There are a lot of words in both the elected song title from Valerie Melina’s first album, one that she has long been working on, and that of the album itself.
We’ve featured her three times previously; all of them singles from this album, ‘You never even knew that you missed me’ and in each case for all the fine words Valerie employs we were mainly taken by the musical dynamics of the song. In other words they’ve all got a rock solid tune.
I think it’s fair to say that they are three of the most notable tracks on the album and it’s for that reason that I looked for something a little different this time and found it in ‘Get away with murder’, a pop ballad that weighs smart lyricism with intelligent musical writing in equal measure.
It’s the polar opposite of a Taylor Swift song, one in which Valerie doesn’t seek to blame her current or ex partner for the Ukraine War, Middle East conflicts, African famines, Mexican drug murders, Trump tariffs – oh, or the break-up of their relationship – and then sticks pins in a voodoo doll of him.
Rather, she accepts the blame for whatever went wrong. How refreshing. Is Valerie on Tinder?
“It’s time to hear the judgement, put me in confinement, hear the hammer drop”.
Joking apart, she’s every man’s dream wife but with the caveats that everything she touches goes cold rather than turns to gold, and that he intrinsically lets her get away with murder and one day that will have repercussions for both of them. By the end she’s practically begging him to be assertive. To be a man.
An interesting and unusual concept for a song and it’s evident she is very much the thinking man’s writer except that it’s the very foibles of the thinking man that she has in her sights.
There are a couple of religious references in the lyrics that it perhaps might have been better to pass on, along with the “digging your own grave” line which is unfortunately timed but they don’t detract sufficiently from the song to make a big issue about.
From the very opening notes of the first single that passed our way, ‘Death of me’, I bet what small reputation I have that she would come up with the goods on this album big style and Valerie hasn’t disappointed at all.
(Continues after the Spotify link).
Find her on:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsvaleriemelina/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valerie.melina.artist/
Link to the full album:
