New song/old song: I love you baby by Surf Mesa feat Emilee

When is a new song not a new song?

In the car recently I heard a cool new song, very chill beat with a contemporary electronic sound. It was extremely easy to sing along and the melody was memorable. Musically speaking, it’s built on a cycle of fifths, but you don’t need to worry if that worries you, just enjoy the music.

Well, if you enjoy this song, you are enjoying the music, but not all of it. Please be patient. Here’s the 

song

Okay, you have heard it, repeated it, loved it, the rest is history.

It’s history because it’s a massively popular song, with more than 77 million youtube views in the official upload by Surf Mesa - ily.  The ily is really important because you might not remember it after hearing the song, no, joking, the lyric is repeated over and over as the 8 bar phrase is  kind of looped. The singer is Emilee, relaxed and chill.

It’s history too because this song has been around before.

You might like this version by Lauryn Hill from 

1998

Surprise, there’s more to this song than Surf Mesa’s 8 bars. This is a guitar and organ mix with of course superb vocals, and passion and energy in the performance with bah bah backing vocals. As always with Lauryn Hill, it’s thoughtfully planned and expertly, beautifully performed.

But let’s go even further back, to Andy Williams and his superb version in 1968. It was really Frankie Valli who got there a year earlier, but I prefer Andy Williams and his smooth voice, meaning smooth as honey. And just listen to the orchestra building from 1’10” and the next 20 seconds, complete with bass trombone …. wow!!! Some of us started learning the trumpet just to play music like this   

This is Andy Williams showing it’s ok to sound passionate and powerful in performance. 

There’s a fun thing about the change from 68 to 20, I mean 1968 to 2020, via 1998: has our concentration span has shrunk so much we can’t manage more than a single 8 bar phrase looped endlessly?

Are we getting to a moment where we can’t sound as though we are making any effort in falling in love, it’s just got to be chill, cool, easy?

Okay let’s not think too much about it. New song/old song, it’s all lovely music whether it’s trumpets or auto-tune. Enjoy

I play music by Adele, Elton John, Robbie Williams and many more at my regular Cocktail & Piano sessions at the Urso Hotel & Spa, Madrid @hotelurso 

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