Review
Genre and Mood
Phonique and Antonia Vai’s Grass Is Greener is deep house with a song at its centre. Soundplate praised the balance between the delicate vocal and the deep production and expected the melody to stay in your head: catchy, then, but also intimate, a voice heard up close over a long, patient track.
Song Summary
Grass Is Greener was the first single from Green Supreme, the fourth studio album of the Berlin-based producer Phonique, released on his own imprint Ladies and Gentlemen. The single came out in October 2016 and the album on 24 February 2017. The credits name Michael Vater and Alex Krüger as composers and producers and Antonia Vai as the lyricist and singer. This recording is the album version, 7:28 long, the third track of Green Supreme.
Musical Breakdown
Main Section
No review we found walks through the track part by part, so this page describes less than usual. Soundplate points to two things to listen for: the voice, which it called delicate, and the deep production that, in its ears, balances the voice rather than competing with it. Over seven and a half minutes there is room for both.
Concepts in Focus
A <a href=“https://korczis.github.io/sonic-playground/concept/featured-artist/” class=“concept-link font-medium text-primary-700 underline decoration-dotted underline-offset-4 hover:decoration-solid dark:text-primary-400” data-concept=“featured-artist” title=“A guest performer credited on another artist’s track, usually as “feat.”: a rapper’s verse, a singer’s hook or a second voice. Features bring together different styles and audiences and are central to hip-hop, R&B and dance music.“>featured artist is a guest credited on another artist’s track. Antonia Vai is more than a guest on Green Supreme: Data Transmission counted her voice on four of its tracks, and on this one she also wrote the words. Phonique told the magazine that Grass Is Greener was his favourite all the way, and that the album’s title mixes it with The Supreme Artist and his vegan life.
The song exists in several versions, and each alternate version has its own length and purpose. The album carries it at 7:28; the official video uses a cut of about five minutes; Green Supreme Remixed, released in September 2017, adds a 6:50 club mix and remixes by Kruse & Nürnberg, Larse and Bruno Be. The yearbook’s copy is the album version.
The music video was directed by Tuca Paoli from a script by Mari Palumbo and Paoli, with Marta Fonti and Johnny Jango in the cast and Eduardo Mattos as director of photography. It was released with the single, the first look at the coming album.
Artistic Context
Data Transmission called Phonique one of the industry’s most tireless artists, with more than 500 original productions and remixes by 2017, and Green Supreme is, in his own words, his most focused album by far. The album’s Bandcamp page names Tigerskin as his studio partner and lists guests such as Richard Davis, Ian Whitelaw, Stee Downes, LazarusMan and Eddie Fowlkes alongside Antonia Vai, who opens the record with Religious and closes it with the reprise of What This Is.
Impact and Reception
Grass Is Greener led the album out and kept going as remixes, four versions of it on Green Supreme Remixed. It is here as one of the owner’s songs of 2018. Give it the full seven and a half minutes.
