Well.
Only here on enlightened conflict will you get a musical review of a country song and a rap song in the same post.
Here you go.
First.
The song Heart of Dixie <and I will connect it to one voice>
I get to highlight a country song.
Heart of Dixie by a young 17 year old named Danielle Bradbery.
Oh.
She won The Voice <just another tv show I don’t watch>.
From Cypress, Texas she won NBC’s The Voice in 2013 becoming the youngest contestant to come in first place.
She has got a nice little country type voice delivering a nice little song.
It’s just a nice pretty little country song. And that’s okay.
Sometimes you shouldn’t overthink music.
Sometimes in simplicity you can find the beautiful.
She sounds young. She is young. And I think that also makes the song a little more thoughtful. While the song is about Life it has such a naïve innocent sounding vocal it makes it real.
Heart of Dixie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BylRObFjmaE
Ok.
Oddly … as I heard this song for the first time … I thought she sounded like Billy Gilman <who is a guy but most famous for his music as a boy>.
Listen and see if you heard what I heard.
Billy Gilman / Elisabeth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY1fQJPv_EA
Oh.
He is the kid who did this spectacular song almost a decade ago.
one voice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NlT-ELVWk0
I apologize to Danielle for thinking of a young boy singing when I heard her song but what the heck … her song, and her voice, could be compared to a significantly worse song.
Next.
Second.
beware a woman with a broken heart
Well.
This is about a pretty cool rap/hip hop song called Beware by Big Sean.
Now.
To be clear.
I have a love hate relationship with rap.
As a lover of words … when rap is done well … it is poetry put to music.
When done poorly it is just painful <and makes you wonder how anyone could mangle the language the way they do>.
And then somewhere in between is the rap song that is so very very close to being perfect.
What I mean by that is this is the rap song where you wish you could call someone up and say “hey … go back into the studio and rewrite some words … maybe ask someone to give you some new words to replace some in the current song.”
This is one of those songs.
It has a spectacular refrain/chorus. The chorus melodically bridges the rap story of the song. In fact … the song is almost worth it just for the chorus.
And most of the rap dialogue is smooth and flows and isn’t silly.
Unfortunately I just typed ‘most.’
But geez … just when you glide into the poetic groove … some incredibly silly and nonsensical rhymes appear … and jolt you out of the groove.
It’s really unfortunate because with a little word help this could have been an A+ song.
So why the heck did I invest the energy writing about it?
Whew.
That chorus.
That musical bridge.
Amazing.
Really really well done.
<beware: there are swear words in this>
Big Sean – Beware (Explicit) ft. Lil Wayne, Jhene Aiko: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-rQZ6IGhCM
Hope you enjoyed.