There’s a slightly blue overtone to the velvety verses adorning the grooves in Betty Beata’s “My Favourite Time Of The Year.” From the moment that her breathy vocal comes into focus, the melody it emits is saturated in a solemn but colorful texture; in both what she’s singing and how she’s singing it, she’s expressing an emotionality to us that is aching and pained.
The feeling of being lost in the wintry glow that comes with every December is translated into a vibrant, boredom-extinguishing soul anthem for the ages in “My Favourite Time Of The Year,” and even though it’s one of the more stripped-down tracks that I’ve heard lately from an instrumental perspective, it’s not devoid of an acerbic tonality that is found only in the most literate and robustly produced singles that I review. Betty Beata is using every sonic weapon at her disposal to get a reaction out of us here, and much like she has in the previous outings, she does a terrific job from beginning to end.
This is a more boisterous ballad compositionally than any of the similarly stylized songs that have been making their way up the charts lately, and I like that Beata doesn’t steal all of the thunder away from the well-rounded instrumentation supporting her. The chemistry between her and the backing band is absolutely off the chain in “My Favourite Time Of The Year,” and in the chorus, she could easily be mistaken for a legendary jazz crooner of the roaring 20s.
I get the feeling that this song was likely created out of an open-ended jam session, mostly because of its somewhat formless harmonies that bond perfectly to the rhythm of the drums. It’s got the defined lines of a stage epic that a group of musicians would come up with on the spot simply by playing off of each other’s cues and following the energy, wherever it may take them. “My Favourite Time Of The Year” makes me very curious to see Beata live at some point in the future because if even a fraction of this magnificent presence translates to her in-concert performance, it would make for a must-see gig for sure.
The passionate pipes of Betty Beata have got us talking once again this season, and I think in comparison to the sleeper hits we saw come out of the woodwork from her rivals towards the end of 2022, “My Favourite Time Of The Year” is more reflective of who Beata is becoming as a solo artist, and perhaps most importantly, what we can expect out of her camp in the future. She’s getting close to the soul/jazz style that she’s playing with here, and I think that she’s proving to be very good at it from pretty much every angle that I’ve examined her sound from. Beata doesn’t fail to surprise me with her majestic musicality, and in that sense, this new single is a standard-setter that I hope to see replicated in her future sessions down the line.
