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comment by cx52
cx52  ·  2922 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 168th Weekly "Share Some Music You've Been Into Lately" Thread

I've been listening to Willow Smith's album Ardipithecus. I'm very surprised that I like it, since my music taste is pretty conservative, I usually hate anything with any hint of experimentation. But Willow's vocal delivery is so confident and so unselfconsciously expressive and playful that I can completely forgive the noodling, unstructured nature of her songs. A lot of the melodies seem improvised, but they're striking, and her voice is powerful and clear. She uses some odd articulations and accenting which gives a slightly (self) mocking edge to her delivery, the kind of intentionally odd voice you'd usually only hear in someone being silly or overly dramatic, but it works, to me it makes her sound genuinely charismatic, very self-possessed and accomplished, with an innate, very clever musical sense. The fact that she's only 15 makes it all the more impressive. You might call it self-indulgence, but I think it works, she sounds more confident than any other female vocalist I've heard, perhaps because she isn't scared to experiment and use odd phrasings etc. I think she's a very natural intuitive singer.