Tuesday, July 9, 2019

Kit Taylor - Persephone



Writing about a songwriter is one of the more challenging aspects of this job than others because you have to totally ignore the vocal performance and judge the song strictly on the words alone. And when the vocal performance is as good as it is on this track, it's damn hard. So looking that this song from Hades perspective makes it a bit easier. If you know anything about Greek Mythology, you know that Hades abuducts Persephone and takes her to Hades (he's not only the lord of the underworld but it's also the name of the underworld) with him. Her mother, Demeter, is heartbroken and stops the crops growing and the people begin to starve so Zeus intervenes and tells Hades that Persephone can return to the surface during the spring and summer months the facilitate the harvest. History lesson over. So looking at this song from Hades perspective, it's a love song about the woman he adores and misses during the summer because she's out doing work.

The lyrics are great. The production is great. It's a damn fun song. It's a fantastic love song and it makes you smile (especially since he worked the word necromancer into it). Joey Diggs Jr. is a beautiful vocalist and he does an amazing job on this track. It makes me want to hear and artist like Ne-yo singing this in an animated movie. Not that I'm taking anything away from Joey at all but a lot of time, the studio vocalist is a stand in for bigger artists to hear what the song sounds like to determine whether or not they wanna go for it or not.

I've listened to a ton of Kit's work this morning as I've been investigating him and he's a damn talented songwriter. He has a way with stringing ideas together in a very cohesive manner and it's brilliant. Whether it's the gospel/soul "Strip It All Away" or the theatrical, "Be Still My Heart", Kit knows exactly how to write an amazing song that takes you exactly where you need to go. He's recently won several prestigious awards via the Great American Songwriting Contest as well as being inducted into the 2018 Hall of Fame and it's easy to see why. He's able to capture all these amazing emotions with his words and he's able to walk among so many different genres but it seems that he's at his very best when he's tapping into a story to tell. World building and painting environments with his words all make perfect sense under his pen. I think he'd do an absolutely amazing job being a book writer for a Broadway style musical and if you listen to a handful of the tracks in his catalog, it's easy to see one being created potentially without his knowing. Listen to the words he's penned along with the artists he's chosen to give his words life. He's doing amazing things.

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