Alexz Johnson – Skipping Stone – The Brown Noise Article
This comes from The Brown Noise, who have reviewed other artists like Lana Del Ray, Drake, and others and focus on music reviews on their website. This is the well worth the read. 🙂
2012 will be remembered as the year that guitar-based pop music blows up again. Thought Lady Gaga and her ilk have dominated the past three years with their deadly infectious, four-on-the-floor electroclash, 2011 saw artists strumming a good old six-string beginning to regain their foothold on pop radio again. Beginning around the time Mumford and Sons had a sleeper hit with “The Cave”, organic arrangements and live drums regained their cool factor, and artists from Lady Antebellum to Adele quickly capitalized. With indie acts such as Foster the People, Grouplove and fun. doing unprecendented numbers on the pop charts, it looks like the stage is finally set for the guitar to make a full-blown comeback, and for artists like Alexz Johnson to finally get the break they’ve needed.
Johnson is no stranger to the machinations of the music industry. The singer recieved attention from Epic Records and Capitol late last decade, but as anybody who saw Capitol drop Kanye West early in his career or Epic fumble around trying to market Nipsey Hussle can attest, the major labels don’t know anything about anything, and she was let go during reorganization. Just because an artist is dropped from a label, however, doesn’t mean they aren’t talented, and a song like “Skipping Stone” would certainy suggest that Johnson knows how to write, and surely knows how to sing.
“Skipping Stone” is a pop-country slow-burner that owes as much to Aretha Franklin as it does to Adele. The song was masterminded with the help of engineer Greg Wells, who, among others, has produced for OneRepublic. OneRepublic had a similar problem back in 2005 – after they were dropped from Columbia and their album was shelved, the band had nowhere to turn, until Myspace (remember that?) and a couple great singles reinvigorated their careers. Wells knows how to give a band a second act, and wisely showcases Johnson’s raw wail, whipping up a tornado of drums and strings around her beautiful, pure voice. She paints an evocative picture, too, referring to her old beau’s “blueberry lies” and recalling how she was “left in the desk/now it’s time for school”. Canadian radio’s gonna eat this up, and with any luck, Johnson will cross over into the U.S. as well. The stage is set. The music’s there. Now Alexz Johnson just has to wait for her audience to come around.
