Rudi Douglas is an Irish singer-songwriter with a beautiful voice and deft lyrical touch.
By Patrick Cash
We first encountered Rudi Douglas performing at the exciting art/fashion event ‘Vogue Goes Rogue’ last weekend in Hackney. The Irish singer-songwriter sang two songs in his set, the first of which was an ‘a cappella’ ballad, touched with poignancy and displaying the depth and emotional range of his impressive voice. In a line-up that included well-known East End talents such as Bishi and Jonny Woo – both scintillating themselves – on the bill, Douglas easily held the crowd of fashionistas attentive by virtue of his natural talent and charisma of performance.
Those particularly attuned to pop culture may recognize Douglas from The X Factor 2006, where he appeared twice in one season as a disarmingly cute 19-year-old getting through by the skin of his teeth on his second audition. However, fast-forward eight years and a quick Google of Douglas’ recent own-written work reveals a maturity and visceral power to its construction. ‘He Won’t Swim In My Ocean’, the first track for which he’s made a video, begins like an old folk ballad with just the smoothness of the vocals leading the listener in, until a twist of anger turns the pace at ‘fuck his heart, let him feel this / fuck your heart, I won’t bleed for you’.
Overall, the song is musically a work of gentle beauty, and lyrically encapsulates the heartache of a gay breakup or hurt of unrequited affection, far more realistically than any mass-produced Beyoncé track that’s ‘heavy on the piano’. Neat plays with familiar language add to the overall effect: ‘I feel your arms around him’. It’s also refreshing to hear a gay male solo artist use the explicit pronoun ‘he’ rather than the more commercially accessible but generalised ‘you’. In the imaginative video directed by Ed Duffield, Douglas is seen going about his daily routine holding a bunch of balloons, a nice metaphor on the pressure to always remain upbeat in social situations when all may not be quite the same inside.
His next video will be for the equally accessible ‘Burning In Your Bed’, currently making waves as an audio on Soundcloud. We’re looking forward to it.
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www.soundcloud.com/rudidouglas
