In her new single “Sweet Persuasion,” Destiny Malibu works to establish herself as a melody-first singer with a penchant for turning out stunning pop beats as often as she does supple, verse-driven harmonies. Malibu doesn’t hold anything back from us in this latest single to emerge from her ever-growing brand, utilizing the bright tones in the background instrumentation to create a canvas atop which she can paint us a story. Her skillset is sounding more fine-tuned than it has in past releases, and although many of come to expect this caliber of work from her just based on the high quality material she’s submitted in her career thus far, I for one think that “Sweet Persuasions” shows off her growth as a performer more than it does anything else.
URL: https://destinymalibu.com/home
The beat is the more important component in this single outside of Destiny Malibu’s singing, and in some ways it illustrates the mood of the music even more than the melodic elements in the backing band do. There isn’t a lot of space between the percussive textures and the thrust of the bassline, but there doesn’t need to be – when both are firing on all cylinders, they’re indistinguishable from one another due to the overall physicality of the master mix. While some artists might view this as a negative, I can see where Malibu explicitly wanted to create this sort of a contrasting dimension to an otherwise streamlined pop song; it demonstrates her flexibility as a singer, and more importantly, as a songwriter.
Destiny Malibu’s vocal is even more expressive than the lyrics she’s singing are, but this isn’t to dismiss the verses as being the product of standardized pop aesthetics – quite the contrary, truth be told. The verses are plenty colorful without being sung by someone with the defined depth and talent Malibu’s got, but when she steps up to the microphone to belt them out in this track, they take on a weightiness that wouldn’t have existed here without her personal touch. She has so much energy she brings to the words that it’s impossible to exaggerate her influence over our interpretation of the narrative in “Sweet Persuasion;” simply put, it would be a completely different single if she wasn’t at the helm of every harmony.
APPLE MUSIC: https://music.apple.com/ca/album/sweet-persuasion-single/1494386474
If you haven’t already heard her work before now, Destiny Malibu’s “Sweet Persuasion” should be considered a must-listen this February. While this has traditionally been a month known for producing hits from some of the more eclectic artists in the pop genre, I think that a more conventional player like Malibu has a legitimate shot of breaking out of the underground right now due to the commanding talent she offers in comparison to many of her less than skillful brethren on the indie side of the dial. She’s a fresh voice amidst a sea of sameness, and with continued growth and development in the studio, I can imagine she’ll be one of the more important singers and songwriters to come out of her scene in some time.
Jodi Marxbury