Music Review // Mereo "Save It"

https://open.spotify.com/album/30E6KlfWh9PnJX30ctkCLm#_=_ //

While I'm never sure how much people pick up on my life of music based on reading my reviews (This could be your first time reading a review of mine for all I know) I don't mind typing about it again and again.   Growing up, pre-grunge, I listened to what I would describe as mostly hip hop and R&B.   I think this was a natural transition for me because in my youngest years I'd listen to pop like NKOTB and things along those lines which helped me get into other artists I heard on the radio and saw videos for on MTV.

Right away, Mereo has this quality of Michael Jackson.   I would've loved for Mereo to be making music in the 1980's when MTV was full of these great videos.   I imagine one for every song every time I listen to "Save It".    Through the dancy pop with soulful singing, there is also this element in these songs which reminds me of Fall Out Boy, but I also think it's that one particular Fall Out Boy song they used in the movie Big Hero 6.   The songs also can open up huge and feel cinematic, so perhaps that it also the connection there.

At times this feels like soul music, at other times you just appreciate the beats (like on "Manami") and more times than not when I hear the percussion I can think of Phil Collins, though that is the only way in which I think of him here as the vocals are quite different.  It almost makes me wish we had some kind of crossover in the 1980's/1990's between Michael Jackson and a rock band but, you know, a rock band from that time like Genesis.  How huge would it have been to have an MTV Video Music Awards show with Genesis performing and MJ comes out to sing a verse?

Mereo has a song called "Mereo" and in that song sings about how he is Mereo.   I do miss this aspect of music a lot.  Back in the day, going back to my earlier idea of what I listened to growing up musically, I feel like a lot of artists were always dropping their names so you knew who they were.   I think of Boyz II Men, ABC, BBD- the East Coast Family.  It's almost like artists these days are ashamed of their names. 

"You Told Me" has this eerie piano line in it, which reminds me of "The Addams Family" for some reason, and then "Lost on a Shelf" has that smooth sax behind it that I love.   The titular track clearly should be a single and then the song "Glow" is about dancing.   "Honesty" closes out the album as this huge ballad and wow, who else remembers when the huge ballads closed out albums?  While Mereo does have a modern feel to the music on "Save It", a lot of the underlying ideals seem to lean more towards the classic and as someone who has been listening to music for a long time I absolutely am in awe of that.