Richy McLoughlin Sets Tennyson to Music on “Days That Are No More”
A London songwriter turns a Victorian poem into the first single from True Lovers Knot, an album of English poetry, while starting university at 51.
Some songs reach for the future. “Days That Are No More” reaches back about 180 years, to a poem about the strange ache of remembering. Richy McLoughlin has set it to music as the opening chapter of an album built from English poetry, and he has done it at a moment when his own life is all about beginnings.
“And thinking of the days that are no more.”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Tears, Idle Tears,” the poem behind the song
A poem from 1847, sung in 2026
“Days That Are No More” came out on October 30 and runs 3:32. Its words start much earlier. Richy McLoughlin built the song on “Tears, Idle Tears,” the Alfred, Lord Tennyson poem in which a speaker looks out at autumn fields and finds himself crying without quite knowing why. Each of its four verses ends on the same phrase, “the days that are no more,” and Richy took it for his title.
The music around it came from his collaborator Milo Rei, who wrote the musical themes. So the song is a meeting of three people across almost two centuries: a Victorian poet, a classically trained composer, and a singer-songwriter in London who wanted to know if an old poem could still land on a new listener.
Nine poems, one knot
“Days That Are No More” is the first look at True Lovers Knot, out November 6. Richy has wanted to make an album from English poetry for a long time, and this is it: nine tracks about love, loss, life and death, shaped by Milo’s classical training and themes.
The title does double duty. A true lover’s knot is the old sweetheart’s knot, two loops pulled together so neither can slip. It is also the name of a small British moth, and a moth fills the cover, close up, wings open, every hair of it lit. Love and something fragile that only comes out after dark. For a record about the things we cannot hold onto, it is a fitting pair.
Starting over at 51
The story around the album is its own kind of poem. Richy lives in Chingford, on the northeast edge of London, and he only started writing music in late 2023, instrumentals first. His first vocal single followed in January 2024. Since then the catalog has run in every direction: pop, synthwave, songs with a country lean, dance tracks, and quieter work that leans on poetry. He moves between styles depending on what each story needs, and he keeps a separate home for his urban and dance side under the name NØRDWAVE.
He has also built the whole operation himself. There are releases on Bandcamp, physical editions through ElasticStage, his own podcast, The Richy McLoughlin Show, and radio play in Brazil and around Europe.
And this autumn, at 51, he started university. Richy is now studying Vocal Performance and Songwriting at Point Blank in London, which means classes, vocal practice and learning Logic Pro on top of writing and releasing. What we love is the timing. He is putting out a song about the pull of the past in the same season he walked into a classroom to start something new. “Days That Are No More” looks back. The person singing it is very much looking forward.
Start here
Start with “Days That Are No More,” and if you can, read Tennyson’s poem once before you press play. Then give True Lovers Knot, out November 6, the full nine tracks.
It is an album about what we lose. It comes from someone who is still gaining.
What Stayed With Us
- A Tennyson refrain becomes a song title, and the poem’s question still hits: why do happy memories make us sad?
- An album title that means a lover’s knot and a moth at once, with the cover to match.
- A record about looking back, released the same autumn its writer went back to school at 51.
Listen on Spotify