At the end of April, London-based Lola Aviva released the single, “Green Eyes.” As a big fan of Elton John, I automatically started singing his song, “Blue Eyes” in my head and thought, “Whoa, unfair comparison. That’s setting the bar way too high.” Besides, he is a piano player and the artwork for this track shows Aviva holding a guitar.
It was good to let the two songs stand on their own, but for a variety of reasons.
As it relates to “Green Eyes,” it started out somewhat ethereal and then the vocals kicked in and I found it refreshing to hear a British accent for once as opposed to singers from “across the pond” somehow managing to sound American more often than not. More importantly, though, was that only 25 seconds in, the song already started to move. This was good for a few reasons.
First, in today’s short attention span society, listeners aren’t going to hang around much longer than that to see if the song is, in fact, going to change up at all. Secondly, over those first 25 seconds I could feel the build and was rooting for it to do exactly what it did. Thirdly was that I then wanted to hear what would come next.
I also liked the subtle shift in the voice tone to, ironically, a bit of a pleasant sound despite the fact that the lyrics were saying, “I don’t need you anymore.”
The structure there too is notable as it’s not easy to pull off having, “accountable” and “infatuation” (and, later on, “unequivocally”) flow lyrically, but Aviva does so quite smoothly.
While the song (smartly) stays on the path of less-is-more, Aviva doesn’t play it totally safe, showing a little vocal dexterity in changing up the chorus just enough the second time through to keep things interesting.
The addition of some background vocals two-thirds of the way through the song was a nice complement as well as even what sounded like some horns.
Unlike when I solicit a nice size helping of facts and assets from an incoming guest to be interviewed on my weekly “Now Hear This Entertainment” podcast, the song was sent to me with no information or links, which not only proves that it can stand on its own (meaning, with little to no set up), but, got my attention enough to seek out the artist. Through that exercise I discovered – not surprisingly – that the track already has approximately 136 thousand streams on Spotify (where she has more than 4,300 monthly listeners). I haven’t done so yet, but my next mouse click will be to see if there’s a video for “Green Eyes” because it’s the kind of song that made me want to see what kind of visuals would be shown to depict what’s being sung about.
As you can tell, I'm all in on “Green Eyes,” by Lola Aviva. As readers, you won’t know about the songs that I passed on before giving this one the thumbs up and, having listened to it now a couple of times in order to write this week’s post, I stand behind my decision – if not feel even better about it – to green light it for the blog. In fact, I would have to believe that Aviva, no doubt, is finding other reviewers giving the same feedback, I’m sure.
Can my almost 20 years of experience helping indie music artists from around the U.S. help with what you’re doing? Tap into the work that I’ve done with those folks relative to questions and/or challenges that you’re having. Give me a call and let’s work through whatever you might want a third party’s opinion on so we can keep you moving forward.