The singer has presented a new project in which he sings about love, with its feelings and contradictions
James Arthur has started the year 2024 by presenting a new album to the world. The project, “Bitter sweet love” consists of 13 songs that total just over 43 minutes of listening time. Throughout this journey we can listen to several different types of music, ranging from his characteristic ballads to faster and more surprising rhythms, but all accompanied by his unique and unmistakable voice.
In the first song, BITTER SWEET LOVE, which gives its name to the album, her voice stands out mixed with new rhythms and melodies. The artist himself has placed it around 1975 and has noted: “if it’s really love, it ain’t going to be plain sailing. “I thought it was a cute thing to do to ask if we just have that sweet love all the time.”
The second, FREE FALLING, is its essence, it is everything that a person would expect from a song of his, lyrics that stab like daggers, a sweet voice that suffers and that does not stop doing acrobatics. Very exciting song. James described the process of the song for AppleMusic:
“I was sat at the piano and just started singing, ‘Jenny down the road’s got a new love.’ The lads were like, ‘Why do you keep singing people’s names?’ I just love that thing when [the lyrics] are very visceral . You can imagine what is going on and bring characters into the song. I guess where I was coming from was I imagined this story of a guy who is watching the world go by and is very jealous of people’s happiness. He wants validation. That fed a lot into my story, where I feel like I’m on the outside looking in and I’m not being recognized.”
SLEEPWALKING is the second ballad on the album, this time accompanied by an acoustic guitar that is present throughout the song while he sings about a love where everything is not as reciprocal as it should. “I thought the word ‘sleepwalking’ was a cool umbrella to write a song around. I wanted to prove I still had that singer-songwriter thing that I think a lot of my fans from a long time ago like, where it was very raw.”
BLINDSIDE features an 80s pop-rock beat that makes you move your head to the music. James Arthur has described him as similar to Bruce Springsteen with groundbreaking and different melodies. As for the lyrics, James speaks “It’s about falling in love at the wrong time. I was in a place where I felt like that’s what I wanted to talk about. I was unpacking some past trauma.”
JUST US is another sad piano ballad where its low notes give you chills. This song talks about leaving behind the irrelevant things in life and realizing what really matters in life. According to the artist: “Realizing the true meaning of life which is of course about true love, loving ourselves, our families and our communities and being there for them.”
COMEBACK KID has a sound similar to Blindside where its beltings reach your heart surrounded by deep and relatable lyrics. Listening takes you directly to his face in an indisputable way, to his stamp as an artist. In the lyrics it is a love song but the artist has confessed that the basic theme is how the media reacted when he “had the fall from grace publicly.”
FROM THE JUMP is a beautiful song with his voice accompanied by guitars while he sings to us subtly transporting us to our inner being. It is a very enjoyable song. “I love this song by Ryan Adams called ‘Come Pick Me Up’. I really wanted to have a song that made me feel like that song does. We were jamming on the guitars and I arrived at the punchline in a very Nashville-type way: ‘I just want to spend forever with you.’ It felt very much like a walking-down-the-aisle type thing. It felt like vows, essentially.”
His voice sings with a melancholic tone about what he had and has lost A YEAR AGO. The song begins with “I miss you”, the recurring phrase throughout the song that constantly situates the theme. The drums add drama to his voice that sounds suffering and sad. James talked with AppleMusic: “There’s nothing more heart-wrenching than that feeling of, I thought you couldn’t love anybody more than me, and here I am having to look at you moving on.”
RUTHLESS starts low and seems like just another ballad but soon breaks and surprises with a more rock style that stands out from the album without breaking the cohesion. James was looking for something funnier and says that the origin of this song is the feeling when a person ghosts you. “it was fun playing the character of a guy who’s disgruntled and bitter about what’s happened to him.”
NEW GENERATION is their most rocking song, with an eighties touch that even reminds us of bands like Maneskin that are looking for a more commercial genre within the purity of Rock and Roll. James Arthur uses this song to talk about the problems of the world and his point of view but above all he focuses on the generational clash. “I just wanted to have a song that expressed my honest feelings about everything and how it’s kind of on the new generation to undo a lot of this outdated way of thinking.”
Returning to a more relaxed rite but maintaining those marked drum beats, in MY FAVOURITE PILL the lyrics talk about falling again and again into the traps of the same person, being trapped by that person who has you addicted to their skin. “The song is about falling in love with the wrong people who I know aren’t going to fulfill me.”
IS IT ALRIGHT?, James asks himself, returning to the ballads again, and the answer is yes. This song accompanied by a piano to which the strings are later added is one of the most exciting on the album. It is his most epic and difficult song vocally, you can feel his vocal cords on the limit and how James breaks down with the lyrics while shouting it. Again for Apple Music, James said: “This song is about the last dance, I suppose. It’s about meeting up with someone who maybe you haven’t seen for a while and you know it’s over, but you want to pretend that it’s not for one night.”
Finally, HOMECOMING. New ballad with guitar where he sings about returning home, being separated from his family, his world and everything that once made him happy and now finding himself in a distant world where he doesn’t fit in too much. “That place was very much the making of me, and I think my morals and values have come from growing up in that environment. This song was my opportunity to write a love letter to my home.”
With this album James Arthur starts the year strong, looking to achieve success again with ballads like “Can I be him” or “Say you won’t let go.“
Credits: Text by Gabriel Sánchez
