The album was driven by the single “Adorn,” which sounds like a slightly hurried take on Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing,” shorn of Gaye’s neediness. “Kaleidoscope Dream” was a more grounded affair, as Miguel grew more literal about the earthiness of his desires. songs that borrowed from alternative rock and electronic music, all of it lunging for some kind of distant, post-genre future.
The record was stylistically promiscuous, full of R. & B. When his début album, “All I Want Is You,” was released, in 2010, after a legal dispute between his record label and production company had kept it shelved for two years, it seemed reasonable to believe that he might never find the audience that his talents merited. There’s been a steady push and pull to Miguel’s career. Photograph by Jim Mangan for The New Yorker Indeep, who gave credit where it's due with " Last Night a DJ Saved My Life." I want the video for a song about joy and release to respect our need for those things, and one of these does that with way less pretense than the other.The singer has always seemed untroubled, but that may no longer suffice. Marvin Gaye, for whom sexual healing really did mean making something whole.
Miguel points over his shoulder at funk musicians who knew that in their bones - James Brown, who put his band to work and perfected the microphone drop, spin, catch move. It's not trivial or mindless or a distraction.
And the exclusion of them from the official video for "The Thrill" is one of the reasons it feels so disingenuous to me.īecause while "The Thrill" is a song about partying, dancing and drinking, it's also a song about how good a good time really feels. I'd bet at this point all these guys have done this song more times than they can count, but performing is just as much a part of their job as writing and recording are. That guy is always cheesing, loving his job and head-banging approvingly when his lead singer sticks the landing. You can see his band, serious and tight with the exception of his guitarist Dru DeCaro, more visible here (and whenever I've seen Miguel play) than his other band members. Yes, he's putting on a show here, blinking on cue, licking his fingers, barely making it back to the mic after a particularly theatrical pullback. You get to see a furrowed brow, the unavoidable byproduct of trying hard, and little adjustments that have to happen live. In the live video, you can see the physicality he uses to phrase the melody in the song, to shade the key, control the dynamics and hit the notes. It's warmer but more driven, and the mid-range isn't bodied out. At the Manhattan show my friend leaned over and said, "Any dude who brought a girl here and can't get laid tonight should just give up." As documented by Yours Truly, Miguel's performance of "The Thrill" sounds different from the recording on his album. And his moves make it happen on the floor. When he's up there you see his decision-making and restraint you feel the tension. He acts man enough to guide hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people through a communal experience.
I don't know if this is the real Miguel in this video, but it's the musician I've been lucky enough to see play twice recently: last year at an enormous old venue in the Bronx and last month at a mid-size, industry-heavy venue in Manhattan. In performance though, Miguel does something he can do that regular people can't. The scene doesn't look different from any high-end club I've ever been in. In the official video, Miguel's having a blast, hanging, sticking his tongue out for photos. I'd rather watch someone at work than at play. For me, it took some of the magic out of the song. From the activities on display, it's clear that the lyrics "Jamey, Johnny and Jack" refer to liquor, not crew. Miguel does no singing (or even lip syncing), but he wears a hat that says "Trouble" on it. There are many images of women in bikinis. This isn't the first video for "The Thrill." Last month, Miguel put out a black-and-white number made up entirely of pool party and club shots. well enough to earn him those critical mentions in the same breath as Prince and Sam Cooke that he's been courting for the past couple of years). They walk a high-wire between the way forward and the past, and they delivered the way R&B fans were hoping they would (a.k.a. This song and the others on his recent album, Kaleidoscope Dream, are magnetic, full of personality and vitality. That happens in this brand new video for the song "The Thrill," by the R&B singer Miguel. Sometimes a single performance shows you everything you need to know about a musician.