I’ve been trying to write this review of Wyatt Flores’ Scared of Heights since it came out on July 31, and for some reason, I just couldn’t do it right away. It wasn’t because I didn’t have anything to say about the album. If anything, it was the complete opposite. I had too much to say, and I wasn’t quite sure how to put all of it into words.
I needed time to sit with this album. I needed to listen to it in different places, at different times, and in different moods. I needed to let certain songs grow on me and let certain lyrics sink in. There are albums you can listen to once or twice, pick your favorite songs, form an opinion, and move on. Then there are albums that follow you around for a while. Scared of Heights has been one of those albums for me.
The more I’ve listened to it, the more I’ve realized that this isn’t an album I wanted to rush into reviewing. It deserved more than a reaction after the first few listens. There is so much happening underneath these songs emotionally that I think you almost have to live with the record for a little while before you really understand what Wyatt Flores is trying to say.
At its core, Scared of Heights feels like an album about fear. Not necessarily the obvious kind of fear, either. It’s about the fear that comes when you finally have something worth losing. It’s the fear of success after spending years chasing it, the fear of loving somebody because they might eventually leave, the fear of disappointing the people who believe in you, and maybe most importantly, the fear of wondering whether you’re actually good enough for the life you’ve worked so hard to build.
That’s what makes the title Scared of Heights so perfect. It isn’t really about being afraid to climb. It’s about what happens once you get high enough to realize how far you could fall. That idea hangs over the entire album. There is this constant tension between wanting something and being terrified of what happens once you finally get it.
Musically, this record also feels like a major step forward for Wyatt. It doesn’t sound like he was interested in simply making another version of Welcome to the Plains. The production is bigger, there are more rock and pop influences mixed into the country and Red Dirt foundation of his music, and there are moments where Wyatt seems completely comfortable pushing against whatever expectations people might have placed on him.
I can understand why that evolution might take some getting used to for listeners who fell in love with the rawness of his earlier music. There were even moments during my first few listens where I wasn’t completely sure how I felt about some of the production choices. But the longer I sat with the album, the more those choices started making sense. Wyatt isn’t trying to recreate an earlier version of himself. He’s growing, experimenting, and figuring out what kind of artist he wants to become.
More importantly, underneath the bigger production, the songwriting still feels unmistakably like Wyatt Flores. The songs are restless, vulnerable, uncomfortable, and painfully self-aware. He has always had an ability to make deeply personal emotions feel universal, and Scared of Heights might be the strongest example of that yet.
Opening the album with “Hate Myself” immediately tells you what kind of record you’re getting into. There isn’t much easing into the emotional weight of this album. From the beginning, Wyatt throws you directly into an internal battle. Songs like “Hate Myself,” “Sober For a Month,” “Drive All Night,” and “Not Good Enough” all feel connected by this sense of someone trying to outrun his own thoughts while knowing that eventually he’s going to have to face them.
“Not Good Enough” especially captures one of the biggest questions running through the album: What happens when everything you’ve been chasing starts happening and you still don’t feel like enough? Success doesn’t automatically erase insecurity. Love doesn’t automatically erase the fear of losing someone. Growing older doesn’t mean you suddenly understand yourself. Sometimes getting everything you thought you wanted only introduces an entirely new set of fears.
Then you reach the title track, “Scared of Heights,” and suddenly the entire album starts coming into focus. To me, this is the song that unlocks the record. The metaphor is simple, but incredibly effective. The scary part isn’t necessarily reaching the top. The scary part is knowing that once you’re there, you can fall.
That idea can apply to almost everything Wyatt explores on this album. In a relationship, it becomes the fear of commitment and heartbreak. In a career, it becomes the fear of success and failure. In life, it becomes the realization that caring deeply about anything means accepting that one day you might lose it.
There is also something incredibly human about the self-sabotage that comes with that fear. Sometimes people would rather destroy something themselves than wait around wondering whether it will eventually be taken away from them. There is a strange comfort in controlling your own disappointment. Throughout Scared of Heights, Wyatt seems to wrestle with that instinct, to run before he can be left, to doubt himself before somebody else can, and to prepare for the fall instead of enjoying the view.
