I always perk up when I see that an artist lives in or is originally from Gävle, a town in central Sweden which is close to my heart as the one where this Nordic journey of mine began back in 2009 and still the most multi-genre musical place I’ve ever come across.
And that is the case with Clara Mae, a new name to me as we are primarily concerned with starters and breaking artists but in her case one with an extensive back story that includes electronic/dance writing with Kream, competing in Lilla Melodifestivalen, the Swedish televised song competition for children aged 8 to 15, studying jazz vocal and piano, working with producers David Guetta and Tiësto, performing as a backing singer in the Eurovision Song Contest and a three year stint as a member of Ace of Base.
Along the way she’s accrued over 600 million streams as a songwriter and artist and over 800,000 listeners a month on Spotify.
Seasoned artist or not this new single, ‘The Player’, co-written with Johan Lindbrandt and Poppy Baskcomb, impressed me immensely.
It seems like she has changed direction somewhat with her new work and admits to interests from country music here.
The words used in the spoken introduction and outro suggested to me that this might be a symphonic metal track, never mind country; especially “I sought the path less seen”, which has that sub-genre stamped right through it.
But once it gets underway it turns out to be a highly sophisticated country song of the type Taylor Swift used to churn out back in the day, tempered by the angst-ridden vocabulary she uses latterly.
The vitriol runs deep with, “But if you start a fire with me/I’ll burn it all”; “I’d rather go blind than an eye for an eye/If you’re hurting me once, I will give it back twice; and “’Cause if you go and start a war/you should know that I’ve fought in one before.”
The tenet seems to be that the confrontation is a sham, no more than a game people play, but having gotten into it he (I’m assuming ‘he’) has taken on a challenge too far and like all games there can only be one winner.
“So now it hurts/When I’m using your own damn words/But you said it first/And I just said it better”
Having mentioned Swift, I often use Fiona Apple as the analogy in these circumstances because she is the world champion with this sort of relationship Mexican stand-off and I’m confident she would also be impressed by Clara Mae’s lyricism.
Musically it’s catchy enough that you won’t need to hear it twice for it to hook into your memory and the surprise ratcheting up in the tempo in the final verse is the icing on the cake.
I see no reason why ‘The Player’ shouldn’t get serous airplay in the UK and the good ‘ole US of A except that they’ll need the cleaned up version of course which I’m sure already exists for both countries, damn it. (Clue).
The tasty video here was created and produced by CHI CHI Studios.
Clara has been working on an album for the last year or so and I’m assuming ‘The Player’ will feature on it.
Find her on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iamclaramae
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/claramaemusic/
