If you haven’t heard anything by Børns, a singer-songwriter from Grand Haven, Michigan, you really need to start listening to his stuff. His onstage character is reminiscent of the late David Bowie. His adornment in designer suits and brightly colored make-up pushes the boundaries of gender roles and norms. His debut album Dopamine was released in 2015, bringing a unique glam rock sound to the music industry. Songs such as “Past Lives” and “Electric Love” have a fun 70’s pop vibe that’s perfect for late night solo dance parties. It’s impossible not to get lost in his poetic lyrics, such as those featured in the song “Holy Ghost.” He sings the lines, “Both my hands on your hourglass, the minutes and the hours pass” in a soft and adoring manner. The women he describes in each song become poetry personified, and he revisits beautiful snapshots of memories while carrying the reader along with him.
Recently, his sophomore album Blue Madonna dropped, and we are in for some rad tunes. Not only does the first track “God Save Our Young Blood” feature the indie dream pop queen Lana Del Rey, but its lyrics also transport the listener to a sunlit road trip along the California coastline. “Damn, look at the sunrise, glowing finish line, made it in record time.” Børns’s androgynous falsetto voice is complimented by Lana Del Rey’s unique sweet tones. The song is one of the shining gems of this album.
Børns released two singles from the album at the end of 2017 before ushering in the New Year with Blue Madonna. The first of these singles, a song called “Faded Heart,” describes a desperate pursuit of a woman. Børns pleads along to a groovy upbeat instrumental, “don’t you break this faded heart,” as fearful of rejection as the rest of us. As his voice swells, raw emotion floods out of the headphones. “Sweet Dreams” was the second single released. Sorrowful lyrics like, “You didn’t even call to wish me sweet dreams…But don’t cry, consider this a lullaby,” are accompanied by soft psychedelic and electronic piano rifts.
In the song “Bye-bye Darling,” Børns takes a different approach to breaking up and says goodbye to things future generations won’t use anymore. It seems like he is paralleling these inanimate objects to a lover he has left in the past. The song is framed by melancholy piano melodies, the strumming of a guitar and nostalgic synthetic undertones. The overall concept of this song is extremely clever on Børns’s part. It becomes clearer through his crooning of the chorus: “We had a good run darling don’t you cry, I know in the end it’s gonna be just fine.”
While Børns’s first album is centered on harmonious relationships with exquisite women, Blue Madonna takes a new tone, one of heartbreak and recovery. “Second Night of Summer” is a perfect example: “She’s always had a soul like cellophane, walked right through me like a spring rain; I’m trying to forget her.” His mourning turns to anger in “I Don’t Want U Back,” as he calls out a cheating lover. The quote, “I should’ve known better but the liquor got me thinking I missed you,” puts in words the feelings everyone has felt at least once during a drunken night out.
I will admit it took me a while to adjust to Blue Madonna. In this new album, Børns has definitely altered his sound with the music flowing more like a laid-back synth-pop album. I do miss his elegant illustrations in Dopamine, where his songs sounded more like poetry. While I still find myself skipping some tracks on this album, I have slowly opened up to a majority of Blue Madonna. Anyone looking for a new genre to explore, or even just low-key background music for studying, should give Børns’s Blue Madonna a chance too. Check him out on Instagram: @bornsmusic.