Brett Callwood
Dominic Fike
Don’t Forget About Me, Demos (Columbia)
Don’t Forget About Cindy Sterling: Pop artist Cindy Sterling told us about her love for a Dominic Fike gem.
Cindy Sterling: I think my favorite album/EP within the most recent years is Dominic Fike’s Don’t Forget About Me, Demos – it was something I heard for the first time in a long time that felt so, free. Hearing Fike’s ability to lose himself in music & ignore stereotypical confinements of sticking to one genre, was amazing. Genuinely, it altered my brain chemistry.
(Columbia)
I have a lot of other obvious favorite albums such as those of Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, Coldplay, The Kooks, The Beatles, John Mayer, Justin Beiber, and Dua Lipa albums – those are artists who you can’t get enough of. They’ve made their way into a wide array of being well known in pop culture.
Something about Fike’s ability to blend MULTIPLE different genres opened my eyes, ears, soul and perception in the world about how it is okay for me to not have to navigate fitting into a specific mold/genre. I would say Dominic had a huge impact on my viewpoints of the direction I was leading this album. I didn’t want my music to have to fit into only one sound/genre such as “pop.” This is what certain kinds of music are really about and I think that indie pop in general has been now kind of oversaturated and because of that, underrated so to hear this record makes such a perfect point in that the genre can have a lot more meaning than people think especially at first glance. There’s definitely some great emotional drive behind a lot of these songs and she does a great job of blending soul, R&B, pop, and even rock into the mix throughout this album.
The production and music are inventive and the whole record feels like it has fewer boundaries than its predecessors. I think a lot of that influence has to do with Dominic Fike & Colson Baker a.k.a Machine Gun Kelly, as I feel in recent years they pushed the narrative of having to stick to one sound, where Colson/MGK even received hate for jumping into the world of alternative-pop/punk/rock from his former rap career. To me, that showed versatility and I loved to see it.
As artists, we are made to express, explore, emulate, and create – and I think it’s a really beautiful thing to not have to put yourself into a box. That’s why I really enjoy the “Don’t Forget About Me” EP from Fike, as you can really tell he sets himself free and allows himself to make whatever music style is flowing to him at that moment. I think there’s so much definition and layers to me as a person and things I’ve been through in life, that I don’t want to be forced to have to be just this typical “pop” sound we hear everyday. I don’t want to be anyone, I just want to be me.
Don’t Forget About Cindy Sterling: Cindy Sterling’s album Roxbury Romance is out now.
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