Music Existence Because of Music, We Exist
MattO doesn’t have to belt anything out to offer us a fever pitch that encapsulates the prescience of what’s about to come careening at us just around the next corner in his new single, “It’s All About Me.”
The bass slowly comes alive like a long-dormant volcano, the foundation ascends into the heavens that the vocal track is occupying with such command, and though we’re able to differentiate where one instrumental component ends and another begins, these elements collectively form a singular tour de force that cannot be stopped, no matter how hard one might try.
“It’s All About Me” is a blistering, unforgivingly heavy number with the heart and soul of electronic experimentation woven out of dream pop. MattO lays down the most infectious melodies of the season in this sonic slice of heaven, and if you didn’t know his name before, you definitely won’t be able to forget it after getting his track’s long, slender hooks impaled through your chest.
It doesn’t take much more than a single listening session with “It’s All About Me” to understand why MattO is winning the affection of the press this month, despite being an unknown on the international level. This song features such a crisp master mix that, were I one of his rivals in the pop underground, I would feel more than a little jealous of its detailed intricacies.
There’s a bit of bass where we’re least expecting to find it, a cutting treble edge in the vocal, virtually no middle over the percussion, and a scooped tone on the synthesized melody that acts as the central canvas atop which MattO spills one immaculate color after another.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D2Kou2Aoys
One thing that caught me off guard was the total absence of fuzz in the bassline; I can’t begin to tell you how many artists have been in love with overdriven bass tones in 2023, but at no point does this track devolve into that sort of overindulgent, unlistenable dribble. MattO is arriving during a very excess-friendly period for pop music, and I think that’s part of the reason why his sound stands out as much as it does right now. He isn’t interested in playing by the mainstream’s rules, and his work here reflects that.
Night vibes meet balladic, introspective prose to make “It’s All About Me” a white-hot cocktail of supersonic might, and from a critical perspective, it says quite a lot about the artist who brings it to life. From what I gather in this song, MattO is a performer and a songwriter with a lot of emotion, but it isn’t the sort of pain that other musicians might want to conceal with flamboyance or abstract embellishments. I get a strong sense of catharsis in “It’s All About Me;” it’s the kind of single that feels therapeutic when you listen to it because, ultimately, it can take you away from whatever state of mind you’re in when it happens to come on the stereo.
I’d be interested to see how he does with a more stripped-down composition as well, but for what I like in a freewheeling song, it’s hard to outdo what MattO has issued in this all-new release.
Ryan Parish
