Plenty of songs talk about division. Fewer keep the tone practical. “For Real,” the new Eric Hirshberg and Aloe Blacc single, keeps its head down and asks for basic human contact. It’s streaming now and tees up Hirshberg’s next album, More Is Not The Answer, slated for 2026.
The backstory matters a bit. Hirshberg spent years in advertising and then at Activision before pivoting to records. He knows how platforms shape behavior. Blacc has long worked in the space where pop melodies carry social messages. They came to this one after talking about pulling back from phone use and wanting fewer divisive inputs.
You can hear that frame in the lyric. It’s about the unglamorous work of showing up, listening, and disagreeing without turning people into enemies. No magic fixes. No policy prescriptions. Just an invitation to stop outsourcing judgment to feeds.
There’s a mini-doc and interview footage rolling out with the song, which helps the message land with more context. Hearing them say, on camera, how the idea started makes the track feel less like a branding exercise and more like two people testing a hypothesis in public.
Skeptics will say songs like this change nothing. Fair point. A three-and-a-half-minute track won’t fix polarization. It can, however, model a tone that’s in short supply. “For Real” does that without wagging a finger. That restraint is the most useful thing about it.
Verdict: if you want a song that takes the temperature down and still gives you a chorus to carry, queue up “For Real.” If the album sticks the landing on this approach, 2026 will bring a set worth living with, not just sampling.
