At the heart of soulful house is great songwriting — melodies and choruses that resonate and place the music in context of the great R&B and disco studios and labels and artists in an unbroken chain stretching back seven decades into history.

There’s a trick to that, though. When songwriting is at the core of your art, the song becomes everything. The stakes are pretty high in this part of electronic music: failing in this one aspect makes a bad soulful house track an unrecoverable catastrophe. For instance, I bet you can remember to this day bad songs you heard years ago. For mysterious reasons, a bad loop or awkward rhythm doesn’t have the same effect. It’s so often flushed, purged as soon as the next track begins. But bad songs stick. Writing for this genre is running on a tightrope with a 50 foot plunge and no net.

Like Honey” is a great song, with a stellar performance. Originally released on Candace Bellamy’s solo album In My Lane, it’s resurrected here with some solid production by the team of Chris Sen and Thorne Miller for Just Move Records. Bellamy’s voice bounces off the walls and calls back to us, with a sweetness of delivery is kinda forcing me to make the obvious pun here. A mix of a track like this may be subject to the fashions of the times but the song behind it has to be good enough to last forever. It is.

Thorne Miller & Chris Sen Ft. Candace Bellamy: Like Honey (Just Move Records / July 2020 / Digital)

 


 

Back To Life: Originally published in 5 Mag issue 183 featuring Phenomenal Handclap Band, Boddhi Satva, Milly James and more. Support 5 Mag by becoming a member for just $1 per issue.