Nicola – Another One Gone
What’s the first advice that lifehack gurus give to the people who pay them small fortunes in hopes that they’re going to be taught how to reach their ideal career? Typically, they’ll advise you to move to the places where things happen, where business is booming, where there are others who think and dream in the same way that you do.
Nicola’s heard the stories as well. While networking with the right people has been known to work in advancing one’s career, and while, since you’re not a tree, you are able to move your body around, don’t be too trusting.
Nothing’s ever this easy, and anything worth something has to have a large price attached to it. In fact, many fame hopefuls have paid the biggest price of all while trying to make their dreams happen.
Nicola’s “Another One Gone” is the modern, highly produced blues-pop song that should go down well with both long-time fans of the genre and casual listeners to the radio. The story, on the other hand, is not one told very often in song form. Just like Tom Waits’s “A Sweet Little Bullet from a Pretty Blue Gun,” this is a tune about those who make promises of fame and the ones desperate to believe these promises. It’s a blues-rock tragedy and one that Nicola knows firsthand happens all the time.
Lindsey Buck – Breathe
A famous music producer who made this fortune by getting points on albums by American hair-metal groups of the 1980s was asked what his greatest contribution was. He answered, plainly and honestly, that what he and those bands managed to do was to lower the bar, and eliminate the need for actual talent when producing chart-topping hits.
I’m sorry to report that the bar has been moved ever lower. And while this seems to be fine for a good majority of listeners, it’s also created a strong opposition of folks who will accept nothing but real talent, soul and hard work. They’re the people asking themselves: “Why can’t our generation have its Nina Simone or Paul McCartney?” And, best of all, they’re working to find them.
Lindsey Buck is an artist who has followed her muse, has paid her dues, and, once she has acquired a considerable amount of musical technique, has brought soulfulness and dreams in order to help make her artistic gifts blossom. “Breathe” is a reminder that most of the greatest music ever composed, like it or not, belongs to the people who worked desperately to acquire the skill that allowed them to do their best work. Only experts get to work on making gemstones shine!
