Good songcraft tends to take years to develop instead of mere months, and this can be quite a difficult reality for some indie players to face. There’s a lot of work that goes into cultivating something special for your audience, and if there’s anyone who knows what I’m talking about, it’s a pop singer like Taylor Jules. Jules’ sound has been getting progressively tighter not through the past decade but, in fact, through the past year alone, culminating with her most recent release in a new single titled and despite its somewhat streamlined construction, this is a track that breaks out of the mainstream shell its contemporaries live in.
There’s a hint of desperation pushing the percussive undertow in this piece forward, but it’s met with such sterling confidence in our singer’s voice that the ensuing contrast becomes a focal point of the song. The narrative in “Adickted” is created not just out of lyrics, but out of the way this crooner is lashing us with them, in the most melodic fashion she can, of course. Thoughtful might be too big an understatement for me to make in this instance – this is Taylor Jules reconnecting with the audience free of any pressures normally associated with the pop game in 2023.
The harmonies in this single have such a strong influence over how we break down the lyrics that there’s no overvaluing the weight of their emotional contribution to the track. The rhythm of the instrumentation – from the drums to the keys, bass, and right on back to the lead vocal – is shaped mostly by Jules’ lyrical execution than it is the pulse of the percussion alone. Simply put, there’s no one element in this song given a singular task; every instrument lends something to the others beside it, making even the more indulgent moments in this mix sound efficient and well-organized. I would undeniably be interested in hearing a live version of “Adickted” just to see if this singer could deliver it as crisply in person as she does from inside of a recording studio, but whether it took a couple of adjustments to make it tangible to listeners or not, I think it would be something Jules’ hardcore fans wouldn’t soon forget.
This singer/songwriter has evolved a lot in the past seven months that have gone by since the release of ”Helicopter”, and “Adickted” summarizes the growth she’s experienced as a songwriter rather flawlessly. There’s still some room for her to expand on some of the themes she’s toying with in this single, but overall I think she’s one of the more complete packages in independent pop music out of the west coast right now. “Adickted” lets Taylor Jules
acknowledge her influences while still blazing a trail that is very much hers and hers alone. By relying on her organic talents alone, she makes a vivid distinction between her sound and that of the synthetics-dependent artists emerging out of the woodwork this summer and looking to appeal to much of the same audience she’s easily winning over now.
Kim Muncie