I am a Los Angeles-based twentysomething. I have a profession, and I have a secret life in music, and this blog isn't about any of that. I like Blogger because I can't read what you're thinking.
Friday, February 18
>>ANDY DAVIS' 'CHICAGO CITY OF SHOULDERS'
Between 2005 and 2007, I was near-obsessed with the Nashville alternative pop singer/songwriter scene. Some artists in this scene are writers or co-writers of huge Top 40 hits, and it fascinated me that they had comfortable music careers with relatively large club-capacity followings, while also living relatively anonymous lives. It was the kind of music career I'd always wanted and still kind of do.
This track in particular by Nashville artist Andy Davis (who Dave Barnes had endorsed, who was endorsed by David Ryan Harris, who was endorsed by talented pop-douche John Mayer) really kept me on my toes the first time I had heard it. It still kind of does, despite the fact that I've heard it some 200 times or so.
There is a degree of suspense in it this song that I would owe to odd chord voicings. The verse melody is also very conversational (especially with the lush harmonies in the second verse), and the chorus melody offers a really clever sense of both slight desperation and comfortable finality. It's beautifully weird. The intimacy is also notable. Don't get me started on the chord changes, which is what initially attracted me to this song.
Andy Davis works hard and I admire that. He is raising money for his new album. I want to talk to him on the phone so I am going to sponsor him at that level. No cheesy inauthentic networking. I just want to say hello and say that this one track in particular reminds me that I can still take compositional risks while still maintaining a degree of accessibility.
On a side note, I especially love that contemporary Nashville has an identity crisis; most of its artists don't know whether to be pop, soul, neo-soul, R&B, folk, country, or rock. Its artist community is wildly talented.