Then there’s “Half The Man,” which might be one of the most emotionally impactful moments on the entire record. The song brings family into the larger conversation happening throughout the album, and that adds another layer to everything Wyatt has been wrestling with. There’s something powerful about hearing a young songwriter look at the people who raised and shaped him while simultaneously trying to figure out what kind of man he is becoming.
Songs about family can hit differently because they force you to think beyond the artist singing them. You start thinking about your own parents, grandparents, siblings, or the people who helped make you who you are. You think about the things they sacrificed, the lessons you didn’t understand when you were younger, and the strange realization that comes with getting older and finally beginning to see those people as human beings rather than simply the roles they played in your life.
The back half of the album is where Scared of Heights really started sticking with me. Songs like “South Dakota,” “Sleepless Lullaby,” “God Forgives,” “Runnin’ On E,” “The Way I Do,” and “Tulsa and Eleanor” give the record room to breathe while continuing to explore the exhaustion, uncertainty, regret, and longing underneath everything that came before them.
“Sleepless Lullaby” and “Runnin’ On E” especially capture something I think this album does incredibly well: exhaustion. Not some dramatic, cinematic breakdown, but the quieter kind of exhaustion that comes from carrying too much for too long. Being tired of thinking. Tired of questioning yourself. Tired of trying to become the person everybody expects you to be. Tired of wondering whether the decisions you’re making are the right ones while knowing life isn’t going to stop long enough for you to figure it out.
By the time the album reaches “Tulsa and Eleanor,” I don’t think you’re supposed to feel like everything has been resolved. That would almost go against everything the album has spent its runtime establishing. Life rarely gives us a clean ending where every insecurity disappears, every relationship makes sense, and every question gets answered. Sometimes you just keep going.
And maybe that’s why this album has been so impactful for me.
I think part of the reason I’ve struggled to write this review is because I kept trying to figure out exactly what I thought about Scared of Heights, while the album kept making me think about things outside of the music. That’s usually the sign of a record that has really connected with me. At some point, you stop hearing only the artist’s experiences and start putting your own memories, relationships, mistakes, fears, and people into the songs.
There are feelings throughout this album that almost anyone can recognize. Feeling like you aren’t enough. Wanting something desperately and then becoming terrified once you actually get close to having it. Missing people. Trying to make your family proud. Being exhausted but continuing anyway. Loving somebody while knowing that loving them means giving them the ability to hurt you. Looking at who you’ve become and wondering how much of the person you used to be is still there.
That is why I needed time with this album before writing about it. I didn’t want to review Scared of Heights based entirely on which songs immediately grabbed me or where I thought it ranked in Wyatt Flores’ catalog. The more I listened, the less interested I became in those questions.
What interested me was why I kept coming back.
I kept finding different songs hitting me depending on the day. Lyrics that didn’t stand out during my first listen suddenly became the lines I couldn’t stop thinking about. Songs I initially thought would be somewhere in the middle of my ranking became some of the tracks I returned to most. That’s the kind of album Scared of Heights has become for me.
More than anything, this record feels like Wyatt Flores standing at a strange point between the person he was and the person he is becoming. His career has grown, his sound is evolving, and expectations around him are getting bigger. Instead of pretending that reaching that point has answered all of his questions, he made an album about how frightening it can be when those questions only become louder.
There’s something incredibly meaningful about that.
We spend so much of our lives believing that reaching a certain point will finally make everything make sense. If we get the job, find the person, reach the goal, make enough money, become successful, or finally prove ourselves, then maybe we’ll stop being afraid.
But sometimes you finally reach the place you’ve been climbing toward, look around, and realize you’re still carrying every insecurity that climbed up there with you.
Maybe that’s what being “scared of heights” really means.
After sitting with this album for the past few weeks, I think that’s ultimately why it has affected me as much as it has. Scared of Heights isn’t a record I listened to, loved for a weekend, and moved on from. I’ve carried it around. I’ve thought about it when I wasn’t listening to it. It has made me think about success, failure, family, relationships, growing older, and the strange ways we sometimes protect ourselves from the very things we want most.
Maybe that’s the greatest compliment I can give an album: it made me sit with it. And maybe that’s why it took me this long to finally write this review. I wasn’t trying to figure out whether Scared of Heights was good. I was trying to figure out why it meant so much to me. And I think I’m still figuring that part out.
