Single Review: Take It Slow

Christchurch artist Loveta releases her first single for 2023 with the heart-wrenching rock ballad Take It Slow. The opening bars allow the listener to really immerse in the fullness of Loveta’s beautiful voice, with just the guitar for accompaniment, producing what I find to be a really quite distinctly kiwi sound. You can’t quite put your finger on what it is, but it just sounds like New Zealand music!

The song unfolds slowly, being true to its name; not very rock-ballad in the first verse, opening with a 7th chord and going into a cheerful, almost jazzy-sounding, guitar finger-plucking style. Take It Slow then drops into a lush, floaty, and spacious first chorus, all before any kind of drum beat has kicked in at all. And when it does drop, it’s not quite what you expect either – taking on a slow half-time beat, so it’s really taken you to a completely different place from the intro to the second verse.

The electric guitar is a great choice for the song, capturing all of the raw emotion of the lyrical content. The guitar riffs are quite dramatic throughout too, and this is really effective for portraying the heaviness, and the seriousness, of the song. You can really feel the heartache that is the driving force behind it. Being a rock chick myself, I just love how electric guitars have the ability to convey so much emotion.

The song builds right to the very end with Loveta’s powerful vocals cascading against the wailing of the guitars, until it all drops away, to a lone electric guitar as the song closes out.

A great first single for the year for Loveta as she breaks into some new sonic territory, with some different sounds and feels as compared to her debut EP in 2022. Also digging deeper into a more personal side of the artist, as she opens up a little bit to her audience, showing her more vulnerable side. Looking forward to seeing and hearing what more 2023 will bring for Loveta. Great stuff!