So, as Culture’s “A Day Off” piece this week, I’m going to enlighten all of you HCX girls to the voice of Laura Mvula, one of the BRITs Critics Choice award nominees. If you’re like me and read every page of Glamour back to back, then you’ll see she was handed the title Voice of 2013 in this year’s March edition by the Glamour team. This is a big deal, right?! Glamour is one of the most famous girls/women’s magazines; the affordable and more readable and relatable version of Vogue and Elle with those amazing Hey It’s Okay pages… Reading about the singer who is due to be the next thing and realising that embarrassingly I’d never actually heard of her, I thought I better turn to my best friend YouTube.
This woman is indeed extremely talented, and most importantly of all, different and original, bringing something new to the musical arena of our world. I checked her out on iTunes too, to try and get an idea as to which songs I should listen to of hers and in what order. I always find that the artists have placed their tracks in the order they have done on their albums for a reason, and I wanted to get a true sense for Mvula’s music before purchasing anything…
If this is even something that is possible to imagine without hearing the music, I put to you that her music and sound is a combination of the two sensational artists, Amy Winehouse and Adele. Having read that, I can imagine you scrunching your face up to try and even imagine such a sound. But this is the beauty of Laura Mvula, she is different to anything I’ve ever heard, and the mixture of her upbeat, happy songs such as Like The Morning Dew and Green Garden, with her more downbeat, mellow tunes such as She and Jump Right Out, provide tunes for every mood and occasion.
Having done a bit of research on her motivations when song-writing, I’ve discovered that Mvula never really has an agenda for her songs, she just tries to tell the story of what she’s feeling at the time. The jazzy chords and the irregular rhythms provide something different to listen to, and you can hear her inspirations from Gospel musicians through the backing tracks to her songs, justifying the label her tunes have been given as Gospel Delia. So follow Glamour’s lead all, and check out this new, up and coming artist up and have a listen – you’ll be ahead of everyone else if you do!
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