Nora Sanger has just released her latest single, Be Yourself. We’ve had a good listen to it here at Send Me Your Ears today.
German based Sanger describes herself as a Singer. Songwriter. Mother. Storyteller. Content creator. Late Bloomer.
Be Yourself has a lovely positive message of validity and hope.
Written for her children, Sanger tells the listener to “Be Yourself”; to search for acceptance as yourself rather than striving for what society or outside pressures may suggest.
There’s some beautiful stereo in this song, together with some really classy and airy backing vocals. Be Yourself is a kind of country/soul crossover, with the vocal techniques and styles effortlessly blending between the two genres.
Sanger notes in her biography that it is hard for a German artist to garner attention in Germany if they’re singing in English but, true to her path, that’s what Sanger has decided to do. And it works! The vocals are delivered beautifully and with no accent to be heard. We were surprised to read that Sanger wasn’t straight out of the U.S.
The chorus is catchy, and by the second time it came around we were humming along. The drums are simple, as is the instrumentation with a repeated riff on the guitar. The focus here is the voice.
There’s a real smile in Sanger’s voice as she’s singing. Its almost as if she has her children in the studio with her as she sings her message of hope to them. There is most definitely a real Karen Carpenter feel in places to the vocals. They’re light and airy with a great deal of character in them.
The vocals are, without doubt, the main focus of this song. The instrumentation seems to be simply there to get the message across. Sanger does, after all, describe herself as a storyteller so it makes sense that the vocals are front and centre. They’re recorded very clearly and sit well in the mix.
From a production perspective, there’s a lot of information in the first octave which most stereo systems can’t really handle. Filtering this out should give a lot more headroom to the song. Personally, we’d give a tiny dip in the low mids to notch out some of the slightly muddy frequencies that are poking through. A wide boost centred around the 5-6kHz area will give a little more presence to the overall track and really make those smiling vocals stand out.
Be Yourself is a delightfully positive message of authenticity. An artist who is clearly following her own path and successfully building her fan base of English speaking audiences. We look forward to hearing more!