Country music made in Germany? Especially in the last few months, there have been a couple of acts, which feel to have stepped out of local or regional appearance to at least a national appearance. One of the artists most mentioned is Henriette, who released her debut EP on 14th February 2020. Here is a review.
Henriette – About The Artist
On her website, Henriette describes her career as similar to a fairy tale. Coming from Western Germany, she already started to write songs as a kid and as a teenager. However, her career boosted when she decided to go to Nashville in fall 2018 to improve her musical style and to write songs. She takes singing lessons there as well as produces some songs, which she finally brings back to Germany. The five track self-titled EP is her debut release. Despite that young career, her latest work lead to quite some audience and also airplay in the radio. The only music video published on YouTube which is not related to her EP is this Christmas track:
Henriette – Henriette – Track by Track
The five tracks of the self-titled EP last 18 minutes.
1. Dream Boy
Dream Boy is the first song of the EP – and to make it short: it is also the best one on the EP. Henriette’s high voice is paired with a very broad and professional arrangement. No wonder that this song lead to some sort of breakthrough in the media – it is just a good track!
2. Lighthouse
The acoustic guitar in Lighthouse is very accentuated (it sometimes even feels a bit dirty-played to me), there are just very limited additional effects before the final third of this song, which concentrates on Henriette’s voice. Very different, slow track. I feel Lighthouse does not reach it’s potential, it could have been better arranged and recorded. In fact, it is a nice track, definitely.
3. Fearless
Fearless is having more of radio track potential again. I think arranging the artist like in this song makes more sense. She feels very intense in this quite powerful tracks, which even has some scattered rock music elements here and there.
4. Missing You
In general, I like the change between very slow parts of this song, which have just very limited instrumentation, and very intense and widely arranged songs. The song is a bit comparable to Fearless but has its own dramatization, own way of being scripted.
5. Crash Like This
As I stated at the beginning of the EP that Dream Boy is by far the best track on the EP, Crash Like This is the song which is coming closest to it. However, I (again) struggle with Henriette, when she tries to sing too powerful in the high notes, I feel it is just a bit too intense and spoils the song in two, three moments.
Henriette – Henriette – Spotify
Here is the Spotify link to pre-listen to the EP:
Henriette – Henriette – My View
My musical “career” was quite limited (though it really let to one TV appearance in early childhood years *smile*), but especially in the short time frame of an EP, I want to see a good musical quality, good songwriting, a good arrangements and versatility. A good EP should promote the artist, illustrate his quality, being something like an appetizer for the next releases. Does Henreitte’s debut EP fulfil that? I would say partially. The five songs definitely illustrate that Henriette is able to deliver good song. On the other hand, I just hear three, four different kinds of sound of her. I like the country-rocking one, I struggle when she is singing too high and acoustic. The arrangement of three songs is just quite close, only Dream Boy and Lighthouse have their own character. Thus, I do not see a top rating here – but I feel she can get one with the next publishing!
EP Reviews on Flyctory.com
Here are media reviews on Extended Plays:
German Artists
Here are all Flyctory.com postings dealing with German Artists: