Thursday, June 17, 2021

Music Review //
Dennis Lloyd
"The Way"



When I first listen to "The Way" I am immediately taken back by how this sound of Dennis Lloyd evolves throughout the song.   There is singing- faster into the chorus- and beats.  Overall this can be considered a pop song with elements of soul, something like you would hear on the radio from The Weeknd or Ricky Martin, but it doesn't quite have the same sound as them and seems to form its own genre of pop.    Dennis Lloyd has created a song that is pop enough to be loved by the mainstream but not so overly pop as to be rejected by those who typically tend to dislike pop.  If you're in rock or even pop punk this could be fit for you.

This video creates an interesting story which plays out like a short film.  It begins with what appears to be a father and a son on a boat fishing.  They are shown eating and living on this boat, a simple but happy life.  The father is then shown speaking with someone in a suit and the boat home switches to life in a luxury apartment.  As they seemingly begin to live a more fancy lifestyle, so do they also seem to grow apart.   One thing which remains in both homes is a Nirvana poster and I would like to hear Dennis Lloyd cover a Nirvana song.

With lyrics about life and living, the chorus asks "Who is gonna show me the way?"  On that level, the video itself seems to answer a lot of the questions.   As parents, there is a responsibility to raise your children: make sure they have food, clothes, etc.  But there is also a need to put those life choices into them, to show them the way.  A lot of that is leadership by example.  So when you have the choice of living the simple life on a boat and being happy or the more luxurious lifestyle but drifting apart, both as parent and child you should be able to recognize that happiness is more important than money-- you cannot buy family.

In the early part of the video there is a scene where the father throws the child's hat into the water so the child jumps in to get it.   Later on, the grown son flees to jump into the water perhaps as a way to find that place where he and his father once were- when things were better.  Not only does this song have a video which should be viewed over and over to find those little hidden clues and be appreciated as a piece of cinema, the song itself seems to suggest that we stay on the correct path and for that I enjoy listening to this song because it can be used to help guide us in our times of need.  


No comments:

Post a Comment