JAMEY D

                                                            "New York Don't Need You" 

                                                            CCB Nashville

As CCB Nashville continues releasing new music every week as part of their #newmusicfriday initiative, we as the listeners are blessed with the opportunity to get to hear some of the strongest new songs from their incredible talent roster week in and week out.

However, although it’s new to many listeners, this week’s release from Jamey D sees him digging back into his earliest days of songwriting to pull out “New York Don’t Need You.”

He’s been filtering this song into his sets during Cash Creek Club Live shows over the past couple months, but as solid as it has sounded during his performances, the recorded version touches all the right traditional sounds in its instrumentation and slower paced melody to truly point directly at Jamey’s voice and allow it to stand in the spotlight of emotions wrapped within the lyrics.

He sings directly to a friend who is leaving town (Nashville area) for the bright lights of New York City, and while there is a clear understanding of exactly why she must leave, the song mostly plays out as one last hopeful effort to give her all the reasons why the Big Apple doesn’t need her.

Supportively admitting in the opening verse, “I can’t blame a girl for dreaming big dreams” and “someday I knew you’d leave this town,” Jamey D sets the perfect tone for the very fact that even though he understands it, he was still caught by surprise when she finally made the move.

Using strong comparatives between the city life she is in the middle of living now and the small-town life she came from, he leans on themes such as how the city lights must make it hard to see the stars and how he wonders if she still can hear the whippoorwills singing; both which cleverly drive home the point that he makes throughout the chorus that New York doesn’t need a small-town girl like her, but admittedly, he still does.

There are several different check-ins of popular New York staples throughout the song including Broadway’s lights; and being as though he pulled this out from his earliest days of songwriting, Alicia Keys and Jay Z (both uber popular NYC born acts who had a hit with "Empire State of Mind") also get namechecks during the bridge.

While this song is much softer paced than what we’ve heard from Jamey on his previous releases “Workin' My Way Back Home” and “Boomtown,” it perfectly unravels another layer of depth to his songwriting as he allows the raw emotions to carry his vocals and connect the missing you lyrics with the heart of the listener.

(Review Written By: Jeffrey Kurtis)

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