Susan
Calloway - Time for This
Hailing
from the Motor City, Susan Calloway’s path through modern music has led her to
occupy some of the world’s great stages from London, Tokyo, and New York City.
She’s earned a great deal of much deserved success from her contribution to the
Final Fantasy video game franchise with the song “Answers” and that
collaboration with producer Gerard Smerek continues with the singer’s latest
single “Time for This”. If this isn’t a personal bit of songwriting, Calloway
certainly treats it as a full representation of personal experience. The song
clocks in at a little less than four minutes, but the spartan arrangement and
the power of Calloway’s vocals invokes an entire universe of experience and
emotion far dwarfing its relatively brief duration. Smerek’s production brings
together the narrow range of musical elements in an intensely artful fashion;
some might think that so few instruments in the mix might make this production
a sure thing, but fewer sonic bases to address doesn’t mean a day off for a
song’s architects. Even the most sparsely arranged tracks can still fall flat.
There’s no danger of that here.
The
vocals are, obviously, why we are here. There’s a physical presence Calloway’s
capable of manifesting the conflicting emotions of the speaker with every bit
of the same impact as the piano playing. It creates a dialogue of sorts between
Calloway and the atmospheric melodic strengths filled in by the piano. The keys
bring a winding, strongly circular quality to the performance that’s formal
without ever sounding ornate and Calloway’s smoky emotiveness strikes a strong
contrast with the arrangement. Calloway’s accompaniment hits the right peaks at
all of the right moments and it gives “Time for This” a rising and falling
sense of theatricality many listeners will love. It is impossible to hear the
musical work on this track and not admire its skill.
Calloway
is a very beautiful woman and brings a definite veneer of sensual allure to an
otherwise emotionally wrought performance. She has rare qualities for a modern
singer. The blues influence in her vocals is extraordinarily powerful and she’s
able to manipulate it at will to maximum effect. She carries each line with enormous focus,
elongating all the right words, pushing the lyric when she needs to. It’s a
lyric that couldn’t be any better suited for the performance. Every word seems
tailored to lock in tight with the musical accompaniment. From a writing point
of view, it’s clear the song wants to accurately represent the experience of
the track but carefully weighs each order to do the situation justice. “Time
for This” accomplishes a lot through plain-spoken honesty and a near perfect
marriage of lyric, vocal, and music under one banner. Susan Calloway has earned
the considerable mainstream attention she’s already received and this song
promises further exposure. “Time for This” gets Susan Calloway’s 2017 off to an
excellent start and the year has scarcely begun.
Bradley
Johnson
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