Review
Genre and Mood
Jain’s On My Way is the first thing you hear on her second album, and it sets the tone for a record Wikipedia files under pop, dance-pop and worldbeat. It is pop with a hand drum at its heart and a message of encouragement on top, uplifting and empowering in intent: a song about getting up and going on.
Song Summary
On My Way opens Souldier, released on 24 August 2018 through Spookland, Columbia and Sony Music, and it runs three minutes and twenty-three seconds. Jain wrote it, as she wrote every song on the album, and produced the record with Yodelice at Spookland in Paris. God Is in the TV counts it among the album’s lyrics of encouragement, words that ask the listener to let go of worry and move on from heartbreak and hard times. Its one sonic detail on record comes from Jain herself: asked whether the song uses a tabla, she answered that it is not a tabla but something similar, an Arabic drum.
Musical Breakdown
No published review walks through On My Way part by part, so this review keeps to what is documented. The song is the opening of the album, built around an Arabic hand drum, with Jain’s voice carrying the encouragement of the lyric; God Is in the TV hears the album around it still embracing African rhythm and percussion, with hip-hop elements and sticky, snappy snares added. Listen for the drum, and for where the song hands over to the rest of the record.
Concepts in Focus
A groove is the felt quality of a rhythm that makes you move, the way the parts lock together in time. In On My Way, a hand drum from the Arabic tradition is part of that groove, the kind of percussion Jain learned in the Middle East, so the rhythm itself carries some of her biography. Her interviewer asked about a tabla, a drum of Indian music, which she says she loves for its very particular rhythm; her answer, an Arabic drum, points back to where she learned.
The song’s music video is an official lyric video on her VEVO channel rather than a filmed story. Alright and Oh Man were the album’s singles; this album track got words on screen instead of a film. Compare the elaborate Johannesburg video of Jain – Makeba.
Artistic Context
Jain, born Jeanne Galice in Toulouse in 1992, grew up in Dubai, the Republic of the Congo and Abu Dhabi, learning drums in Pau, Arabic percussion in the Middle East and programming in Congo. Her debut Zanaka made her name; Souldier, its title a play on soldier and soul, was her second album. Jain told LiveWire she wanted it to be a safe place, a kind of utopian bubble where people can find refuge.
Impact and Reception
Souldier debuted at number one in France and was certified double platinum there. Critics were divided on its lyrics: God Is in the TV found the hopeful words overly simple, while Diandra Reviews It All heard the record, from Dream to On My Way, as more settled and concise. Start the album where Jain does, and let the drum lead you in.
