Having built up an impressive record that includes a co-writing credit on the BTS Billboard Hot 100 number one song, Life Goes On, Chris James has accumulated a brain-breaking 1.7 billion Spotify streams across his collected work. Here on Sugar, James turns his hand to an indie-folk influenced style of energising pop.
Sugar is the kind of instantly infectious record that you can’t help but move to. The song’s magic is in part in its ability to weave together an authentic, raw vocal together with polished electronic melodies and moments of thoughtful vocal overdubbing. The result feels joyful, uplifting and yet also surprisingly genuine. The rest of the magic is all in a chorus that bubbles with energy, as James delivers the song’s repeated refrain, “The air, it tastes like sugar”.
Chris James’ song is a somewhat therapeutic exercise, and the sense of warm relief that runs through the song somewhat ironically reflects its difficult incubation period, followed by the relief in its conclusion. As James describes:
‘I was going through a little creative rough patch while I was trying to crack Sugar. It‘s funny cause the song itself is really about the feeling you have when coming out of a situation like this, and you finally get to breathe again, so in a way, the song's theme reflects the journey to making it.’
In Sugar’s closing minute, Chris pulls back all that polish and electronic instrumentation to deliver the song’s vocal on a basic microphone, giving the song a naked aesthetic, sounding like something he might record on his phone, in his bedroom. The result is surprisingly emotive, revealing the heart of the song and letting the melody stand tall, free of the production wizardry that embellishes the first two-thirds of its duration.