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Little Hurt’s “Cooler If U Did” is a stormy and turbulent performance yet never overwhelms listeners. Instead, I found myself compelled to keep following the song’s ever-changing thread, its movement from the slinky pop beat of its opening portions into the acoustic guitar introduced soon after and so forth, fully confident it would lead to satisfying outcomes. It did and there are many. There’s a lot of emotional ground that Little Hurt covers with their new single and, as a consequence, the arrangement for the song should be able to cover as many emotional bases as possible. Little Hurt’s mastermind, onetime Mowglis frontman Colin Dieden, succeeds and crafts something uniquely his own in the process.
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Passion is one of the many aspects of this song sticking out for more. It doesn’t sound plastic or manufactured either. “Cooler If U Did”, despite the sort of childish spelling, comes off as one part lament and one part screed with Dieden in full control of each part of the song and its production. He does a spellbinding job of threading a musical needle incorporating so many nods to different styles – the audience encounters a lot during this performance. He adroitly mixes those styles, however, into a steadily mounting pop symphony of sorts that may leave some listeners slightly stunned by the song’s end.
Advancing this far as a songwriter has always been in the cards for Dieden and it took going deeper into himself to get him there. “Cooler If U Did” doesn’t mire itself in self-referential obscurities, however, but instead draws the necessary connections for his point of view to bust free. The narrative voice I hear driving the lyric of this song towards its final line is a deeply felt and occasionally ruthless voice, but it is a voice, singular and its wide-eyed engagement with the song’s subject engages me as well.
I do wish the song would settle on a single or perhaps two lines of musical attack because I think its ultimately reflects too much of Dieden’s own wants rather than what audiences genuinely want to hear. There are many listeners, however, who will not concur with this. It isn’t a question of being too ambitious – Little Hurt does set a bold goal for itself, in retrospect, but Dieden unquestionably brings it off for me. It’s just me, however.
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I know I hear enough here that I can say, with total confidence, that for anyone interested in modern singer/songwriters with a multi-genre focus, Little Hurt is where you should go. Colin Dieden’s songwriting for this project doesn’t give a damn about labels. You shouldn’t either. It’s misapplied labels that keep us from hearing music such as this and artists such as Colin Dieden’s Little Hurt from finding the audience it deserves. “Cooler If U Did” deserves the widest possible audience as Little Hurt breaks more than a few rules and gets away with it – gloriously. It leaves me wanting more and I bet it will many others as well.
Jennifer Munoz
