Tag: Melanie Jay

Don’t be fooled by the introduction to Melanie Jay’s “WannaBe.” Yes, it is a kind of indie pop song that begins with a sound that may be familiar in form but it quickly becomes a flow of recursive echoes out of a chorus that spirals off into the distance before coming back like Jay is singing with herself in the round and it resolves into the sound of an answering machine with the beep to the message trailing off in some delay or reverb. But it all suits the theme of the song in which the narrator contemplates the intricacies of identity and desire and feeling lost in a sea of voices, one’s own and those of the messages we receive each day from different sources telling us what we should be and what we should want. Jay exorcises it all into the wisp of a ghost that may haunt us again but with a diminishing capacity to do so. A truly unusual pop song that works because it uses classic form in a completely original and experimental way. Take a deeper dive into Jay’s work at melaniejay.bandcamp.com.