Good music knows no borders, no language barriers, and no politics; it touches us from across an ocean, a continent, without ever skipping a beat. Gabriele Saro isn’t interested in making region-specific pop, and in the aesthetic-blending new singles “Can’t Fight the Feeling” and “I Don’t Mind,” he presents his artistry as being a lot more flexible than that of most anyone in the underground today.
There’s a heavy Europop influence to his songwriting concepts, but make no mistakes about it – for every old-world compositional cue in his music, there’s a touch of western postmodernity, suggesting that he’s a lot more curious about experimentation than he is making anything in the puritan vein of the pop genre. There’s a striking instrumental punch to “Can’t Fight the Feeling” and “I Don’t Mind,” but it isn’t meant to take anything away from the vocal or cosmetically mask a shortcoming within the performances; I get the impression that Saro legitimately wants to express with as vast a canvas as he can muster up in the studio. His melodic illustrations here do not disappoint, and those who check out these new songs are likely to share my sentiments.
Confidence is always a positive attribute in pop music, or really any genre you fancy, and it’s something that this player doesn’t have a difficult time wielding like a loaded gun in a knife fight. “I Don’t Mind” features a more driving lead vocal than “Can’t Fight the Feeling” does, but both of these tracks have a lot of physicality that isn’t restricted to basslines and percussive beats exclusively. In all honesty, the elegant arrangements of these songs allow for a lot more brawn in the mastering than something more jagged and unpredictable would have, ironically enough.
It’s as if Saro has to be a little meticulous to yield a sense of controlled chaos in these singles, but as painstaking as the work appears from the critic’s chair, there’s no arguing the value it adds to the finished product. Production quality would seem to be as important to his narrative as any actual play is, and if you don’t believe me just take a peek at the polished hook in “Can’t Fight the Feeling,” which I feel was made so to attract as much mainstream radio attention as possible.
I haven’t had the chance to see or hear what Gabriele Saro can do on a stage, but if it’s anything similar to what he can accomplish in a recording studio, he’s going to discover a plethora of fans hungry for his services on both sides of the Atlantic in 2022. He’s got so much self-confidence and charisma that it’s almost a given that he would be a juggernaut in a live setting and depending on how he chooses to take the next couple of releases he works on, I think mainstream affections are going to get easier and easier to come across. I can appreciate all of the buzz around Saro after hearing “Can’t Fight the Feeling” and “I Don’t Mind,” and I don’t imagine it getting anything but bigger in the years to come.
Claire Uebelacker
The music of Gabriele Saro has been heard all over the world in partnership with the radio plugging services offered by Musik and Film Radio Promotions Division. Learn more https://musikandfilm.com