Heartbreak in the Voice

David is such an enigma.  His cheery disposition is deceptive insofar as it throws you for a loop when he opens up his lovely mouth to sing.  Even a fun pop “summer” song like “Something ‘Bout Love” has this incredible dark undertone to it.  Now, granted, considering my most recent itunes download just before getting David’s new single is Eminem’s “Love the Way You Lie” (feat. Rihanna), it’s quite easy for the darkness in SBL to get amplified when it is followed by a hip-hop ballad meditating on the repetitive destructiveness that is domestic violence.  But seriously: what does it mean that I hear more heartbreak in the opening echoes of David’s vocals on SBL than I do in Rihanna’s hook in LTWYL (who is clearly singing from experience)?

Makes me think there is so much more to David’s story than he’s been letting on (even in his fairly sunny and upbeat memoir that is Chords of Strength). If a note, a run, a chord can embody years of experience, then David is truly an old soul.

Just think of the lyrics in SBL:

There’s something ’bout love
That tears you up
Whoa oh oh oh
You still believe
When the world falls down like the rain
It’ll bring you to your knees
There’s something ’bout love that breaks your heart
Whoa oh oh oh…
But don’t give up
There’s something ’bout love

It’s so David.  All hope and optimism, but oh! The vulnerability, the plaintive crying, the weeping, the melancholy, the deep, heavy sighs of a weighted down heart that weeps for the world because he feels everything so deeply.  Of course, he doesn’t ever let this show.  He picks himself up and keeps on smiling.

The question of course is whether or not The Voice itself has its own story to tell.  Could it write its own memoir?  If so, what deep-seated pain and hidden hurt would it reveal to us?  It’s like there is that underlying motif just beneath the surface of sunshine and rainbows.

I think it was first detected in “Apologize” – indeed, I remember some You Tube commenter, who went to one of the Idol concerts, remarked that she wanted to hunt down the “heifer” who caused David so much pain after listening to his performance. And who could ever forget the Hartford Apologize rendition?

One Republic got owned on their own song!

And let’s not forget the tear-inducing “Fields of Gold”

He most certainly is a student of Eva Cassidy!

While David’s label/management is still working out the kinks in how to market him, I’m still a big supporter of the “heartbroken, heart-soothing crooner.”  The pop music world is so overcrowded with boastful, swaggering macho types, it’s time the gentle soul makes a comeback.  Anyone who can make us cry on cue should be trusted to forge his own musical identity.

But of course, let the Voice speak for itself (or should I say sing?), and others will follow.