Kaeley Jade – Ego

Canadian artist, Kaeley Jade, has a new single out, Ego, and we’ve been taking a good long listen here at the Send Me Your Ears studio.

Ego is a study of the affects of a toxic relationship on one’s mental health and it’s interesting because that seems to be a running theme with a great deal of our submissions at the moment. Perhaps something about the pandemic has caused us to assess our relationships more closely, or perhaps media attention has meant that people are more comfortable to discuss these difficult situations.

Ego is just beautiful. We think it may be our find of the day! This is really gentle indie pop that is very much led by the gorgeous warmth of Kaeley Jade’s lead vocals. Sounding just a touch like Taylor Swift, Jade has both a fragility and a confidence in her voice that is uniquely charming.

We particularly liked the changes in the use of reverb on the vocal track. There’s a very vulnerable sounding reverb-less moment near the end of the song which builds into a moment where the vocals and instrumentation are drenched in reverb and then back to nothing. This is a really classy use of varied effects on the vocals and really serves to get the lyrical message across to the listener. This hits hard in all the feels!!

Ego is predominantly led by the vocals, and there is some minimal instrumentation; synths, pads and electronic drums for the most part. The instrumentation sits firmly in the background with the voice being very much the focal point. At times guitars are added, at times the drums are a little busier and more predominant, but for the most part, it is Jade’s voice that is the stand out in this song.

The rise and fall of the instrumentation throughout helps to maintain interest for the listener and you almost forget how little is happening in places apart from the voice because it is such a characterful and passionate vocal performance.

There’s some superb use of silences to help build and release tension, and the song easily captured our attention. This is radio friendly stuff and we feel that Canadian campus radio will just love this track. We assume CKUA already have their copy?

One thing that we thought was particularly clever was the last line; “if i could let it go then i would….” It makes you feel as though the artist has suddenly found her strength whilst thrashing out her feelings about this toxic relationship and is at peace with a metaphorical mic drop. The song stops at that point and you realise that perhaps she is feeling healed and just has no more to say.

It is pretty rare for us as producers to be this impressed with a track, but Jade has nailed it here. Hang on to whoever your team are. We’re hard to please and this was an extremely high quality appealing track.

Ego by Kaeley Jade is a mesmerising track with some real quality vocals and a well written and well conceived subject matter. A new artist to us, but hopefully one that we, and our readers, will become much more familiar with.