Connor Riesen Holds the Line on All This Time

Connor Riesen is an Orlando-based producer and artist whose path runs from self-taught piano to French horn in the school band, then into digital production and a body of work that moves between pop, jazz, and piano. He began writing melodies over simple chord progressions in 2019. The debut album In My Mind arrived in 2022. What followed was a steady expansion through the Beginnings volumes, the jazz-leaning twelve-track Stories with collaborators including Lisandra Yero and Sergio da Silva, and the hymn arrangements of Sabbath in C that returned him to the instrument he first loved. All This Time, released in 2025, stands as a focused single that also carries its own acoustic counterpart.

Look at the cover long enough and a different picture forms. A young man in a red sweater stands in a gray room holding a single red heart-shaped balloon by a thin white string. The balloon wants to rise. The string is the only thing keeping it in the frame. That tension is not decoration. It is the entire argument of the release.

All This Time was written for the woman who would become his girlfriend, at the exact moment he wanted to say he loved her for the first time. The produced version opens with late nights and long drives, the everyday scenes that accumulate until the words can no longer stay inside. Soft drums and warm, close production give the track the feel of contemporary bedroom pop, yet the skeleton is pure song form. The vocal sits forward, clear, and melodic, designed to stay in the ear. The pre-chorus lifts expectation with the simple promise to treat her right, then the chorus opens on the title phrase and resolves the waiting. There is no rush. The arrangement understands pacing. It holds the emotion in place the same way the string holds the balloon, letting the declaration arrive only when the weight has been fully felt.

The acoustic version removes the rhythmic frame and the layered production. What remains is voice and sparse accompaniment, most likely piano, recorded close enough that breath and small imperfections become part of the texture. The tempo softens into something more free, guided by the singer rather than a grid. Without the drums the lyrics sit naked. The same images of weekdays spent together and the desire to walk side by side now feel like a private conversation rather than a radio-ready hook. The emotional peak still lands on “All this time,” but the intensity comes from performance alone.

Taken together the two versions do something precise. One version shows the craft of building a modern pop song that can travel. The other shows the same material stripped to the point where it has to stand on its own intention. Riesen has moved through jazz, hymns, and self-taught production without losing the ability to write something this direct. The patience he learned holding long tones on French horn, the years of teaching himself harmony, and the steady accumulation of work all surface here as control. The balloon stays in the picture because someone chose to keep the string taut. The song works for the same reason.