Hailing from Los Angeles, alt pop, soul crossover artist Freddy Hale wrecks havoc on the hip hop and R&B music scene by simply keeping one hand on his beat casting macbook and the other on a fender telecaster. The Swedish American brings to listeners his brand new single and music video “Troublemaker,” a giant soulful R&B track filled with synthesizers and ambient beats.
The music video to “Troublemaker” opens to a mysterious scene with a girl in a dress with a bloodstained face. When you first see the girl, you don’t know if the blood is hers or someone else’s due to a struggle. The next scene follows the girl into a stranger’s house, sipping wine from a glass, as she enjoys the amenities of the house. Footage of Hale performing the song cuts in about out of the music video. Our house guest happens on an intruder while she is in the house. Perhaps it is the owners of the house coming back home or perhaps it’s something more sinister, but next we see the girl holding a sharp letter opener in her hand. Next, we see the girl walking off from the bloody scene into the woods. Towards the end, we see her walking toward a mysterious shadowy figure and the enigmatic scene ends there.
Throughout the track you can hear the delirium and desperation in Hale’s vocals as he sings with candor about the troubling scene in the music video. The electricity of the pop track progresses with a highly charged rhythmic bluesy cadence. The soulful quality to Hale’s singing is a hybrid of R&B and pop that cohesively incorporates guitar solos, pop keys and atmospheric synths into a rare look into an electro-pop track done right.
The single is out now.