Ben Kidson – Mind Made Up (2020)
If you have ever felt the regret of missed opportunities to reveal your true feelings, you will be able to relate to ‘Mind Made Up’ by Ben Kidson. The single is a lament about these moments filled with bitter vocals and sorrowful lyrics. Resting over a lo-fi beat and grungy guitars, they fill you with the stinging emotions of recalling missed chances.
The bitter emotional message of the track is brought to life in the poignant visuals of the accompanying music video. Shot by award-winning cinematographer Miguel Carmenes and directed by Oh Neve, it is a smooth and powerful video.
‘Mind Made Up’ has this high line that draws you into the song before the guitar hits you. There is a great lo-fi feeling to the melody as the guitar slowly draws you further into the song. The lightly plucky tones of the melody have this great movement that you are able to get lost in. The layers of the melody combine to form a river of sound that you can easily float down. As the song moves through different emotions, the melody moves to match.
Kidson’s vocals are emotive and fill the song with a sense of sorrow tinged with bitterness. When his vocals first hit, you are put into the scene of the track. This moves to a realisation that the missed opportunities of sharing emotions resulted in a negative turn in the relationship that they might not have wanted. It is very easy to connect with the lyrics through his performance. The song ends with a great sample snippet that really rounds out the messaging of the single.
The tale of the song is brought to visual life in the official music video. There is an old-school coming of age movie vibe to the video with a boy singing outside the window of the girl he likes. The video has a really great visual flow to it that helps the message of the song shine. While relatively simple, the video is really fun and easy to watch. The video does take a bit of a turn at the end, but this is a great symbolic visualisation of the message of the track.
Ben Kidson fills you with sorrow and a hint of bitterness with his lamenting single ‘Mind Made Up’. Using lo-fi beats and grungy guitars, he walks you through missed opportunities to reveal emotions and the effect this has. The official music video wonderfully puts these emotions to visuals with a play on different layers.
Find out more about Ben Kidson on his Instagram and Spotify.
