How can guitars be clean and watery at the same time? When they’re produced and mixed like they are here, that’s how. Featuring the sound of the plectrum on strings, the guitar sound is a major hook in its own right, in a clean and up-front production that demands your attention.
Grooving hard and funky from the outset and driving straight down the middle and with loads of lyrical repetition that drills into your ears, all the while refusing to let go, we’re told ‘Music is my life / Music is my soul’. I believe it! Soulful and full-sounding vocals with authentic sincerity shining through, and backed by some lovely, tightly-performed harmony BVs.
The track is hiding a revelation of its own, too, for all its straightforward and easy-to-latch-on-to hooks. And that is the development of the main vocal melody. With the amount of music I listen to, I’m pretty used to correctly predicting how melody might develop, particularly with a groove as even and funky as this little peach.
We get the first line, some space, an emotive ooh, some more space and then the next line. I’d lay down hard cash that we’re gonna get another ooh, but instead we get a third line of lyric, hard on the heels of the second, instantly making rhythm and flow pop. This might not sound earth-shattering, but it actually kicks hard and insists that you sit up and take notice, focusing in on the lyric. There you are, enjoying the groove, taking your sweet time, cruising in your open-top sports car, when… wham! A bigger sports car roars by – and that’s something that can’t be ignored.
A simple song with a pure heart, funky groove, lovely clean production, uplifting message and a beautifully unexpected turn in the road. Gotta love that.
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