Fire or Fear

I'd like to begin this post by declaring myself the true champion of the Procrastination Games. Thank you, thank you - I am not proud. Sorry! 

Now onto the new post - today I will be writing about Authenticity. 

A quick Goodle search will tell you that the word “authenticity” means to be authentic. Why, thank you, Google, that’s exactly as profound and comprehensive a definition as I was hoping to find. Not one to accept defeat easily, and after a quick brainstorming session, I discovered that the definition of “authentic” is “to be honest or real”.

Ah, real…a word thrown around so aggressively these days. Often in order to put something or someone else down so that everybody else can know that the user of the word is in possession of a lot of depth and character. Or simply to hide behind social justice while actively disenfranchising everybody else because #insecurities. You can easily identify these people because they’re always going on about real music and real women and real whatever else, forever damning everything outside their definition of real to the realm eternal non-existence.

But I digress…

What I am interested in is my decision to dedicate the rest of my 2016 to the pursuit of authenticity, aka the pursuit of complete and total honesty in my dreams and intentions. I want to make choices that are true to who I am as person, what I believe in and what I stand for. I want to like the things I like because I like them; I want to do things because I want to do them; and I want to say things because I mean them.

So, in order to be as authentic as possible, I have created The Manifesto on Being Authentic.

This list could easily be ten times longer, but ultimately, my pursuit of authenticity will depend on my ability to be unapologetically myself. 

I wanted to say that this isn’t a review but then reviews, when you think about it, are just well-structured opinions. I don’t think this is particularly well-structured but this is my opinion on a musical matter.  More specifically, this is the part of the blog where I share artists/musicians/bands I love and why I love them. And hope that you might love them to – or at least listen to them.

My first feature in The Artist Spot is Billie Marten. Billie Marten is an English artist that I only recently discovered but she is already one of my absolute favourites. She is only 16 years old but you’d never guess from the depth in her lyrics and the melancholic, folk-y melodies in her songs. Are melancholic folk melodies even a thing? I don’t know, but they will be for the purposes of this post. She is the perfect artist to listen to on an overcast and rainy day, especially with a voice as soothing as hers.

I reckon her sound probably fits under folk…but the alternative and moody side of folk. It’s the kind of music that puts you in a contemplative mood. I found her through her song Bird, which has a delicate melody that goes perfectly with the sweetness of Billie’s voice as she sings, “Nobody's watching/drowning in words so sweet/mild is the water/caught as a bird once free”. The song is quite sad but it is undeniably beautiful. I know a good thing when I hear it so I immediately went and downloaded her EP As Long As, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Her song Heavy Weather is one of my favourites off of the EP and it speaks of lovers who are fearless in the face of the elements. The song builds beautifully as it involves a subtle drumbeat reminiscent of the rumble of thunder and is carried right through with beautiful guitar strumming...picking...playing (I promise I will learn proper guitar terminology in future). Roots is another favourite of mine where Billie sings about finding her place in the world and I’m pretty sure every human ever in the history of existence knows this feeling and will likely relate to it.

You can download her EP here.

You can find her music on YouTube here. 

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