Some songs look back because they want to return. Others look back because the past helps them understand the present. “Back when” by VEXA, featuring Anggun Rustinya, sits somewhere between the two. It is a dreamy, atmospheric reflection on childhood wonder, growing older, and the challenge of keeping that sense of possibility alive.
The song begins with a memory: climbing garden walls and trying to “wake the sleeping skies.” From the start, the writing creates a world that feels larger than ordinary childhood. The imagery is imaginative, almost surreal, with flowers, skies, stars, colour, and wind becoming part of a personal mythology.
That sense of wonder is central to the track. The past is not presented as perfect, but it does seem to hold a kind of freedom that becomes harder to access with age. The song’s repeated invitation “Let’s go back when” feels less like a literal desire to travel through time and more like a wish to recover an old way of seeing the world.
The nature-based imagery gives the song much of its personality. “Petals storm the gates of green,” “sprouting life across dead stars,” and the idea of shifting the world back into colour all suggest a struggle between imagination and limitation. The phrase “trapped by roots of time” captures the tension perfectly. Time gives life structure, but it can also make people feel stuck.
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“Back when” follows a cyclical pattern that mirrors the way memory works. It keeps returning to the same central chorus, revisiting the desire to seize the sun and turn “blacks to blues.” The repetition feels intentional, like a thought that keeps returning whenever the present becomes too grey.
The final return to the opening question, remembering how they used to fall “into the sky” leaves the track suspended in a beautiful moment of uncertainty. Did the characters really lose that sense of wonder, or is it still there waiting to be rediscovered? “Back when” is a thoughtful, atmospheric song about growing older without completely letting go of the person you used to be. VEXA and Anggun Rustinya create a world where nostalgia is not simply about looking backward. It becomes a reminder to keep climbing, keep imagining, and keep finding colour in the world.
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