This review was written by Joseph Lu RELEASE DATE: 18 DEC 2019 GENRE: R&B / NEO-SOUL Upcoming trio Sachie Amira, Kelly Siew, and Alesia Dhana come together as Tiga Soul in the R&B-flavoured bad (For Your Heart) to deliver a heartfelt story about a toxic, abusive relationship.
Tiga Soul does a good job dramatizing the story of a young girl struggling to leave her SO, with lyrics inspired by your average instapoet (that might be a good or bad thing, depending). But one thing you can’t deny about Tiga Soul is their vocal talent. The trio works as a unit. When one of these girls take the mic, the others hover in the background, spilling out vocal runs that would make even Beyonce nod in approval.
Performance aside, the arrangement sticks to a tried and tested formula; a dash of jazzy 7-chords, a pinch of Phil Collins’ signature gated reverb, and to top it off, a guitarist doing his best impression of John Mayer. Sadly, the end result is a song that sounds like it was released almost twenty years too late. And a 5-minute run time does not justify itself, especially when most of the time is spent convincing us they can sing.
In the end, bad (for your heart) seems to be the musical equivalent to an Instagram filter, it gets the job done, and for a lot of people, that’s enough. But if Tiga Soul wants to bring the sensual feminist spirit of Erykah Badu to Malaysian shores, it would help if they spent more time on the piano and less at the karaoke.
RATING: 3 / 5