This is Haley Reinhart. Some of you may have heard of her or are familiar with her from American Idol 's 10th season (and her 3rd place finish). I unfortunately did not get to witness her on there, or I would have been obsessing sooner.
A way that I have been describing Haley Rienhart is that she is basically the blonde younger sister of Amy Winehouse that didn't get caught up in drugs. She has the same soulful voice, throwback sound, and sings a lot of love and heartbreak, but it's got a raspy-ness to it. It is so clear and powerful it just hits you.
Back in March, she released the lead single from her debut album Listen Up! titled "Free." Click here to take a listen. It has that bouncy piano that I love and talks about that inevitable break-up that needs to happen, and how you should just break free from it and both parties will be better off for it.
But the song that I have been HOOKED on is the song "Wasted Tears":
All of the soul. All of the jazz. All the trumpets. It has a 40s vibe to it. And the lyrics! They got me and I've been hooked. Unless you are happily married to your high school sweetheart, I think you can identify with this song.
The entire album is laced with songs that have an addicting melody made up of so many instruments that will get stuck in your head. Her sound is an overall, mainstream jazzy/soulful sound. And I've been meaning to talk about this shift in pop music. With breakthroughs being made into the pop music scene over the past couple years by songstresses like Amy Winehouse and Adele, there seems to be an opening for shift to what popular music will be down the road. I think in the near future, many more artists like Haley Rienhart, Esperanza Spalding, and Rebecca Ferguson will make up a significant portion of what you'll be listening to. It will lend to a more soul and jazz-influenced music scene. The music scene is currently flooded with a lot of synthetic beats and pulse pounding tunes (which isn't bad); I just think it's happening a bit too much. There will always be need for dance songs or club hits, but I personally believe this is a shift that will be (and is slowly) taking place in the popular music scene.
Ok, now that I got that out, here are a couple others that I love from Listen Up! - "Oh My," "Undone," "Now That You're Here" <--Live version (aka she can really sing and it gives it a piano bar feel), "Keep Coming Back," and "Hit the Ground Runnin'".
I realize that is a lot (and almost the whole album), but they're all so good. If you only wanna listen to two, I'd recommend "Undone" and "Hit the Ground Runnin'".
THIS could get BIG. So watch out for Ms. Reinhart. I have a feeling she's gonna do some big things :)
Favorite Lyric (from "Wasted Tears"):
"I can see now that the clouds have clear, I've been crying wasted tears."
