New Zealand lass, Sabreen Islam, has just released her latest single Count Me Out and we’ve been taking a listen here in the studio at Send Me Your Ears today.
Count Me Out is a glittering, cutesie pop track about being stood up on a date and working through the feelings that come with that sense of rejection. This feels to be a song of empowerment and positivity; “count me out” lets the guilty party know that they missed out. Its a message of believing in oneself and having a sense of self worth.
Sabreen has some lovely high notes in Count Me Out. Her switch between head voice and gentle twang is expertly exhibited and you can almost hear her smiling as she’s singing. As a young vocalist, perhaps consider more compression on the vocals to bring those difficult low notes under control and stabilise them to sound equally as good as those high notes that just soar over this song.
We were particularly taken with the sumptuous layered harmonies in this song. They were really subtle and served to bolster the lead lines perfectly without taking focus away.
With minimal electric drums and piano as the main instruments in Count Me Out, its the vocals that really carry the song. The chorus is really catchy and we found ourselves singing along by the end. This is an interestingly genre-blending song with elements of singer-songwriter, together with just a touch of contemporary bedroom pop.
This feels to us to be the kind of song that would work well in a TV show. We’d recommend Islam reaching out to try to garner some coverage in this field. Hard to get into, of course, but there’s something about this song that feels as though its best avenue for recognition would be to be placed first in a show and then subsequently seek out some radio air play.
Our perspective on the production is that Islam has done a good job of mixing the track herself. We’d suggest a boost in the EQ of the top 2 octaves in the master track to give some more air and brightness, just carefully notching out around 9kHz to avoid too much sibilance in the track. Perhaps a boost around 100-150Hz would add some extra warmth in the bass too.
A cute, sweet, singer-songwriter track which has some lovely elements, a great message and some folky vocals.