How Omar Apollo’s Heartache Became My Evergreen
My senior year of high school was a blur of endings and beginnings. I was moving through heartbreak—both romantic and platonic—and trying to make sense of all the versions of myself I had to leave behind. Everything felt so temporary, so fragile. But somehow, a month before graduation, I found Ivory by Omar Apollo. At a time when I didn’t have the words for what I was feeling, Ivory said it all, especially the song “Evergreen,” which rocked my world at the time.
Released in 2022, Ivory is Omar Apollo’s debut studio album, but it feels like so much more. It feels like something that’s lived a thousand lives. Apollo pulls from many different sounds like R&B, funk, soul, pop, rock, even the occasional corrido. He somehow blends them into something cohesive and entirely his own. The genre fusion isn’t just for show; it reflects his Mexican-American identity, his queerness, and his emotional range.
Ivory is full of themes that mirrored what I was feeling at the time: heartbreak, longing, desire, confusion, identity, connection, and disconnection. Songs like “Bad Life” and “Petrified” will have you rethinking every life decision, while others like “Talk” and “En El Olvido” explore what it means to want something (or someone) you know might never be fully yours. Apollo writes about love and pain with a kind of honesty that made me feel seen in ways I hadn’t expected.
But at the end of the day, I always came back to Evergreen.
That song hit me like a TRUCKKKKK. There’s no other way to say it. I listened to it once and had to sit in silence afterward. It wasn’t just about a breakup, it was about remembering my worth in the wreckage. About realizing that I had spent so much time trying to prove I was lovable that I hadn’t stopped to ask if the person I was trying to prove it to even deserved me in the first place.
The metaphor of an evergreen—a tree that stays alive and green through all seasons—was exactly what I needed. Omar wasn’t just singing about love lost; he was singing about the kind of growth that hurts but heals. When he gets to the line, “You didn’t deserve me at all,” it doesn’t come off as bitter. It comes off as clear. Honest. Reclaiming.
For me, Ivory became a part of my own growth. It held space for all the feelings I didn’t know how to name. And it taught me that resilience doesn’t always look like moving on—sometimes, it looks like staying put. Feeling everything. Not hardening. Choosing softness even when the world tells you to toughen up. Apollo’s music reminds me that heartbreak isn’t the end of the story. It’s part of the bloom. Heartbreaks pass, but the things that help us heal? Those are the things we keep.
