Phillip Phillips is continuing his quest to blend together the music of Mumford & Sons and The Dave Matthews Band on his new single. Yesterday (March 3), the season 11 American Idol winner released the lead single "Raging Fire" from his upcoming album, and the track is exactly what Phillips fans have grown to expect.
Arguably the most successful Idol winner in recent years, Phillips took home the trophy in 2012 with "Home," an epic guitar-driven ballad full of swells of strings and a powerful, but not overwhelming, raspy vocal delivery. He then followed up that single with "Gone, Gone, Gone," a similarly powerful pop-rock song with pauses of massive orchestral movements.
Both those songs have found Phillips success - "Gone, Gone, Gone" went platinum and "Home" is the best-selling Idol coronation song of all time. So, it logically follows that Phillips would continue this momentum on his second album and fourth official career single, and boy does he on "Raging Fire."
In essence, "Raging Fire" is a Phillip Phillips song to the core. There are those orchestral bouts of energy, there's the peppy acoustic guitar and there's that signature raspy Dave Matthews-lite voice.
The song is solid enough for a Phillips track, and it's clear that he's building his own signature sound, whether he means to or not. In an interview with Billboard, Phillips said his yet-to-be-titled sophomore album would show "a different side" of him, but man, "Raging Fire" is the same ol' thang.
It's even hard to distinguish this song from "Gone, Gone, Gone." The breaks in the music are so startlingly similar that this reviewer kept anticipating that track's well known chorus, and then the swells of "Raging Fire" threw me off.
But, if you were into "Home" and "Gone, Gone, Gone," you'll be into this song, and I suppose there's nothing wrong with that.
Listen to Phillip Phillips' new single "Raging Fire" below:
Phillips will return to his home stage on American Idol this Thursday to perform his new single.
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