Let Me Pray For My Salvation, Baby

Christine and the Queens “Tears Can Be So Soft”

It’s not just that “Tears Can Be So Soft” sounds like Portishead, Tricky, and Massive Attack in the mid 90s. Plenty of artists have aimed for that and ended up with songs that were just OK. This song actually nails the stoned groove magic of the Bristol cohort while pushing it in a very different and far more melodramatic direction in the way Chris sings it, splitting the difference between earthy R&B moves and a more theatrical bombast that reminds me of Amy Lee of Evanescence. The lyrics are fairly despondent, lamenting a loss of so many key things in life – family, love, joy – but embracing crying as an act of cleansing catharsis. The vocal is emotionally raw and compelling, but I think the biggest reason this song works is the studio work by rap production legend Mike Dean, who I think brought a lot of nuance to the beat and got just the right ratio of menace, melancholy, and romance out of a central Marvin Gaye sample.

Buy it from Amazon.