Hemlocke Springs, one of the pop revelations of the last five years, has released its debut album these days, ‘The Red Apple Under the Sea’, three years after becoming known with the viral ‘Girlfriend’. The album is inspired by his religious upbringing and contains numerous references to the Bible, but only to affirm Isimeme Udu outside of all dogma, in search of his own independence.
‘The Red Apple Under the Sea’ stands out for its colorful production and its original approach to genres such as synth-pop (‘Sever the Blight’), electropop (‘Be the Girl’) or R&B (‘Let Me Free’). Prior to the album’s release, ‘wwww-w’ was promoted, one of the most distinctive productions of the project and the Song of the Day for today, Sunday.
‘wwww-w’ is one of the most powerful pieces on the album, thanks to an industrial-style rhythm section that refers to Michael Jackson’s ‘Dangerous’ (1991) era. We could also talk about Björk’s art-pop in the ‘Post’ era (1995) to understand the style of the song: there are the percussions at the beginning or the entire synthetic soundscape.
The melody of ‘wwww-w’ is pure Hemlocke Springs intensity, while the lyrics are totally unusual in their exploration of child marriage.
Hemlocke was inspired by the 2013 documentary ‘Father Figures’, where it is revealed that a 16-year-old Filipino woman has married a 73-year-old man for money. Springs, of Nigerian parents, uses this story to criticize child marriage and sexual slavery that continue in Nigeria and other parts of the world.
The exploration of sexual slavery is specified in the first stanza, where Springs recounts the sale of a girl by her family to a wealthy man seeking to marry her. Springs describes the girl being sold as an object (because she only “gives trouble”).
In the chorus, Springs already gives his personal point of view, singing: “I can’t imagine getting up on a Sunday morning, cooking him breakfast and making him coffee. Why would she do that when he already has one foot in the grave? Springs concludes, bluntly: “I would kill myself rather than have to look him in the eyes and tell him I want his love.”
