MUSIC: John Newman puts everything into his debut album, Tribute, and confuses a John Mayer fan as a result.
By Jonathan Whang, Staff Writer
What do you get when you combine the husky vocals of James Morrison and the style of Adele? For those who have pondered this question their entire lives (as I have), worry no more, for the answer is John Newman. After being featured on two singles by the electronic group Rudimental, John Newman released his debut album. Tribute entered as number one in the U.K. Albums Chart on January 7.
The most notable aspect of John Newman as an artist is his colorful musicality. There are no statistics to verify this, but it seems that most artists only cover one or two genres in their music, such as Taylor Swift with country-pop, Usher with R&B, One Direction with pop, etc., etc., etc. However, Newman takes the road less traveled with Tribute, juggling soul, pop, piano rock and gospel all at once.
Were it not for the intricate drums and the first two tracks of the album, including “Love Me Again,” Tribute might as well be a remastered album from the previous century. Traces of ‘70s disco and ‘90s house can be heard in the rhythm and soulful piano melodies of Newman’s songs. He even goes classic gospel in “All I Need Is You,” opening with a piano riff that sounds suspiciously like Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.”
For those who love “Love Me Again” and OneRepublic, I’m sorry, but “Love Me Again” is as pop as Tribute gets. But for those who love “Love Me Again” and Aloe Blacc, you’ll probably dig the sound of Tribute—choirs, pianos and all.
For some people, Newman may make his music more complex than it should be. But while individual preferences differ, a large variety of music genres is in no way detrimental to the marketability of an artist’s records—an example of this is John Mayer. For over a decade, Mayer has dominated the charts with every album he’s released and sold over 20 million albums; at the same time, his music is one of the most overwhelming messes of genre that I’ve ever heard. For one thing, he changes his style with every record. Four years ago, Mayer was playing rock with Battle Studies. Today he’s playing country-folk—arguably one of the least marketable genres in the modern-day music industry—with Paradise Valley. The thing is, both records have sold really well. And this isn’t to mention the diversity of the songs themselves.
Let’s take “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room” off of Continuum for example. On the album, the song comes off as pop/rock—rock, with enough pop to get it on the radio. But when Mayer plays it live and adds a guitar solo to it, it becomes blues. As someone who likes to know his music thoroughly, this aspect of Mayer drives me insane. But it’s also the reason why his music has never gotten old for me up to this day. And if Newman continues to hit the right notes, hopefully his won’t either.
The genre categorization of John Newman’s Tribute may be mixed, but my rating for it definitely isn’t. It’s a phenomenal album, and I encourage you to get it.
Photo courtesy of www.theguardian.com