“Sixty years from today, the earth will have withered away”…Sophia James grew up in Long Beach, California, and that airy chilledness shows through in her music, earning her a place in the coveted ‘Top Ten’ on 2020’s American Idol. ‘Sixty Years’ is a beautiful, piano-based song, down-tempo but not slow, melancholic at times, but not sad, a mixture of jazz, folk, rock, and soul, hopeful, gentle, and charismatic. It’s a lovely record, Sophia’s beautiful vocals rolling and lifting, the lyrics stunning and superb.
It’s genuinely moving and emotive, Sophia’s voice carrying the listener away on a wave of beautiful nostalgia around love and regret, and the way some people are just destined to always be there, one way or another, no matter what – those relationships that you can leave untouched for five years and yet pick up like you only popped out yesterday. Sophia wants to ‘create music that will connect people, move people, and heal people’; in ‘Sixty Years’, she’s done just that. It’s a truly beautiful single.
Hear ‘Sixty Years’ on Spotify; check out Sophia James here or on Instagram.
Review by Alex Holmes