatly.

Since then, Lanzon has kept scaling up without losing that home-built feel: more EPs, coverage from outlets like NME and Rolling Stone AU/NZ, a dedicated fan community across Discord, Substack and socials, and now a debut album that pushes his sound into bigger, live-ready territory. Through all of it, New York, Falling Apart still reads like an early thesis. It is the moment where the kid in his room starts writing for the skyline and, somehow, the songs keep feeling intimate anyway.

“New York, Falling Apart”. “New York, Falling Apart” considers how missing a person or a place are two sides of the same coin. “It’s a bit of a double meaning. I think on the surface level, it tells this story of kind of longing for this lost relationship, trying to hold onto something that’s just not really there anymore,” Chris says.

After a fleeting trip to the USA in 2019, Chris worked with LA-based songwriter Franco Reid over Skype to craft the track. Having fallen for New York City, now completely out of reach due to the pandemic, the two concepts merged.

“I was like, “What if we kind of switched the idea? Instead of singing it directly to a person or a thing, what if we’re singing it about the city itself?” It became this kind of weird vibe of me saying goodbye to a city that I can’t stay in anymore because of the pandemic and everything else,” Chris says.

All of this artistic growth comes to fruition on Lanzon’s long-awaited debut album, You’re Missing The Best Part, released in late 2025. The album’s title hints at the record’s overarching message – a gentle reminder not to let life’s fleeting moments pass by unnoticed. Musically, it continues the trajectory of his earlier work while expanding the palette. Lanzon’s songwriting remains cathartic and “hauntingly honest” , but the sound has blossomed from the sparse bedroom productions of his first EPs into a richer, bolder indie-folk/alt-pop blend. Take the single “Yo-Yo (It All Comes Back to You)”: built on a gritty drum loop and steady bassline, the song marries Paul Simon-esque folk warmth with modern alternative textures in what Lanzon himself calls “Paul Simon meets Mk.gee” . It’s playful on the surface, yet rooted in the kind of introspection that has defined his solo catalog. Throughout the album, gentle acoustic guitars, plaintive piano, and subtle string arrangements intertwine with electronic flourishes, always leaving space for Lanzon’s earnest vocals front and center. Lyrically, he wears his heart on his sleeve – reflecting on love, personal growth, and the resolve to embrace hope even when life grows heavy. In many ways, You’re Missing The Best Part feels like the culmination of a journey: the sound of an artist who has steadily grown into himself, now confident enough to let light peek through the clouds of melancholy.

Notably, Lanzon’s evolution hasn’t gone unnoticed. The album debuted on the ARIA charts and stands as a testament to his growth as a songwriter and producer . Five years ago, Chris Lanzon was known primarily to reality TV viewers and teen pop devotees; today, he’s an indie artist with a clearly defined identity and story to tell. You’re Missing The Best Partsolidifies Lanzon’s transformation from boyband graduate to a mature artist with a voice all his own. With its introspective themes and expansive soundscapes, the record invites listeners to share in his hard-won optimism – reminding us, as Lanzon has learned himself, not to miss the little moments that make life worth living.