Shannon Denise Evans has never been one to sugarcoat the truth, and her track “Unbeautiful” is no exception.

Remember being fifteen and absolutely convinced that everyone else had figured out some secret formula for fitting in? That nagging feeling that you were somehow built wrong, like God had used the wrong blueprint when putting you together? Yeah, well, Shannon Denise Evans remembers too. And she’s turned that pain into something pretty damn powerful with “Unbeautiful.”
This isn’t your typical feel-good anthem about self-acceptance. This is rawer than that. Meaner. More honest. Released in January 2020 as part of her EP “Blood,” the track runs just over four minutes but manages to pack in enough emotional weight to leave you winded. Evans, who also goes by “The Storyweaver™” when she’s not busy collecting guild memberships like trading cards, has built something here that feels both deeply personal and universally relatable. The song opens with imagery pulled straight from some fever dream—shamans and seers and clerics, oh my—but somehow it all makes perfect sense when you’re listening to it. It’s like she’s speaking in code that your soul already knows how to crack.
The production work by Alex Venguer, Evans, and Dylan Glatthorn deserves special mention because they’ve managed to create something that sounds both polished and completely unhinged. There’s this underlying pulse throughout the whole thing that feels like a heartbeat that’s been cranked up to eleven.
What really gets you, though, is how Evans handles the whole concept of being “unbeautiful.” She’s not trying to convince you that ugly is the new pretty or any of that Instagram inspiration nonsense. Instead, she’s saying something much more radical: maybe the whole game is rigged, and maybe the only way to win is to stop playing altogether.
The lyrics hit differently when you realize they’re coming from someone who’s actually lived this stuff. Evans has talked openly about being bullied, overlooked, underestimated—the whole depressing catalog of human cruelty that gets unleashed on anyone who doesn’t fit the mold. But instead of turning that experience into a sob story, she’s weaponized it. “You’re unbeautiful… but you’re free” isn’t just a lyric – it’s a battle cry.
This is spectra rock at its finest—that sweet spot where raw emotion meets technical skill meets absolute refusal to apologize for taking up space. Evans’ voice moves between vulnerable and fierce so seamlessly that you forget there’s supposed to be a difference between the two.
https://music.apple.com/us/album/unbeautiful/1816764687
The critical response has been pretty unanimous in its praise, with media outlets like Jukebox Mind, Quora, and Daily Music Roll calling out her vocal agility and emotional depth. But what’s really interesting is how the song seems to resonate differently with everyone who hears it. Some people hear a middle finger to beauty standards. Others hear a love letter to outsiders. Both readings are probably right.
Four years after its release, “Unbeautiful” still feels urgent. Maybe that’s because we’re living in an era where the pressure to be perfect has never been more intense, or maybe it’s because Evans tapped into something timeless about the human experience of feeling like you don’t belong. Either way, the song has aged like good whiskey—it just gets more potent with time.
Evans splits her time between Los Angeles and New York these days, which feels appropriate for someone who’s made a career out of existing in the spaces between categories. She’s not quite indie, not quite mainstream, not quite folk, not quite rock. She’s something else entirely, and “Unbeautiful” is proof that sometimes the best art comes from refusing to be easily categorized.
Nowadays, many of us are still obsessed with fixing what isn’t broken, but SAVARRE™ offers a different solution: embrace the cracks. They’re not flaws to be hidden; they’re how the light gets in. And sometimes that light is exactly what the rest of us need to find our way home.
Visit SAVARRE™’s Official Website for more: https://www.savarre.com