Okay, I’ve been avoiding this for a while now, Reader. I’ve tried—I’ve REALLY TRIED—to NOT write this song up. Honestly, we pride ourselves on being rather cutting edge with our musical tastes, especially given the fact that we’re—honestly—kinda old and not as in-the-loop as, say, the twenty-something versions of us are or would be. Man. I bet the twenty-something version of me wouldn’t even listen to music. He’d listen to, like, dripping water that’s been recorded and then slightly syncopated and then run over a beat that’s been created by turning every other consonant in the Gettysburg Address into one’s and zero’s, respectively, and then run through some sort of high-end computer that’s been built to replicate an original 8-bit Commodore 64. So cool.
Lucky for you, we’re not that cool. But we do tend to bend our ears, more often than not, in the direction of the less-than-mainstream and sometimes even odd. Stuff our moms wouldn’t necessarily like. Which is why we feel a bit like we’re letting you down with this post, Reader—our moms will all totally love this song.
BUT I CANNOT GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD! And that’s not in a “I went to the Met supermarket and now I seriously cannot get that fucking Sheena Easton song out of my head” kinda way. It’s in a “Damn, this is a gooooood song, even if my mom would totally love it” kinda way.
Nashville-based, Pennsylvania-born, mom-pandering signer-songwriter Madi Diaz, it turns out, has a long and well-documented history growing up with the arts. Her Peruvian mother home-schooled her with an emphasis on development in the visual arts; her Danish father was a keyboardist for Frank Zappa; and she attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston and, before that, the Paul Green School of Rock in Philly, where she was featured in the documentary, Rock School. And all that skill certainly comes through in her music. This week’s Song, the blissfully poppy “Gimme a Kiss” shines at times with—yes— a little country twang, which is usually not our bag, but the sweetly crafted hooks of the music and beautifully sung lyrics reel you in in an undeniable way. There’s something about this song and a few others on her 2012 album, Plastic Moon, that remind us of early solo Aimee Mann, especially in the simple, sliding little guitar guitar break of “Gimme a Kiss.” And there can’t be anything wrong with that. Even if our moms would totally agree…but think we should “tone down the potty talk.”
You can listen to “Gimme a Kiss” here and visit Diaz’s site for a couple other free downloads, including a non-album track and the superb, “Let’s Go.” Video for that one below. Photo by Elizabeth Weinberg.
Note: Songs posted to this site are kept online for a limited period of time out of fairness to the artists and, you know, our server. So if this is now an older post, the links may well be dead. Buy music!
