With the end of the semester just around the corner, I was more than ready to head down to Washington, D.C. with a few friends to see British singer/songwriter James Bay during his U.S. tour last Saturday, Nov.14. I was more than ready to be serenaded by his beautiful words as a way to blow off steam with the stress of schoolwork becoming all but unbearable. I just wasn’t as ready to attend the show with a broken heart.
I can’t count the amount of times my breath got caught in my throat as Bay and his opening act, Frances, sang the words I was dying to say. Each word sung and each note played was delivered with such a genuine magnificence that only true talent could convey. Raw emotion hung in the air in the most beautifully tragic of ways, as they made sense of feelings that are almost too complex to understand.
Songs like “If You Ever Want to Be In Love,” “Let It Go,” “When It Comes to Us,” and “Let it Out” reminded each and every person standing in that pit that it’s okay to hurt, grieve and miss that special someone. Like Bay sings, “You don’t have to wear your best fake smile, if you don’t like.” Frances and Bay prove to be a perfect concert match, as each musician expertly crafts every stage of being alone or in a relationship into lyrics delicately strung together with guitar and piano accompaniment.
iTunes has dubbed “The Chaos and The Calm” as a “stunning debut album,” and I could not have said it better myself. Bay does an incredible job of tugging at his listeners’ heartstrings as he captures the essence of every stage of love, and the record is definitely worth the listen. If there’s anything I learned from that night, it is that I am not alone in my heartbreak. Musicians have given us one of the most important gifts of letting us always know that we are never alone in how we feel, and that both pain and love are universal. They are living proof that beautiful things can come out of struggle and heartache.
Bay is set to continue his very successful tour as he heads westward to finish the U.S. leg, and then he is off to Australia and Europe. Click here to check out his new hit album.
Feature Image: Gibraltar Photo, Courtesy of Flickr. URL
