Harpa – What The Hell (2024)
How do you define a musician that saunters across various genres with a boundary-pushing style? What do you call the musician that pushes beyond categories with each single presenting something entirely different, yet a distinctive link remains in its experimental nature? Well, you call the musician Harpa, and you define that sound as Harpa’s unique sonic concoctions. Diverse but with distinction, singer-songwriter Harpa forges ahead shifting from pop to folk, rock to metal. The latest addition to her discography is the single ‘What The Hell’.
Following her well-received songs ‘Gone’ and ‘Leave Me Behind’, Harpa binds different types of rock in ‘What The Hell’. Produced by Mike Pierrepoint, ‘What The Hell’ tracks back to vintage rock offering a nostalgic breath to classic 70s rock; however, just as there is a retro tone to the track, a flush of contemporary indie-rock slices across with peeks of hard rock breaking through in the instrumentation.
A shimmering sonic tapestry, the pounding drums drag along with a glistening blue light while the soaring guitar adds bright red to the palate. A shock of piano peeps through with silvery glow, and a bold bass flickers here and there with purple twinkles. While this sonic tapestry is intoxicating, it is Harpa’s heavenly vocals that up the ante. Winding about in its richness, Harpa’s voice is simultaneously delicate fragility with confident boldness.
The melody is without a doubt intriguing, but it is the lyricism that brings weightiness and depth to the track. Exploring the complexities of relationships, ‘What The Hell’ is a tale of persuasion, domination, confusion, self-discovery and despair.
As with the song ‘Growing Pains’, ‘What The Hell’ is a narrative of womanhood – it “tells the story of a woman who has grown up learning the art of persuasion in a world dominated by men. Initially, she navigates relationships by speaking their language and playing along… however she realises that by simply playing along, she has only given the man exactly what he wants: power… In the end, she laments the fact that while everyone taught her how to be what a man wants, she never learned the most valuable lesson of all – how to stand up for herself.”
Find out more about Harpa on her official website, Facebook, Instagram and Spotify.
This artist was discovered via Musosoup #sustainablecurator
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