Monday October 4, 2021
The new release for 17-year-old music artist TIA is yet another mature pop song with an array of decent hooks and an identifiable lyric.
TIA has been called ‘a Melbourne powerhouse with her mind-blowing vocal chops, with comparisons to pop icons like Bishop Briggs and Dua Lipa,’ by Triple J Unearthed. That comment is understandable—the vocal performance is sophisticated, polished, well-executed and suitably athletic.
TIA’s previous releases have all contained a hint of R&B. This stylistic tendency has dissipated somewhat on Belong but is still there in spirit, if not present via the drum programming and some of the dips and dives of the verses and pre-chorus. The melodic shifts and turns are equally as refined as TIA’s performance, crafted to induce just the right amount of dynamic heat and overall hook value.
When asked about the song’s origins, TIA says, ‘Belong is about the journey you go on when you outgrow the place that brought you comfort, and you’re looking for a new place to grow. It is about finding a place where you truly feel like you fit but still staying true to yourself. It’s about the rollercoaster that this journey of belonging is.’ The lyric attempts to delve deep, and that’s a bonus.
The words, ‘I’ve been feeling cynical / Ironically not typical / Sometimes irresponsible / Guess that makes me a fool,’ are perhaps more praiseworthy for their playfulness. Still, the chorus comes through with a more pliable couple of lines with, ‘I’m sick of feeling like I don’t fit / I’m over feeling like a misfit.’ These are sentiments we all might be reciting to ourselves during the current global upheaval.
What gets Belong over the line is more than TIA’s assured and soaring vocal but its central melodic reprise, the chorus, which possesses the right kind of chant-along, anthemic-veined chorus we all don’t mind listening to now and then.
