iTunes free singles are amazing (most of the time.. I am going to forget about “Keep on Lovin’ You” by Steel Magnolia and countless others I “nexted” after the 30 second preview.) They have introduced me to Owl City‘s “Fireflies”–before it became popular– V.V. Brown‘s “Shark in the Water”, Neon Tree‘s “Animal” and most importantly, Benton Paul‘s “Moon”. Unique and catchy this song had me at the robotesque, you feel gravity pushing on you as you fall through space feel and the genius sound of the line, ” If gravity didn’t control me”. I guess you need to listen to it to understand… click here, listen extra carefully at the one minute mark.
“Moon” was part of a recently released EP entitled Trois. His freshman album, Grey released in 2008 is an album that is enjoyable from track one to ten, an unusual feat in the era of single track downloads. A mixture of upbeat, feel good tunes, such as “Good Habit“, with singer songwriter love songs, “I Only See You” and “Paris“, there is a song for every mood in this album.
An unsigned artist from Utah, he recently embarked on a tour opening for David Archeleta during the Christmas season but is pretty inconspicuous on the internet — only a personal blog, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook along with a typical artist website which includes tour dates and media features, and small Wiki page. However on all of these sites, there is little to no biography, no mention of when he first started or how he got to where is he today, making it very challenging to learn anything about him — an important aspect in a musician’s story. Is he trying to hide something (murder,bad family name), or does he just like to keep his personal life personal? I hope the latter.
Being the great detective that I am, I discovered that he graduated in 2007 from Brigham Young University with a degree is Media Music Studies, first came to tour on the East Coast with David Archeletta, opened for Jon Mclauglin in 2008, lived in Paris for a unspecified amount of time, and gets excited for “The Office”(Jim and Pam all the way!) and Coldplay (see his cover of “Yellow”).
A young and upcoming musician it will be interesting to see where Paul’s career will take him. He can only go up, and with help like publicity from the Jonas Brothers, who knows where he will end up and where. Perhaps soon we will be calling Paul a Justin Bieber for the more sophisticated.
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- Musical Spotlight: Jarrod Gorbel
- Musical Spotlight: Diane Birch
- Three Strikes for Shiny Toy Guns
- Lust, Lust, Lust for Danish pop duo The Raveonettes
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