Music Review // Francisco Martin "IF U NEED ME"

There exists a line between music which is pop and on the radio but then there is also this other version of pop where it's right along with the radio stuff but has some depth to it.   Francisco Martin has that line covered between pop enough for the radio but yet not overly pop.   "IF U NEED ME" has all of the elements which make up a pop song for the radio and yet it has all of the meaning and complex musical natures which can often times have a song not make it to radio airplay because radio listeners don't always like to think.

Even towards the end of this song you hear a shift in the way it sounds.  Most of this song can feel like it is acoustic but there is just a pop way about it that is somehow both uplifting and sad at the same time.  Is bittersweet pop a genre yet?  The music itself has that positive way about it, like you'd hear some singer on the radio being happy about, but with the lyrics it also feels like it's bringing me down a little bit because I read too much into them.  And then toward the end it just gets into a much darker type of sound, which most pop songs do not because this bridge of sorts breaks up what the radio would prefer to be more repetition.

During this music video there are a few different scenes but they all seem to take place within the same location, a place such as California.   What starts out in the city with walking around and even a shot of skateboarding turns into a beach scene.  As the lyrics suggest, that "If you need me, I'll come right away", I like to imagine that the protagonist of the video is at home and ends up going to this other person throughout the course of the video, finally finding them at the end.

Though this feels like the type of song you might hear during an animated Disney movie, I always think about the complexity of elements such as the lyrics.  Yes, it is about being there for someone, as the singer basically states that, but it does also make me feel a bit sad listening to it because this singer has directed these words at someone.  So what of the people who don't have someone who will be there for them?  Or what if someone cannot get to you in time when you need them?  This does feel sad in a being left out way, but I think that should just inspire everyone to look out for someone else so that no one is ever left out.