In the new single “Heart of Mine” by songstress Sharon Rae North, everything starts and ends with our singer’s signature lead vocal, but don’t think that this track is one-dimensional by any measurement. If anything, by structuring everything around the tempered voice North possesses, we get a good handle on how much she’s able to do without having to bring in any of the instrumental big guns that her closest rivals in the American and British undergrounds have been trotting out all year long. She comes ready to roll in this piece, and I’m looking forward to hearing more of what she’s capable of doing in this department.
URL: https://www.sharonraenorth.com/
The guitar part has a lot of sizzle on it in the solo, but this complements the tone of the vocal spectacularly well. Rather than trying to make elements compete with one another for a specific space in the mix, producers are employing a collage effect in “Heart of Mine” that is almost more magnetizing and cerebral for the type of song this is than it is an experimental effort on the part of an artist who is still trying to figure out her place in the hierarchy of pop.
North wants for us to get lost in the tempo of the music as much as we become enamored with her linguistics, and I don’t know that you can compose a track like “Heart of Mine” without this being more than a bit obvious to the audience. She’s got something brooding for us in every inch of this piece, buried just beneath the skin of the arrangement and allowing for us to get an increasingly raw look into the emotions she’s putting on the table here, and that in itself makes this single a very interesting listen for those who really love quality music.
The way “Heart of Mine” was mixed gives it the vulnerable, intimate feel of something recorded from within the tight walls of a smoky nightclub, but without having to listen to our performer over the dull chatter of the crowd between verses. Even if she had recorded this live, I doubt there would be a difference in terms of her charisma; Sharon Rae North comes off as someone who was made for this kind of a medium here, and there’s never a moment where it feels like she’s trying to be someone who she isn’t outside of the studio or the stage the same.
I wasn’t following Sharon Rae North as closely as I admittedly should have been coming into this review of her new single, but now that I’ve got a taste for what she’s done in “Heart of Mine,” I’ll be looking forward to checking out what she’s going to record next and, more importantly, wherever she’s going to be booked for a live performance in the near future. This is a talent too good to remain within the studio, and you’ll see what I mean when you listen to “Heart of Mine” for yourself this September.
Mindy McCall
