When you’ve got the kind of vocal charisma that Free Your Self has, you don’t have to invite a lot of the same bells and whistles that other singer/songwriters rely on when making new material into your own content – hence, the new single and music video “If It Takes Your Breath Away” is sans such filler altogether. In leaving the fluff on the sidelines, this artist not only asserts himself as a player who doesn’t have time for the commerciality of a flagrantly passive pop movement in the American underground today but illustrates a desire to be real with his audience that many similar musicians haven’t been comfortable committing to. “If It Takes Your Breath Away” is a personal ballad, but more than this, it’s a request to be heard in a world that seems to have forgotten how to listen.
With the beat being an understated element beside the melodic components of the song, it’s easy to see why some would get hung up on the cosmetic fireworks in this single – its bright harmonies, the kinship its players seem to share, even the flawless way the imagery in the video captures the emotion in the song as it stands by itself. I spent a couple of listens with “If It Takes Your Breath Away” trying to determine whether it was the tonality of the instruments or the ease with which Free Your Self commands over them that made the words they push forth so authentic; in the end, it only made sense to deem every point of expression here as valid as the others comprising the track.
There’s a case to be made that this is the most well-polished and radio-ready piece of material that Free Your Self recorded for the 2019 album Free Music!, and though I agree with this argument in spirit, I don’t think it’s was driven by dreams of big sales by any means. There’s just too much of an anti-artificiality subtext to the narrative here for this to be true, and while I don’t deny that it’s clear radio play was something the composer was considering when assembling the main hook in the chorus, this can be traced more to honest talent over tenacious aspirations for marketable gains.
“If It Takes Your Breath Away” disappears into the silence from which it came pouring through almost too stealthily, leaving behind a void that makes me want to hear the rest of its parent album if for no other reason than to get a little more poetic context. Free Your Self has got a lot of competition coming his way from all sides of the industry at the moment, and while I don’t think it’s going to be an easy climb from the depths of the underground to the peak of the primetime mountaintop, this is definitely a good way of letting critics like myself know exactly what he’s all about as an artist. I’m very taken with his sound, and I don’t think I’ll be the only one with these sentiments in 2020.
John McCall