#3 Linda Kiraly, "Can't Let Go"

I try my hardest to break free,
I'm so locked up and you got the key,
I'm in way too deep and I can't let, can't let, can't let,
I can't let go

Oh, how I wanted this to be a hit. And, though I knew it was unlikely, given the frequency with which my favorite songs have any real success in the U.S., part of me thought it might even really be possible--I really thought the song deserved and could maybe even possibly just maybe get Mariah Carey "We Belong Together" level success. Transitioning from that opening simple ballad structure to a drumbeat-backed epic mid-tempo near-power ballad, complete with Linda's beautiful voice, handclaps, a piano part, and a post-chorus up-and-down "can't let go-ohhh-ohhh-ohhh" that just pushes me over the edge every time, "Can't Let Go" is lush (to borrow Adem's word). The first time I heard it, back in July, I literally listened to it nonstop for something like an hour and a half, and I never do that with just one song. "Can't Let Go," which is co-written by Rodney Jerkins, never really took off at U.S. radios, though, and from the moment I saw the very cheap video for it I was pretty sure its chances were gone--it just didn't look like the label was willing to invest in pushing her. What a waste, though--it was one of those cases where all the stars in the pop universe align and you get the perfect song, perfect singer, and perfect production (yes, I'm not over the production on this song yet).

Making the song's failure to take off in the U.S. (or U.K., for that matter, though I don't think it was released there) even more frustrating was the fact that people would keep discovering the song throughout the year, one by one, bit by bit, piece by piece; though of course it's to be expected that not everyone will discover a song at once (I jump on bandwagons late all the time), the consistently positive opinions (even if not everyone loved "Can't Let Go" as much as me) and the failure of all these separate discoveries to ever coalesce into one big push for the song made me wish desperately for some sort of way to get everyone in the world to listen to the song right then. I fully expect that new people will be discovering the track throughout 2008, into 2009--I just wish we could get people to PAY ATTENTION now so the track could build some real momentum (or perhaps more accurately, since the whole world doesn't spend their time on the Internet looking for new music, that we had some big launching platform for her, something everyone would watch or listen to or some way to get the whole world to hear this song).*

Find it on: "Can't Let Go" single (only in a few countries' iTunes stores)

(Note that, for reasons that are beyond me, her management or record company or whoever originally uploaded the "radio edit with guitars" version onto iTunes, but later removed that and replaced it with the "radio edit" "without guitars" version; in my eyes, the with guitars version--it's not as if you hear the guitars and think "oh, guitars;" they're just part of the mix--is definitely better. It just sounds a lot fuller.)

*I'd be interested to know--oh, what's the term? I've forgotten it--"audience impression," or something like that--whether this song really had that low an audience impression rate at radio or what.