Having soul in a song isn’t just about putting forth a powerful vocal alone. It’s about having an intimate relationship with the lyrics, an appreciation for the depth of a harmony moving from one verse to the next, and accentuating the rhythm of the music as to draw as much emotion from the backdrop as possible. Simply put, unless you’ve got the kind of talent Sandy T does in her new single “Fall 4 You,” it might be best to avoid using the term soul to describe your music, as the sophistication behind the songcraft commands a lot more respect than the status quo in pop calls for.
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The string play in this track is pretty funky and arguably lends a more colorful foundation to the song than we would have been treated to otherwise, and I think Sandy T was wise to give the guitar parts as grand a role in the arrangement as she did. Rather than trying to put all of the weight on the percussion alone, or even the melodic bottom-end, she’s spreading out the sonic distribution in “Fall 4 You” to create something full-bodied and organically larger than life, which is a lot harder to do in the studio than you might be thinking.
There’s a generous bassline afforded to this single, but this isn’t to say that Sandy T doesn’t know how to straddle it like a legend. Contrarily, she’s got such a professional-level control over the strengths of the low-end tonal presence in this track that you would assume she’d spent even more time in the spotlight than she has. She’s a veteran of the game, but this is a performance that shows us she’s both wise and fresh with her creative output, which isn’t something I can say for all of her peers.
This beat is Sandy T’s from the get-go, and I like that she isn’t chasing a big percussive force to shape the chorus in this track. There’s nothing worse than an unbalanced arrangement in this kind of a single, and to her credit, I don’t get the impression that we’re listening to an artist who would present us with something as predictable and unfinished as all that. She knows what she’s doing both behind the board and the microphone the same, and she doesn’t mind giving us a little flex in “Fall 4 You” if for no other reason than to remind us of how skilled she really is.
Equally as melodic as it is enticing and sensuously constructed to immerse us in passion from beginning to end, I think Sandy T’s “Fall 4 You” does her brand a lot of good and only further elevates her status above that of her contemporaries in the American underground today. This is a premier exhibition of her technique and chosen aesthetical direction, and while it lacks some of the grandiosity that her previous cuts have been steeped in, I don’t know that this isn’t one of her most efficient examples of brilliance thus far.
Troy Johnstone
The music of Sandy T has been heard all over the world in partnership with the radio plugging services offered by Musik and Film Radio Promotions Division. Learn more https://musikandfilm.com