Maliika (Sweden) – Say Goodbye (single)
No, it isn’t say goodbye to love and there’s no guitar solo that’s probably the best ever, but it’s very tasty all the same.
We featured Maliika last year with the single ‘Flow’ and I singled out her voice (somewhere between Enya and Mary Hopkin) and that “her words and music replicate the flow of oil or water paints onto the canvas.”
‘Say Goodbye’ is, she says, a song about moving on and facing tomorrow with an open heart, which I’m assuming may be, like Karen Carpenter’s, an allusion to coming out of a relationship intact and smiling; “Seize this moment” as she sings. Well I’m all for carpe-ing that diem.
The song is replete with otherworldly atmosphere in an Enya-like fashion and builds towards an anthemic conclusion, with a bridge in the middle, played on a flute, which could have been captured at Glastonbury or Stonehenge at the summer solstice.
On her last single I felt the bridge let the song down a little but this time she’s nailed it.
And lyrics like,
“See the sun rise up/and enjoy the sight of a shimmering sky/Meet the new dawn/with your open heart/and drink the wine of eternal love”
have ‘New Age’ stamped right through them. (I mentioned last time that she runs an ice cream parlour at the seaside…how avant-garde is that?
But what caught my attention more this time is the quality of her vocal. Now I don’t know if autotune was applied but I don’t think so, you can usually tell. If this is pure larynx it is quite exceptional.
Last year I wrote a piece proposing one female vocalist as being the leading rock and pop singer in the world, with reasons (it’s the most viewed article on the blog).
Listening to Maliika I get similar vibes. I note the Press Release compares her, inter alia, to Sarah Brightman and I definitely concur. I don’t know if Maliika has had operatic training but the quality oozes out in the higher ranges especially.
Find her on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaliikaArtist
