This song is really well written, the delicate and spacious verses lead powerfully into the hook section, and this helps that moment really strike effectively. The songwriter’s style of building up structurally has a strong impact, and this you can tell from the song itself – the gentle vocal moments, the simpler melody, moving onwards to the more intense and passionate sounding ones where the melody starts to rise. You can easily hear the strength of the song as working purely on the vocal delivery of it. In other words, an acoustic performance would convey the intensity just as well. However, the instrumentation in this version definitely adds to that build up, to that rising intensity.
The music has the classic sound of a somewhat timeless rock or pop ballad. The piano adds further humanity and realness, the performance here keeps things very real and almost free flowing at times. The performance on the drums furthers this, and everything else that comes into play works hard to keep that intensity moving in the right direction. The finished soundscape works beautifully as a complete unit of artistry.
Those softer moments that lead to the finish have a certain brightness due to the weight and volume of the music featured in the build up. And yet in fact, even after the rise of the musicality, you really notice the lyrics in this final moment, and this concept of still having pride is one that shines pretty brightly in itself. To then listen once more is to follow everything with more intent and to feel it all connect with you personally. The poetry and the personality are well balanced and it makes for an accessible and hugely passionate song that is easy to forget yourself to.
By Rebecca Cullen
Rebecca is a Musician and writer from Manchester, UK, with an MA in Song Writing
