BlackSheepLad's Zombie Romance: What the Microphone Hears in a Pandemic Ukulele Waltz
The Cheshire Multi-Instrumentalist Sets a Pandemic Love Song in Waltz Time on Ukulele
A ukulele waltz sits at the heart of Zombie Romance, the folk-pop single from BlackSheepLad, the project of Cheshire singer-songwriter Phil Mellen. Written as the pandemic reshaped daily life, the song uses a zombie metaphor to ask what keeps people human when they are kept apart.
BlackSheepLad’s Zombie Romance has a place in the playlist below, among this desk’s acoustic and folk selections, and every article about the artist sits on the BlackSheepLad profile. It reached AcousticMusic.News through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news sites. Give it a listen, then carry on reading.
Zombie Romance Starts From a Voice and a Ukulele Moving in Three-Four Time
At its centre, the microphone catches two things: a voice and a ukulele in waltz time. That choice matters, because it sets the scale of the whole record. First, a waltz is a dance for two. Second, a ukulele is a small, close instrument with a short, bright decay. So the record starts from intimacy rather than spectacle.
Mellen comes to it with a full toolkit, too. For example, on his own site he lists voice, guitar, drums, bass, piano and keyboards, plus soprano, baritone and bass ukuleles. Letting the smallest of those carry the hook is therefore an act of restraint.
In a waltz, after all, the lilt does much of the work, which lets a tune stay plain and conversational. That is also the kind of writing his chosen influences are known for. Mellen names John Bramwell, Prefab Sprout, Doves, Badly Drawn Boy, Ben Folds, Elbow, Cherry Ghost, Lloyd Cole and Neil Finn. In fact, the list leans towards the North West, and towards songwriters who trust a simple melody with a complicated feeling.
Why Zombie Romance Turns a Horror Image Into a Song About Staying Human Through the Pandemic
The lyric takes a horror-film image and turns it towards tenderness. Zombies are usually the people we no longer recognise. Zombie Romance, by contrast, asks what happens to love when everyone feels a little less alive. Indie Dock Music Blog read it as a song about relationships and the challenges the pandemic brought. It also heard a plea to remain human and keep feeling.
Framing that as a romance gives the song its warmth. Setting it as a waltz, meanwhile, keeps the image of two people dancing in view, however strange the world outside has become. As a result, a playful image sits around a serious centre, a register an acoustic arrangement handles well.
The song also arrived early in the BlackSheepLad story. It first appeared on streaming services in autumn 2020, and it was presented as his new single in February 2021. Indeed, Indie Dock described it as only the second single from the project. The blog also noted support from a number of British radio stations, partly because the subject spoke so directly to that year.
Other blogs followed. The Other Side Reviews covered it in 2021, and Mesmerized Mag and the Portuguese-language Roadie Music wrote about it as well. Altogether, that spread reached well beyond Cheshire.
Three Beats to the Bar and Three Minutes Forty-One Seconds of Cheshire Indie Folk
Structurally, Zombie Romance runs to three minutes and forty-one seconds, a comfortable length for a waltz. Three-four time shapes everything around it. Every bar has a strong first beat followed by two lighter ones. In turn, that pattern gives a vocal line natural places to land, and it gives a listener an easy sway to follow.
The catalogue around it shows where that approach led. She Makes Me Me, the Badly Made EP, Pantomime and Better This Christmas followed in 2021. Then Another Love Song arrived in 2022, the year of his debut album, Love Songs and Laments. Next, the Lost Time EP came in 2023 and Fighting All the Way (On and On) in 2024. In 2025 he released a live recording, Live at Semitone, along with the Love Lie Dance (Film Songs) EP, which brought Zombie Romance back into the set.
Three Songwriters From His Own List of Influences
Three of his named influences offer useful reference points. John Bramwell spent years with I Am Kloot, proving that a small acoustic song with a dry sense of humour could hold real weight. Similarly, Zombie Romance shares that mix of wit and sincerity. Badly Drawn Boy won the Mercury Prize in 2000 with The Hour of Bewilderbeast, a record by a multi-instrumentalist songwriter. Likewise, Mellen’s own one-person range sits in that tradition. Finally, Neil Finn is the name to hold on to, because his melodies show how far a plain tune can travel.
So who is this for? Listeners who like acoustic and folk-pop songs with a light touch and a real subject will find plenty here. Equally, fans of the North West’s songwriting tradition will recognise the lineage straight away. Above all, anyone who remembers how odd the first pandemic year felt will hear something familiar in the lyric.
AcousticMusic.News’s curator team: “The best decision on Zombie Romance is the time signature. Writing a pandemic song as a waltz turns isolation into a dance for two, and the ukulele keeps the whole thing close enough to feel like it was played in the next room.”
Where to Hear Zombie Romance and Follow BlackSheepLad Across Streaming and Social Platforms
Listen to Zombie Romance on Spotify. Then follow BlackSheepLad on Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, YouTube channel, Instagram, Facebook and X. Gig dates and new releases are on his official website.
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