There’s been a serious lack of upbeat pop coming through the underground in the past year, and although his is subtextually angst-ridden in spots, there’s a lot more positivity to be enjoyed within Marc Bosserman’s new single “She Makes Beauty” than there is among any other tracks out at the moment. Where a lot of other players in this artist’s scene have been relying on an element of contrast to make a driving point to their audience, Bosserman’s sound is utterly straightforward in this performance, which despite being a little less trendy than what his peers are doing works out incredibly well for this material.
The Beatles-influenced structure of this song certainly creates a fine dynamic for our fair-voiced singer, but had he been just a little more aggressive with the hook I do wonder if the melody would have come across just a bit more balanced. There’s nothing wrong with the cosmetics of this incarnation of “She Makes Beauty,” but make no mistakes about it – there’s more versatility to this composition than Bosserman was willing to experiment with. He needs to free himself of concern when stepping into the recording studio, because from the looks of this piece I think his ambitions could yield even more exciting content in the future.
This harmony has got to be the most compelling part of the track, and not solely because it’s at the center of the arrangement. Contrarily, there are moments where it feels like more of a footnote to the lyrics than an actual agent of evocation, which isn’t to say that the lyrical content in this song is any more profound than what you’d hear across the whole of the FM dial this autumn. To me, it doesn’t have as much of the spotlight as it deserves, but this undeniably drives up the sense of exposure in the narrative.
Bosserman’s lead vocal absorbs most of our attention thanks to the way this song was mixed, but there’s honestly nothing in the framework of “She Makes Beauty” to suggest that this was compositionally intentional at all – the opposite, truth be told. I think that when something looks or sounds better from within the studio it’s more than alright to make a couple of changes here and there, and if he’s able to channel this attitude more towards the aesthetics of his work in upcoming releases, we’re going to hear the true best of what this artist can do.
Although it’s a little more indulgent than what I normally go for in a pop single, “She Makes Beauty” has a premise that I simply adore as both a critic and a longtime music lover. Marc Bosserman’s charisma and personality are what give this performance so much of its guts, and while there are more than a couple of departments in which he could improve on the model he’s working with here, I don’t know that you’re going to find another release like his this September, nor for the duration of 2022 at this point.
Cleopatra Patel