“Higher Love” was already one of the more soulful pop songs of its era to reach excessive success on the charts, but when adapted to the stylings of Kamoken and the brilliant vocalist Malou Beauvoir, it takes on a second life that critics like myself didn’t know it could. Straddling the beat with a supple lead that could make just about any millennial believe this was her song and not Steve Winwood’s, Beauvoir delivers an absolutely captivating performance in this collaboration with Kamoken, who personally arranges this into something both accessible to young listeners and seasoned audiophiles much the same.

One of the first things I noticed about this track was how little it resembles or attempts to replicate the rigidity of the original version. There’s a fluidity to the percussion that was missing from the classic “Higher Love,” and while the firm stomp of the beat was once half of its charm, the exact opposite is true of this rendition. Kamoken wants to forge something a bit more exotic here, and to me, choosing to retool the direction of the rhythm was perhaps the best way to have done this without completely destroying the integrity of the groove.

The lyric video for “Higher Love” overstates nothing and keeps in line with the theme of the cover song itself. There are no specific instances in which we get the theatrics I’d expect from a mainstream music video, but this is good for one really big reason – it allows for us to put all of our attention on the substance of this material as Kamoken and Malou Beauvoir have interpreted it. That’s about as good as it gets for this type of project, and given the experience of the latter artist, I would honestly expect nothing less.

I don’t know about anyone else, but for me the pairing of Beauvoir and Kamoken is absolutely too sublime a match to resist, and their new single “Higher Love” is proof of as much. It’s difficult to cover someone like Steve Winwood considering not only the versatility of his talent but the legendary nature of his greatest hits, but here, neither of these two musicians try to do the impossible in recreating the same chills this song’s composer once did. Instead, they set off on their own collaborative path and end up submitting something in “Higher Love” that I would rank among the best singles of its kind to debut in 2020.

John McCall