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CMU Approved
Approved: Joseph Lamar
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 21 May 2020
Joseph Lamar’s latest single ‘Paradise 1’ continues the genre-bending style he embarked upon with his 2017 debut album ‘Quarter-Life Righteous’. It also sees him setting out on a new journey, analysing the religious upbringing he pushed away from as a teenager.
“Paradise – it’s defined as an ideal place”, he says in a blog post about the track. “It literally means ‘enclosed park’. It’s synonymous with utopia (which literally means ‘no place’) and heaven (which literally means ‘sky, firmament’ or ‘place where god dwells’)”.
“To me, the literal meanings of those words imply two things; containment and inaccessibility”, he adds. “In other words, you can’t get in AND you can’t get out. My song ‘Paradise 1’ started with a reflection on the limits of paradise”.
The song itself is like a religious epic in three and half minutes. It switches genre at least three times, but Lamar manages to weave these shifts in with the emotional twists of his lyrics. As a result, everything makes sense in a way that it shouldn’t.
The EP it forms the title track to is actually made up of four versions of the same song – one playing the track in reverse to reveal its hidden messages, two more giving the track more religious musical treatments.
‘Paradise 1’ is also the first track released from Lamar’s forthcoming new album ‘SIN (Act 1)’, which he plans to be the first part of a trilogy. Watch the video for ‘Paradise 1’ here:
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