“My mom thinks ur trash and my friends think you suck / If they saw you out they’d probably all key your truck / I want to believe the side I saw of you / Is really who you are but I just don’t know if it’s true,” proclaims Daisy Briggs in the opening line of her new single “I Don’t Hate U (my mom thinks ur trash),” her vocal as cutting as the melodies that will soon surround it in colorful high definition sound. Anyone who has listened to Briggs’ much-publicized recent work knows that this is one artist who has a voice capable of winning just about any sort of audience over, but in “I Don’t Hate U (my mom thinks ur trash),” she pushes her vocal to the limit and ends up delivering what might be her most prolifically melodic sound so far – which, as many are aware, is saying something.
Lyrics aren’t the only evocative element that Briggs wields like a razor-sharp weapon in this all-new single; actually, they’re often not even the most communicative component audible to us. Tonality is everything to this artist, and inserted within the melodies of every instrument in her new track we find bits of emotionality that could never be expressed through words alone. While the poetic value of the verses in “I Don’t Hate U (my mom thinks ur trash)” is as noticeably measurable as anything else is, this single just wouldn’t be the juggernaut it is had it been outfitted with any less of a brute intensity with regards to the instrumentation.
This master mix favors the bassline more than it does the drums, but it doesn’t reek of inefficiencies on the backend of the track – the exact opposite. The structure of the verses allows for the flow of the bass parts to constantly merge with the swaggering pulse of the drums, and though this might have led to almost certain discord in another setting (say, a rock or a hip-hop-stylized song), it works well here because it isn’t stealing any of the thunder away from the most important element of focus – Briggs’ singing.
Briggs’ vocal is one of the more versatile that I’ve heard in a while, and I would like to hear what she can do with it in a more stripped-down capacity. She’s got the chops to sing a lot of different styles, but it would be interesting to find out how much of her harmonizing is reliant on a larger-than-life backdrop.
If what I’m hearing in “I Don’t Hate U (my mom thinks ur trash)” is just a sample of what is still to come from Daisy Briggs in the next five years plus, she is going to be hard to slow down once she finds the momentum necessary to carry a mainstream audience from season to season. She’s off to a tremendous start just with what I’ve already heard from her and provided she can build upon the street cred her scene has earned in the last few years, I think we’ll be seeing and hearing a lot more from her as the rest of 2023 comes into focus.
