"... I hope after listening to this song, you’ll wake up in the morning ready to fight for your happiness and all the good things you deserve to have in your life no matter how hard it is."-AfinaAfina caught me by pleasant surprise. Perhaps I've been listening to too much soft and "understated" music lately, so when something so unequivocally bold and energetic comes up, I just can't help to get swept up by it. Make no mistake. "Sweet Dreams" is the real deal, straight up high-quality R&B/Soul combo with those fantastic and crazy female vocals that just blow you away in an instant. The song is a mighty piana-driven affair with "Hell Hath No Fury" lyrics and all, the kind that would make Aretha Franklin damn proud at the sight of her lineage thriving so strongly in the voices of songstresses like Afina.
However, the song is not for Jilted Lovers or the like - though I guess you could take it that way if it suits you, no the song is much more than just that, much broader and even a bit more inspiring than that. “Sweet Dreams” is dedicated to everybody who is going through any kind of difficulty in their life. I wrote this song when I felt completely scared, weak, and lost." Says Afina herself of the song. What I particularly enjoy is that thanks to its genre, this song feels like it goes in the opposite direction of so many others about the same topic. A lot of the time, songs dealing with hardship can take on this very passive and melancholic tone, they voice the sadness and the exhaustion of struggling, allowing for some sort of "cathartic gloom" to take place. That's all well and good, that kind of vulnerability can be a powerful way to connect with emotions that are difficult to grapple with or even understand, however, "Sweet Dreams" Turns all that angst and frustration into a sort of dignified anger, fuel for the fire to truly empower yourself to move forward. "I hope “Sweet Dreams” will be a kick in the ass to everybody who needs it desperately, but has nobody to help or motivate them," says Afina herself. Knowing where the song comes from made it all the more powerful to me: Afina was born in The Republic of Moldova and she's been making music since childhood. She made a substantial career for herself in her country, even performing throughout Europe and gaining awards and recognition for her many appearances and talents, such as her stint in X-Factor in Romania during 2014 and 2015. She even had the kind of pull it takes to organize a huge charity event for an orphanage in her home country. Eventually, with dreams of expanding and perhaps even taking over the world, afina immigrated to the United States at age 19 with a head full of dreams and $1200 in her pockets. Once in the U.S. she had to learn everything about this new country from scratch, with all the usual Eastern-European immigrant challenges and woes that entails and then some. Of course, things don't always turn out as you want them to, and Afina was feeling stuck, all alone in a strange country having achieved very little in the way of her goals, and that's exactly where and when this powerful new song was born. You take all of that frustration, all of that difficulty and you grind it in the mortar of an unbreakable spirit with a clear goal, and what you get is some of the most refined Soul music you've ever heard. with a little emotional support from her parents, and a little bit of determination, Afina began turning things around by keeping her head clear and her eyes on the goal. She still has a long way to go to get where she wants to be, but she's got all the talent to make it happen and she certainly seems to be putting in the work as well.
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