If you’re looking for a both heartbreaking and heartwarming folk song, then Cedar Rose Johnson’s new song, My Open Heart, will tick every single box for you.
My Open Heart is a song about feeling safe, about that loving warmth when absolutely nothing else in the world matters. Initially we assumed this was a love song, but then discovered that this is just a heart wrenching song written after Cedar Rose lost her mother. So perhaps a love song, but nonetheless written at a time when the writer was feeling raw and vulnerable – the very best time to write if you can stomach it! Kudos to Cedar Rose for finding the strength.
The song starts beautifully and grabs your attention immediately. With incredibly warm and smooth vocals, this is a truly intimate glimpse into the artist’s heart.
We just can’t get over how smooth and warm My Open Heart is. A really superb performance.
Harmony vocals come in in the second chorus and they just melt your heart a little more. There’s some superb stereo in the backing vocals that really help fill out the sound.
The song develops well, with some gorgeous cello and some great subtle high strings. The pizzicato strings in particular are a wonderful touch.
Its funny, the melody of the vocal line is repetitive but in no way annoyingly so. It allows you to get comfortable with the vocalist and let her voice wash over you while you pay attention to the sparse but absolutely perfect instrumentation.
For such sparse instrumentation, this is a really surprisingly dynamic song. The rise and fall in this is a real lesson to anyone looking to score a simple song.
The chorus is just super catchy and something that we were joining in with fairly quickly. “Boom bada ba boom” is pretty easy for even the most musically challenged to join in with and we imagine this would be a great sing along song at a Cedar Rose Johnson concert.
The vocals are confident, fragile, intimate and breathy. They’re characterful with Cedar Rose’s English accent coming through charmingly in many places.
My Open Heart is just perfect for a sync deal and we would strongly urge Johnson to seek something out. The simplicity of the instrumentation, together with the warmth and intimacy make it something that many music supervisors are just crying out for right now.
Its rare we’re this impressed with the production of a song but My Open Heart hits the spot for our producer. There’s great balance of frequencies right across the EQ spectrum and each instrument is given plenty of its own space to shine.
Cedar Rose Johnson’s, My Open Heart, is our track of the day. A warm and intimate love song that will have you singing in your head for the rest of the day and probably well beyond that. A great work!