Music Review // ZZ Ward "Naked In The Jungle"

ZZ Ward not only excels at creating songs in a musical but also in a lyrical, storytelling way.  This is apparent on the new single "Naked In The Jungle", which can not only paint a pretty clear picture but also tell a good story.   The idea behind the song just seems to be when you are either left to your own devices or just ill prepared.  Let's face it: no one wants to be naked in the jungle because of things like snakes and bugs crawling all over you and just that idea of finding the plants will give you rashes as well.  

One of my favorite set of lyrics within "Naked In The Jungle" sets the idea of the song up perfectly, as it says: "Feels like a stranger's living in my skin / But you're so free / To just leave me / Burnin' in the sun rays".   This touches upon the identity crisis that you can face after a breakup but also that idea of maybe someone you were living with moving out and now you feel like you're stuck with all the bills.   There is just so much more put into these four lines in this song than a lot of artists put into their entire song.

Musically, ZZ Ward just keeps that tradition of the blues and rock n roll alive.  It's the idea of those guitars sliding and winding around the corners, but also just being so straight forward and loud at the same time.  This song is just pure text book style blues, but at the same time there really isn't a formula for going out and making a blues song because it's more about the feeling than the actual music itself and that's just something which you cannot teach.

With enough open-ended lyrics for you to likely find a way to relate with this song, ZZ Ward has also managed to match the vibe of the music with that meaning.  People will use words to describe ZZ Ward that relate with the blues, but this isn't blues music because it can remind you of an artist like B.B. King.  This is blues music because not only can you tell how ZZ Ward was feeling when writing this song, but it's also about how listening to this song makes you feel.