Without You
No, not the Badfinger song turned into a hit by Harry Nilsson and remade by Mariah Carey, but a new production by an acolyte of Diplo, Dillon Francis.
Huh?
Released Tuesday, if you go to the iTunes Store, you’ll see there are 78 reviews, and 71 are five star. I know, I know, the fans love it. But isn’t that just the point?
In other words, yesterday this track was at the bottom of the iTunes chart, but last night Tom Windish, Dillon’s agent, told me he was good for 2,000 tickets a night, if not more.
So listen to the track… It sounds like an English new wave production from the eighties until you hit the electronic elements. And I mean that in a good way. You know, the intimacy, with the vocal melody, and no covering up of the thin voice. Yup, today everybody wants to sound like everybody else, and they lose their personality in the process. But the slight voice in this case adds intimacy. Instead of swinging for the fences, Dillon Francis is just trying to hit it over the infielders’ heads. He doesn’t want to crush the game, but be part of it. In other words, you can be included. It’s like catching the eye of that imperfect girl at the club or the party. Everybody’s pitching and fantasizing about plastic-surgeried airbrushed stars. I ask you, how do you kiss Kim Kardashian’s lips? Inflated with a rubbery substance, does she quack when she makes love?
In a world exceptionally phony, “Without You” is positively real.
And, as I stated above, it’s not a home run. But it’s infectious. Not something you need to listen to forever, but you need to hear it a few times through and you want to tell your friends about it and you want to go to the gig to feel good. And since Francis has been at it for a few years, there’s more than the “hit” to experience live.
In other words, what you considered mindless, beat-driven music may not be. Maybe the deejays are coming closer to the melodicists, the singers and songwriters. Or maybe it’s the reverse, the singers and songwriters are moving towards electronics. But the point is this is new, or at least different from what has been proffered for years.
I don’t want to beat a dead horse. I don’t want you to tell me your metal band is better. I’m just e-mailing you this because it portends possibilities.
