The Singles Bar: Leilani Wolfgramm walks on a ‘Live Wire’
The R&B newcomer serves up pointed cultural criticism.
Welcome to The Singles Bar, a review series focused on new single and song releases.
Social media has birthed the most narcissistic generation of our human existence. We are chasing our tails, hunting down likes to feed our own plundering egos and forever cursed to live our lives on loop. We aren’t actually living but seeing only what we want to see through Instagram and Snapchat filters. Our proverbial rose-colored glasses mask the suffering buried deep within our chests. But we can do better. Singer-songwriter Leilani Wolfgramm heaves a harsh retort about today’s deteriorating mental slope with her reggae-stripped new single “Live Wire,” doused with creamy R&B and her siren-like magnetism. “We are more superficial than we’ve ever been. More materialistic. More desperate for attention. More naked, more insecure. More depressed,” she says, matter-of-factly.
The song, co-produced by Wolfgramm, along with Fredro Odesjo (Guy Sebastian, Christina Milian) and Joshua Sadlier-Brown (John Legend, Parson James, Emily Kinney), depicts “the lies we tell ourselves,” baring our coiled, hardened insides. “If we take away our personas, our masks, we start to see how ugly we’ve become and how sad we really are. Walking around covering up who we are is like walking on a live wire,” she continues. “It’s dangerous, and it’s electrifying; the attention we get when we get a complement or a ‘like.’ That feeling starts to become a drug. And before we know it our confidence is reliant on compliments, it’s fake security and we just keep chasing the high till we die.”
Her songwriting is most pointed on the bridge, where she lacerates the digital stream.”Compliments for confidence / And common sense is convalesce / So, we trade sex, because we’re obsessed to fill the void and feel the complex / What’s next? That was a quick fix,” she murmurs, transfixed by her own selfish infatuations and sun-scorched exposure.
“I write music to celebrate being alive. The good, the bad, the happy, the sad ⎯⎯ all the lessons I’ve learned,” Wolfgramm stresses. There is yet no indication where “Live Wire” might be heading next, but the distinctive vocalist, mingling dancehall with glistening pop, is eyeing quite the breakthrough 2018. We’re so ready.
Grade: 3 out of 5
Listen below:
Photo credit: Anthony Kimata
