Bryn Christopher - 'The Quest'
Man this is a good song. I mean REALLY good. It's got these amazing old-school soul touches, little hints at the past with a backbone of pure hip hop nowness, to keep things nice and meaty. That's a heady fusion, and it takes a superb singer to do it justice. It helps that the song is steeped in melancholy and darkness, which takes the '60s horns out of the retro zone, and adds a dubby swirl here and there, just to give everything an extra spooky whoosh.
Course, the reason I know it's a good song is because it's already been released. Admittedly it was called 'You Know I'm No Good' the first time around, and it was being sung by Amy Winehouse, but still...
Bryn can't even claim not to have heard Amy's song, cos he TOURED with her. Granted, he could have written it before she did, but did he have to produce it in the exact same way too?
Hell, even the big choral backing to the chorus could have been arranged by David Jordan, which makes this a great big grab-bag of everything which is currently succesful in modern pop (apart from Alphabeat, if you played a song with this much darkness near them, they'd only begin to glow even brighter. They are the flourescent strip-lighting of pop, y'know).
But, for all that this is still Amy's song, with barely any alteration, you can't get far past the fact that young Bryn has a blast furnace of a voice. The kind of voice you'd expect to see taking a lead role in some West End musical, admittedly, but not an unwelcome one in the world of chart-based pop. I just wish this thing could have been a bit fresher, ideas-wise.
Or to put it another way, if this song actually WAS a quest, it would be a rubbish one, like trying to be the first man to hop up Ben Nevis while playing Iron Maiden songs on a Sousaphone, or trying to be the ninety-first man to discover the South Pole. But it would be a fun one to watch.
God there are times when you'd think ChartBlog was sponsored by Three-Stars-Out-Of-Five, eh?
Download: Out now
CD Released: June 9th
(Fraser McAlpine)
Comments Post your comment