There’s a new R and B performer who just came into public view who makes hot new music, and he is shaking up everyone’s ideas of what radio friendly, r&b, or pop music are like. Traditionally, pop music has been thought of as fun fluff - meaning, it’s like cotton candy. Pleasant and fun in the moment but not what would be thought of as meaningful or substantial.
It generally focuses on a few ubiquitous subjects, like falling in love or out of love, and it relies on approximately fifty words that rhyme that appear throughout the thousands of songs put out by the hundreds of singers that all sound exactly the same (think “love” and “above” - you get the idea). This is the kind of music you would use if you had a personal trainer certification and teach an aerobics class. On the opposite extreme, you have what can be described as serious music. This would describe genres like jazz or classical, or even lyrically witty and more grown up style bands like Dave Matthews band. This music is great, but is rarely thought of as fun, or the type of music that would make you want to get up and shake your booty. There’s serious music and then there’s fun music - and never the twain shall meet. Until now.
With his hit song Big for Me, Jd Webb is shifting those concepts and labels around. Before I was given Big for Me for review as a niche marketing webmaster with many music sites, admittedly, I was thinking it would be your typical R&B dance tune. “I give it a 10, it’s got a good beat, you can dance to it,” type of music. And Big for Me definitely is danceable fun for your iPod or for the club, to be sure. But it also explores a deeper concept. It’s not only about that heady feeling of first attraction - it’s about a character who is shocked at he sees himself making considerations in his life to better serve his love interest and better serve their shared life. It’s not how he usually acts, which is the reason he says, “That’s Big for Me.”
The song takes the idea of falling in love and
explores it in a way that is deeper and more interesting than the surface. And anyone that’s been in love can say that the emotions on that level of love are equally as overwhelming and exactly as awesome as initial attraction - in fact, more so! In the same way, Webb’s music has taken the Pop genre and explored it on a level that’s deeper and more interesting. And, exactly like love itself, that’s made it so much fuller and richer - and infinitely better.
