There aren’t many songs that immediately get my attention with the very first notes, but the start of Gavin James’s “Nervous” is captivating. To start with a simple male vocal singing high notes without any music is daring, to say the least. But it’s not really worth losing my head over, because Gavin James originally didn’t dare to kick off his song this way either. I fell for a remix, yet again.
The original version of “Nervous” is beautiful in simplicity. Stripped to the very basics, this songs plays on your heartstrings just by its lyrics, but it’s the Mark McCabe remix that has, currently, made its way to the charts. With the remix, the song also got the addition nickname of being “The Ooh Song”. It’s the oohs that will get your attention, too.
With the beat that has been added to the remix and the stop and go moments, the new music doesn’t take anything away from the intent of the original version. If not anything else, it just adds an extra dimension, but it’s still very sweet and fragile.
The hit song is the delivery of the promise of Gavin James. He was marked as “one to watch” when this year started and finally it seems to happen for him beyond Ireland. All thanks to a remix. For him, as well as Imany, about whom I blogged before, the challenge is now to direct that new found attention to what they were originally doing. When that’s a far stretch from the remix, that could be a massive challenge.
In all honesty, I have seen so many artists get stuck once they got famous for a genre they actually felt represented them the least. I’m sure you’ve heard this too. For instance, many underground stars actually hate the period in which they did a more commercial sound, as they feel they kind of sold out. Regardless of it being their most successful time of their career.
Gavin, however, has actually uploaded a secret weapon to cross the audience over to his sound. He covered Justin Bieber’s “Sorry” and completely made it his own. I think many of you will be surprised, like me, that this song could sound this way once it’s brought back to an acoustic version. Have a listen right here:
I wish I could tell you a little bit of what Gavin has got planned for 2017, but so far, I haven’t been able to find out anything other than him playing gigs in the States until the end of the year. But going on the fact that his album, “Bitter Pill”, was released in 2015, I would imagine he’ll head back into the studio to work on a new album.
