Music Review // Henry Taylor "HUMMINGBIRD"

 

Henry Taylor has crafted a good old fashioned rock n roll song with "HUMMINGBIRD".   With multiple guitars, there are also keys in here which give that Southern Rock vibe as well.  This is somewhere between Lynyrd Skynyrd and Steppenwolf, as there is also a great drive to this song, where you just want to break open and be free on the road.   It is definitely the type of rock song which in order for it to truly work all pieces must fit together, as everyone must be on the same page, and this song does exactly that.

True to form with a classic rock song "HUMMINGBIRD" also seems to tell the story about a woman.  When lyrics ask the titular hummingbird questions like "What's your number" and then wonders why you haven't been calling, it can definitely seem like it's more about an actual woman because birds can't use phones.  There are also some lyrics here about spending the night and innuendo liking his nectar that it might be best not to think too deeply about.

There was a time when music was subtle.  It left a lot of what it was saying to the imagination.  I'm not sure why but I always think about the song "Squeeze Box" by The Who.  Sometimes less is more.  But these days it feels like music is much more straight forward, crass even, to where they can explicitly state what used to be something you'd have to find by reading between the lines.  So I do enjoy that Henry Taylor has kept this idea going.

And to be fair on the surface you can just think of this as an innocent enough song about an actual bird and take it from there.  Anything else you should happen to read into it (even what I'm reading into it) is at your own discretion.  The fact though that, in that way, this song makes you think is what also makes it that much more powerful because people also don't seem to want to have to do as much thinking these days.