Music Review // Andrew Spice "Unafraid"

 

As "Unafraid" begins with piano and dramatic strings, it kicks in to bring this overall sound with lands somewhere between Fiona Apple and The Rocket Summer.  It's soft in its delivery, but loud in its tone.  Though not fully abrasive or in your face, Andrew Spice still puts enough into this song to make it feel important- to feel like you should be listening.   This is interesting to me because the way the song is you have to almost turn it up on a volume level, but the message inside of it comes through loud and clear.

We all live with fear, as it is just a part of life.  One thing I've always been afraid of is heights, but in some ways that fear is just telling your body to be careful because you're in more danger, in theory, when you're up high than you are when you're on the ground.  But this song by Andrew Spice isn't just about general fears it's about specific types of fear.  This fear is about living with yourself and who you are, as the chorus says "How easy this would be / If I wasn't me / How unafraid / How perfectly made / I wish I was".  

What's interesting as well about this song is that there are two verses which really seem to define this.  One says "We hope you're not contagious / We hope you'll still grow up / We hope you won't get shot down in the street" and the other which comes after that says "You know our world is changing / but some things are still the same / So watch you back and everything you say".  I think about this in the sense of prejudice as a whole.  If you are prejudice against something then this song is likely referring to that.

Somewhere between being a POC or part of LGBTQ+ community, the whole idea about being contagious (which can refer to AIDS but also people really did think back in the day that touching a Black person would change their skin color) it just especially feels like in the United States today people are being made to live in fear of being their true selves.  I wish for a world where people can walk down the street and not feel afraid because someone might not like them for some visible reason, but I don't know if it will ever happen.  I do know, though, that songs like this will help bring us closer to it.