“confident and honest” DJ Annie Red – ‘No You Won’t Bully Me’
The track opens up initially with a fairly retro, trip-hop sort of ambiance; the light synths and notes chosen have a calm and dreamlike nature to them, but as the vocal comes into play things are fairly quickly switched up a fair few notches.
The concept of ‘No You Won’t Bully Me’ is admirable, so in a way, it makes a lot of sense that the leading vocal in this song is the loudest and most striking part of the music. The voice has a lot of character, the performance seems very free, almost childlike at times – a unique sort of energy that could perhaps pass for a freestyle on occasion. The nature of the lyrics and the flow reinforces this idea.
The more you listen, the hook and the beat and those vocal loops really start to become hypnotic and mesmerising. The sound is extremely minimalist, when you break it down – there’s not a whole lot involved instrumentally. If at first it comes on a little strong, intense and unusual, later on the splendour of this is made explicitly clear.
There’s no holding back, and this works well along the theme of not being bullied – the artist featured is exercising their freedom to be themselves, and the sooner you realise this, the greater the song sounds.
“hypnotic and mesmerising”
The rhythm is addictive, the bassline adds to this, and, as mentioned, that hook soon takes hold of you and refuses to let go. The lyrics throughout the verses reveal themselves to be extremely good natured, good hearted, confident and honest, and that’s an important and valuable set of characteristics to express.
It really is the sort of song that perhaps shocks at first, but only briefly, and pretty quickly becomes the anthem of your day, if not much more. The whole thing is incredibly unique and ultimately very free.
By Rebecca Cullen
Rebecca is a Musician and writer from Manchester, UK, with an MA in Song Writing.
