2 Songs to Get You Over the Wednesday Hump

Not to sound like a burnout dad stuck in a 26-year-old’s body, but remember when they made music? Like actual, heartfelt, soulful, so-catchy-it-hurts music that gave you no other option but to run and slide into a room the moment it came on because regardless of what you were doing you just had to dance?

Just like that.

Now, of course pop stars today come up with great hits. I’m not impervious to the charm of Sam Smith or Taylor Swift. But Otis Redding, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke — I mean those guys were really something else. They were of a different time; authentic. It was a golden era of music with new sounds that shocked listeners and caused real waves.

But you can’t really shock us now, can you? We’re a been-there-heard-that generation. We’re essentially all hipsters who’ve bought the t-shirt and turned it into a tote bag on Etsy before the record label even knew their own signed artist existed.

There’s a new guy who might be able to change that. 25-year-old Leon Bridges. He’s not doing anything technically new, but he is reviving an old sound that hasn’t been touched by the young mainstream since the 60s, really. At least not this well. And he’s using vintage instruments and live recordings (read: no auto-tune) to do it.

NPR wrote: “‘Coming Home’ explores the reasons why gospel meeting soul worked so magically at the dawn of the 1960s: the swing, the intimate relationship between background and lead vocals, the way the descending organ line works a pirouette around the triplets Bridges sings. This kind of perfection is always relevant.”

Perfection is a little dramatic, but in my unwarranted nostalgia for the time I never personally experienced, I honestly can’t think of a better word.

Above images via GorillavsBear.net; homepage image via Austin 360.