Burwell - Can't Stop
Are you looking for some upbeat acoustic pop to get into your life while you sit at home with “nothing better to do” during self-isolation? If that’s the case then you definitely need to check Burwell’s latest release, ‘Can’t Stop’. No, this is not a Red Hot Chili Peppers cover. This is a great new original piece that is full of love and longing and is presented with a vulnerability that I rarely ever hear in the pop genre these days. To be fair, I don’t spend all that much time delving deep into the pop genre but there is a stripped-down quality here that I love more than pretty much anything I hear on the radio (or Spotify, Sound Cloud or whatever other thing that’s out these days).
A brief aside: I have done my fair share of reviewing pop music and I have come to discover that most of these songs sound the best when they are stripped of all the synths, sequences and dreaded auto-tune. While there is a bit of a vaulted pop verb kicking around the harmonies in and around the chorus of this track, it is nothing compared to the intensely processed junk that hits my ears more often than not…and for that, I am thankful!
I am also thankful for the opportunity to interview Burwell about her new release and the life surrounding it. While part of her past leading to this release is shrouded in mystery, there is a lot to learn from someone who spent a good chunk of her time promoting other artists, waiting for the right time to open up and share her own work.
In 2016, I changed my name & took away “burwell” as a subtle way to pretend it wasn’t a part of me. It's been humbling to realize none of us can let go of our past and that perhaps we shouldn’t try so hard to hide it… even the darkest pieces of who we are can be made beautiful, in hindsight.
It is a breath of fresh air to have an artist who has such intimate music willing to share some of the shadows of the past in order to help us shed light on our own futures. There is wisdom in the notion of turning our darkest pieces beautiful in some way or another. Given the veiled backstory, I wanted to know more about just to whom she was singing in this song. I anticipated a former lover or perhaps an extension or younger piece of herself. I typically pride myself on a decent upfront and cursory reading of new music sent to me and I was pleasantly surprised to be shown wrong!
When I started writing this track with Chad Corouthers in Nashville, I had a hard time getting fully into it… the vibe of wanting something we can’t have, thinking about it all the time… then I thought about this feeling I found in nashville in the summer of 2014 and have been chasing ever since… I wonder if Nashville ever thinks about me, too.
Of course, Burwell is hardly the first musician to sing an ode, or ballad or love song to a place. I don’t think I need to bother listing anyone past Sinatra, Billy Joel, KISS or Huey Lewis…there are countless others; all very different musicians with an intense love for certain places. In Burwell’s case, it seems to be more a love of the feeling she got while in Nashville but, either way, she just ‘Can’t Stop’ thinking of the place where she felt this way.
What I find incredibly interesting about this piece, especially with regards to my love of stripped-down pop music, is that Burwell actually wrote this piece as an 80s synth-pop track (which I talk more about in our upcoming podcast episode reviewing this song). It wasn’t until after leaving Nashville and working with Corey Pavlosky (a musician I’ve had the pleasure of covering before) that she pulled back to the acoustic version.
Having genuinely enjoyed the song, I asked the easy question…when should we be expecting more?
I’ll be releasing a cover song in a few weeks, followed by an upbeat dance-pop track that feels pretty out of character… then I hope to set a few tracks from past projects free before getting into some of the newer songs I’ve been writing over the past year…
‘Can’t Stop,’ is less than a year old. I wrote it during my last trip to Nashville summer 2019 & finished it out in December. Pretty soon, I’ll release a few songs that are nearly 5 years old, which is absurd to me. They’re old enough to be in kindergarten.
As interested as I was and am in knowing more and more about this mysterious pop artist and to hear more and more of her work to better understand where she is coming from, I didn’t even feel the need to push or pry for more. Why? Well, she summed up just enough for fans and fellow artists to know until her next release (which you can bet I’ll be digging in to).
Thank you just for listening. Finding my voice has been a challenging journey & using it has been even harder… to have someone listen makes the whole thing feel worth it…For the longest time, I’ve struggled to call myself an artist & in a lot of ways, I still do. but in truth, nothing about “art” should fit into a box.
Learn more about and keep up to date with Burwell right HERE!
