The Maverick: Music as Metaphor

On the art of being heard for being different

Pause with me to remember some shared musical obsessions involving two key factors: talent and uniqueness. These are voices I not only listen to, but I seek out reaction videos because I want to live vicariously through the experience of someone discovering them for the first time.

I’ll begin with my most recent fascination, and though many of her works are spellbinding, I believe this song from a talent show six years ago is the perfect introduction. She was fifteen at the time, and I won’t tell you what makes her unique as that would defeat the point. Listen for yourself.

The song is short, making up only a little over two minutes of the video, but the video begins with the song and you can cut out when it’s done. There are versions that focus only on the song, but I wanted to link to Ms. Ankudinova’s official account.

The motherly voice I hear in the back of my head says, “You have such a pretty voice when you sing normally.” What pleases mother is when you sound like her favorite artist, in part that’s because she loves you and imagines you with the success, the glory, and that place in her heart the artist holds.

The reality, though, is there’s an endless supply of talented singers who can mimic mother’s favorite artist. They’re quickly forgotten, but if we focus on what makes us different, and if that difference highlights our talent, we have a chance of being heard and remembered.

It’s not the same as being weird for the sake of being weird, which was an artistic obsession of mine as a young man. Strange as a gimmick wears thin. We don’t need to see another dude, dressed like the devil, sing opera. That means for most of us, that legitimate difference might be minor, and that’s okay. The point is to express our talent through that which is truly us.

Sometimes, however, strange can be a beautiful necessity.

What an amazing display of storytelling used to share personal trauma. The difficulties Ren shares at the end of the song were caused by Lyme disease, and it’s an ongoing fight. Ms. Ankudinova’s personal history has also become the stuff of legend, and if that’s not overtly the story shared by her song, it informs the dark change made to a previously bright Elvis Presley tune.

I assume the Hi Ren video is better known, but that’s really only because I’ve shared it before and have heard from fans who love Ren and this song in particular. Diana Ankudinova is a new discovery for me.

For this version of The Prayer by Marcelito Pomoy, I chose the live recording because it highlights that this is all him.

Now, mind you, some of us have sung like this all our lives. The difference is, he does it well.

This next one by Dimash Quadaibergen is also about six years old, and as I retrieved the link, I had to stop and listen to it all over again. Absolutely magical.

Now, maybe the only oddity here is range and a mastery of those high notes, and if I’ve strayed from the maverick to simply fabulous displays of talent, maybe there’s room to include this next classic, Postmodern Jukebox’s cover of Creep, featuring Haley Reinhart, but I’m going to argue for its proper inclusion.

I fought with myself over this one for a bit, thinking I only wanted to include it because it was an absolute obsession of mine and an obscene display of talent. However, I sought out Ms. Reinhart’s own work after this and couldn’t recapture the spark. Here we combine her talent with the quirkiness of Scott Bradlee’s arrangement to hit that maverick sweet spot, and together they become something unforgettable.

Hard to believe it’s been ten years.

We were granted a similarly magical combination when Jungle sought to make a dance video of their song Back on 74 and chose Shay Latukolan as their choreographer.

And sometimes the oddity is simply a genre you don’t pay much attention to, like beat boxing, that’s pulled off with such aplomb that you have to take notice, such as with Dopamine by Wing.

All of these are examples of viral videos, all of them introducing the artist to a much wider artist, and I don’t want to fall into the trap of analyzing what makes something viral. If we look at them as introductions to a body of work, however, I think it’s worthwhile to consider how often we became fans of a broader body of work.

Back on 74 introduced me to the dancer Will West, but my next great love of the dance style wasn’t him or the same choreographer. It was CDK’s video of Somebody I Used to Know, which captured a similar energy better than the follow up videos by Jungle.

Creep made me a fan of Postmodern Jukebox, especially everything they did with Haley Reinhart.

I’m not seeking out more Wing, and I might have listened to a second Dimash song.

I spent a week with Marcelito Pomoy, and a few months diving into the works of Ren.

I’m currently fresh in my obsession with Diana Ankudinova, but so far it hasn’t translated to her contemporary work. I am, however, thrilled with another older piece, her cover of Wicked Game:

It’s a battle for eyeballs as artists seek the attention and then the retention of an audience, and the bigger the initial grab, perhaps the more who follow along for the complete ride.

It’s the reason we’re talking about expressing our talent through that which makes us uniquely us, rather than slapping on strange for attention. Whatever grabs the audience, you want it to be something that leaves them needing more, a need they’ll find satisfied in your larger body of work.

That focus applies to all of us, viral sensations or otherwise.

—Thaddeus Thomas