The sense of nostalgia in music is extremely specific, and Michellar of San Francisco manages to replicate it with The Star so easily. It is not much of an experience like listening to a song but rather an opening of an ancient photograph that you have forgotten, where the corners are warm and the memory is glowing. Produced on several continents by a UK producer Toby Wilson, the song has this inaccessible, personal glossy sheen, the sort of intimacy you get when you are close to those people who are most important to you, the ones who obscure all other things in the present.
The voice of Michelle Bond is a caressing hand, soft, confident, right away friendly. It is not glossy, not a pretence, just a voice that embraces you like somebody you have known your whole life. It is delicate and gentle; light, airy synths play under gentle acoustic guitars and allow the song to breathe. You can sense the stillness of it, as of the sunlight pouring gently over a room.
Folk influences of folk greats such as Dan Fogelberg are dictated here and there making The Star have a classic, introspective head. This tune has that old country cosiness of the type that makes you stop and take a look and observe the small things in life. It is warm, but thought-provoking, like a dark night when the light touches the boundaries of memory and you are at home even when the whole world passes by.
It is the honesty that makes the song beautiful. Michellar ponders about family, thankfulness and hope and makes something as ordinary as putting a star on top of a tree a representation of peace and fulfilment. She writes a song that is lived-in, tender, and true even after she has composed 82 songs in this year. The Star, being her second celebratory single, does not follow any fads, it is a song that makes us remember why we keep listening to music every single year. It causes us to feel not so solitary, hard and deep.
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