Charley Young’s Hold The Moon is labelled as being Dance and EDM, and as the song starts it’s clear that it’s certainly placed well within its genre. Synthetic plucks and a whirring pad is heard first, quickly developing into an up-tempo four-to-the-floor kick drum pattern.
The song is built on percussion loops with very subtle changes and fills every four bars or so that help spur the song along. Minor adjustments such as these help create a sense of movement and the song being alive, even though all elements except the vocal are either sampled or synthesised.
A Euro-pop infused chorus follows the verse, essentially consisting of only a drum pattern, vocal, a doubling melodic element, and an off beat bass that is heard for the first time – expanding the overall bandwidth of the production, making the chorus feel bigger, and again, more alive.
The post-chorus is an expansion of the melodic idea heard seconds before in the chorus, developing the melody on a synthesised bell sound over a instrumental built on a repeat of the chorus. There’s an interlude before the verse that’s in stark contrast to what had come before, omitting higher, melodic instrumentation with preference to a more aggressive crotchet based hi-hat rhythm and a chant with vocal ad-libs. This provides a perfect transition to the second verse in which the original energy of the song is re-introduced.
The lyrical content is congruous to the title’s suggested themes, with mentions of the stars, the dark, and the sky. This is furthered by a driving, but atmospheric production featuring long reverbs to create a large sense of space, and orbiting delays that pan across the stereo field like comet tails across the night’s sky.
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