Track of the Week: Hailey Magee “Royal Blue”

This week’s track of the week comes from an artist who is not only talented, but extremely generous in her time giving back to the community. Hailey Magee has spent the better part of this year building a community around herself and young songwriters in town. EBASS has become a wonderful thing for folks who may not have realized they have folks they can reach out to, share gigs, talk about writing…a community (and you know we love community here at RLR).

Her voice slowly drifts over a delicate acoustic guitar. It has a very percussive feel to the playing, each time the bass note is hit it reverberates through my head. She launches into a rapid fire versing. A fury of words that has a whole sh*tload of emotion behind it. But man, I really like her voice and how she carries it. She can sing, but nothing is “put on”, its natural and (in this song in particular) it just flows.

Knowing Magee as an ‘always smiling and excited to share other folk’s music’ gal, one of the latter verses really hits me especially surprisingly. Anyone can bake a curse word into a song, but when you pass it off into your lyrics with such genuine conviction that it really hits you. Singing with a simple and pretty voice, while inserting a sense of angst and hurt, it’s impactful.

Baby, tomorrow they won’t find me
I’ll leave behind the sofa where we fucked
And all the love you said you’d buy me
But baby, I know you won’t be lonely
The earth is really cozy late at night
When all the demons come to bite

From this point the song builds a bit more, but never quite peaking over a certain level that you might expect. The way she has arranged the song in that manner gives the listener this unnerving sense of anxiousness. It is really amazing how she can elicit such a feeling in me when I listen. Waiting for a volcano to erupt, but it never quite does. The song just leaves you in this “holy crap, what just happened” sort of a state. Keeps you wondering, keeps you thinking about the song, and then you listen again.

Magee is well worth a listen. So go on ahead and do it today…