FEATURE:
My Five Favourite Tracks of 2021
PHOTO CREDIT: Justin Hardiman
Leon Bridges - Why Don't You Touch Me
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I am being a bit cautious…
PHOTO CREDIT: Justin Hardiman
when it comes to the five best tracks of this year. As there is still enough time for a song to steal in there, I am pretty sure about my first few selections. I especially love Leon Bridges’ Why Don’t You Touch Me. A typically stunning release from the Texan artist, it is taken from his new album, Gold-Diggers Sound. That was released back in July. That album ranks alongside the best of this year. I love Why Don’t You Touch Me, as it is the best track on the album. It is also a song where its visuals were split into two. You can see the effort that Bridges and his team put into making the videos as stunning as possible. At a time where I don’t think videos are as detailed and original as they could be, Why Don’t You Touch Me looks amazing! This is what Revolt said about the two-part video earlier in the year:
“Leon Bridges is steadily prepping fans for the release of his July project Gold-Diggers Sound. First up was his “Motorbike” single, and now he returns with his “Why Don’t You Touch Me” offering, which arrives with visuals that are split into two parts. On the song, Leon sings about coming to terms with when two lovers may be losing their fire:
I‘ve been feeling way too undesired, before the flaming out, all around, this was all on fire/ I can feel the distance go for miles/ But cold is all you are and it’s causing chills, what’s with all this? You won’t even talk about it
Can you be honest, is you just running out of thrills?/ ’Cause every time you put me second, yeah/ Girl, make me feel wanted, don’t leave me out here unfulfilled/ ’Cause we’re slowly gettin’ disconnected, yeah
In October of last year, Leon Bridges tapped in with one of R&B’s favorites Lucky Daye for their “All About You” collab. He also shared a few words about how it came about. “For this song, we set out to bring back the energy of some of the ‘90s R&B greats we grew up listening to,” Bridges said about the song via press release. “The way [collaborator] Lucky [Daye] and I met was completely organic. One night when I was out on the town in LA, I ran into a friend of Lucky’s who suggested that we should collaborate.”
Leon Bridges’ last full-length release was Good Thing back in 2018, and he has released a slew of singles since then like this year’s “Sweeter” featuring Terrace Martin, and also his four-track collaboration project Texas Sun with Khruangbin”.
With the single released on 17th June, it was a nice mid-year treat for us all. I have been a fan of Leon Bridges since he released his debut album, Coming Home, in 2015. He delivered an assuredly sublime and remarkable song with Why Don’t You Touch Me. One of the very best songs from Gold-Diggers Sound, go and listen to the song if you have not done so already. I have been playing it a lot since it came out. I also reviewed the track and was amazed by its video (I reviewed the song and included the first of the two videos).
I will finish off with a snippet of an interview from The Guardian, where we get a sense of what it was like recording Gold-Diggers Sound. The album, as noted, is Bridges at his most vulnerable:
“After finishing Good Thing, Bridges, Grammy-winning producer Ricky Reed (Halsey, Lizzo) and guitarist Nate Mercereau decided to make a third record that better reflected the broad range of Bridges’ influences – everything from Ginuwine’s irrepressibly sexual R&B to Townes Van Zandt’s despondent country. Moreover, Bridges hoped that in doing so, he would challenge some people’s myopic notions about the kind of music he should be making.
“One thing I’ve noticed is that fans tend to want to put boundaries on Black expression. If I wear a grill or dance to some hip-hop with my homies, people are in the comments like, ‘What happened to …?’ ‘I wish you were …’ They want me to play it safe,” Bridges says. “I can get down on some Marvin Gaye shit and some Young Thug shit, and it’s all us. This is our culture.”
To make the record, he, Reed and Mercereau drank tequila in the afternoon and coffee at night, piecing together songs from extensive jam sessions. Reed pushed Bridges to reveal more of his personal life on record. “Our sessions were like noon to five,” the producer explains. “Then every night Leon goes out, does his thing, and comes back the next day: ‘Ah, it was crazy, man. We started here, then went there, and had dinner with so-and-so.’ And I’m like: can I get that guy in the studio? Can we get night-time Leon on record?”
Gold-Diggers Sound offers sides of “night-time Leon” – the aforementioned Magnolias or the southern blues-soul-gospel hybrid Sho Nuff – but it also shows Leon at his most vulnerable and political. Sweeter finds Bridges yearning for peace for Black people, an escape from “those judging eyes”. Though the pandemic stalled his plans to release Gold-Diggers Sound in 2020, Bridges released Sweeter at the height of last year’s protests against police brutality. He couldn’t remain silent”.
One of the truly great tracks of this year (I am including singles as opposed album tracks), Why Don’t You Touch Me is a pearl. I know that Leon Bridges will continue to make sensational music for years to come. Tracks like Why Don’t You Touch Me are proof of his…
IMMENSE talent!