Music Video – Haydon Spenceley

I’ve not written any of these columns in 2016. Partly it’s because I’ve been exceedingly busy. Partly it’s because I wanted to change the focus of them. For a while there back last year I wrote about almost everything that I was sent by bands, artists and PR people. I totally respect the hard work it is to promote yourself as a band, and the hard work that PR people do on behalf of their clients, so I thought it was important to write as much as I could about as many artists as I could when they came my way. Which is noble, perhaps even laudable. Except that these columns started to go down well as people shared them and the sheer volume of music I was being sent became unmanageable. I had folders of stuff to review, organised by release date, then those got too big, and so I just gave up. I’ve been writing c1 review per week fro Drowned in Sound this year. You can find my writer’s profile there by clicking on this sentence.

And so I resolved after a fair bit of stress that I needed to be nicer to myself this year, and not feel quite so beholden to everyone and everything. I said to myself that I’d only write about things that truly gave float to my boat, that the title of this column would once again be apt.

And then I didn’t get round to writing any columns.

Sorry.

I’m trying to rectify this. There’ll be a couple of pieces in the next few days about some fantastic albums and EPs that have given me much joy this year. Some of them you’ll know about. Some you may not. That’s the fun of things like this. So, if you’re a PR person, the review you’re waiting for is probably coming. Unless I didn’t love the record you sent me. In which case it may very not be. Sorry about that.

To start things off again though, it’s a great joy, perhaps even a privilege, to share with you the new single and video from the fabulous TaRee. ‘The Way I Do’, as a song, is a sumptuous piece of soulful R&B. It has a great, sweeping chorus. TaRee’s vocal is a thing of wonder throughout. It’s pretty much the perfect soul single.

But there’s so much more to this piece than that.

When I recorded for the Ghostree EP in Nashville way back in 2011 (in what feels like another lifetime), our producers Kevin Bruchert and Brandon Perdue (who just won a Grammy, way to go Brandon!) had just finished recording the Crazy Love EP with TaRee. The first time I heard that EP was one of a few rare moments when music was not just something I enjoyed, or even loved, but something which touched me to the deepest extent imaginable. That voice, the power in the songwriting. That amazing voice (I know I’ve mentioned it more than once, it’s for effect). Even though the EP was a mere 5 tracks, and was designed as a demo, it stayed with me for near-on 5 years. I returned to it often. Once heard, ‘All We Are’ from that EP cannot be forgotten. It’s impossible.

And I waited. And waited and waited. Waited for TaRee’s inevitable domination of the world of Soul/RnB to come to pass. I was perplexed when it did not, even angry at the injustice of it all, that someone with such talent, so many great songs, could not find ears to hear.

But now, finally, things begin to come to pass, with this amazing project. I could talk about the video and its powerful storyline relating to police brutality and the oppression of Black people, but really you should just watch it, take its message to heart, download the single and support TaRee in her continuing artistic endeavours. There is, honestly, no more exciting a Soul singer in the world right now than TaRee. Don’t miss this.

I’m really pleased today to release the video blog for February’s A Song A Month, ‘Light Has Come’.

Most of you reading this will know that I’m a disabled person. I try not to bang on about it all the time, but being disabled is part of me, it’s not something I can easily avoid, and so instead I try and embrace it, without making a fuss.

Years ago now, I did a Disability Studies Masters by Distance Learning from the University of Leeds. One of the key people on the course, Colin Barnes, challenged me to write songs about my experience of disability. ‘We need more protest songs’, he said. I always fought shy of writing about disability, mostly because I didn’t feel I had the language to write about it well in a song. I haven’t wanted to be a protest songwriter. I’m no Martyn Joseph.

Over the last few years though, perhaps as I get older and some of the idealism of youth wears off, I’ve found myself finding the UK a harder and harder place to live as a disabled person. I personally am a very fortunate man. I have a family, a wife who I love and who loves me. I have a faith which sustains me, and I feel like I’m able to make a contribution to my community, and to society, in a variety of ways. The fact remains though that I am in physical pain of one sort or another all of every day (like a lot of people, a lot of whom have it worse than me) and more than this, mentally and emotionally, I face challenges and hurdles to overcome many times daily, because I use a wheelchair and am disabled. It’s hard to explain or quantify. It’s simply how it is. I hate being disabled. Much as I’m supposed to be well-adjusted to it all, I wish I wasn’t.

But I know full well that my life isn’t as hard as it is for a great many other people, whether they are disabled people, or whether they experience other things in life which marginalise them and make them part of minority groups they never asked to be in. I truly believe that, as people of social conscience, Christian or not, we are called to be prophetic, whether we’re off faith or not. I believe we’re called to stand and hold one another to account for how we treat each other, whether we are ‘successful’, functionally well, impaired, old, young, or anything else. It saddens me to sense a corporate, societal, hardening of heart towards people with disabilities. Perhaps I’m wrong, perhaps I’m entirely mistaken, but that’s my sense.

February’s A Song A Month is a humble offering, inviting us to see that there is a better way to live, a better way to treat one another, to treat ourselves. A Light Has Come.

Thanks once again to Pete Thorn for playing on this song, and his help with the video.

Download the lyrics to Light Has Come by clicking here