Strutting into focus with a swaggering beat that works its magic on the audience as quickly as it takes a match to ignite, “My Dying Spirit” comes on strong and keeps at us for the whole of its nearly five-minute running time. In this new single from American pop singer Greyson Chance, flashy hooks and virtuosic vocals take a backseat to homespun poetry, straightforward vocals, and melodies that don’t need a lot of synthetic amplification to resonate with the listener. The instruments are colorful, and the crooning is sly and a little mischievous, but the message here is more than clear – we’re all in this crazy life together, and one way or another, music is going to bring us together in the long run.
“I’m hanging on an endless hunger / It keeps the tears out the devil’s eyes / I don’t eat because he tells me that it’s fine / I’m barely even standing now” we’re told in one epic string of lines in “My Dying Spirit,” as if Greyson Chance were imparting some final words to us before disappearing into the darkness through which they come gently roaring at the start of the track.
Though this particular set of verses feels rather stoic, they come at the culmination of a multipart declaration of emotionality, melodic pageantry, and old-fashioned confessional commentary. Instead of coming off as preachy, Chance sounds almost encouraging in this single, which is a nice change of pace from some of the self-righteousness that’s been infecting the mainstream airwaves with nonsensical narratives in the past year.
“My Dying Spirit” wraps up with the same unfanciful gust of keys that it starts us up with, but while the end of this single isn’t all that different from its beginning, it doesn’t feel compromised or missing any fireworks at all. Greyson Chance is still getting into the public consciousness, but in this song, he makes a valiant attempt at raising the bar for both himself and the scene that gave his career together life in the first place. It’s not a perfect homerun, but for the audience that this single and its video was tailor-made for, I believe “My Dying Spirit” deserves to be lauded as a big breakthrough for the musician who performs it.
