21. February 2025
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Media Review

Caitlyn Smith – High

Florian Buechtingby Florian Buechting

Caitlyn Smith - High

Caitlyn Smith - High
3.9

Rating

 3.9/5

Flyctory.com Pros

  • Good songs
  • Some nice variety in the first songs

Flyctory.com Cons

  • Just seven songs plus intro - not an album
  • Final songs are a bit similar

Album or EP? Even though, for example, Wikipedia lists the eight track release High as EP, Caitlyn Smith’s social media sells the 8th April 2022 release as an album. I have been really curious about her new songs and gave them a listen.

 

Caitlyn Smith – About The Artist

Caitlyn Smith is a female country and pop musician. Born in Cannon Falls South of Minneapolis, she had some remarkable success as a songwriter and wrote songs for artists like Meghan Trainor or Miley Cyrus. On her solo career side, her debut EP Everything To You has been released in 2014. Her second EP Starfire in 2016 rather touched folk music and thus also placed in the US Folk Charts. Two years later, Starfirehas been upgraded to an album. Her latest major release is Supernova, her 2020 album. Despite all these releases, she was nominated as the New Female Artist of the Year at the ACM Awards.

 

Caitlyn Smith – High – Track by Track

The eight song album lasts 25 minutes.

1. High (intro)

Okay, it’s an intro, 28 seconds. No more words about it.

2. High

The gentle opening into the album directly flows into the title track High. The song starts with a very fragile touch, but then creates its energetic, almost angry passages. By far, the most successful song of all three single releases – even though the 750k Spotify streams of High feel tiny compared to her best streaming success so far, Cheap Date of the Starfire album (some 11m streams… New Artist 2022???).

3. Dreamin’s Free

The single release Dreamin’s Free is my favorite on the album, even though the sound of the song cannot deny a strong mainstream touch. Caitlyn Smith’s lovely voice is beautifully focused in here. Good to listen contemporary country.

4. Good as Us

The song has a nice groove, the first notes almost spread a touch of reggae feeling. However, I would overall rather name it soulful. Very different mood – and really well done. Good song.

5. Downtown Baby

Especially compared to Dreamin’s Free, Downtown Baby is a bit more straight-forward and has a stronger country pop touch. Nice, quick and rhythmic song, which also just makes you move to the rhythm.

6. Nothing Against You

Downtown Baby just gave us 2:47 minutes to take out the dancing shoes and enter the dancefloor – Nothing Against You requests to have a romantic dance now. The sixth song is a ballad with nice vibe. Here and there, I slightly struggle with Smith’s high voice, but overall I really like the song.

7. Maybe in Another Life

In parallel to the album, Maybe in Another Life has been released as video and single release. Will I ever say goodbye? Maybe in Another Life. A very touching, intimate song, which nicely connects to its predecessor. My emotional highlight of these eight tracks.

8. I Don’t Like the World Without You

The last three songs of High are all aiming to touch the emotions of the listener. More or less just the acoustic guitar and Smith’s voice (which I like much more in here) – that’s all it needs for this farewell track. Good one!

 

Caitlyn Smith – High – Spotify

Here is High on Spotify:

 

Caitlyn Smith – High – My View

Caitlyn Smith really makes me struggle. High is treated as an album, it is marketed as such – and the pricing (Amazon Germany: 10.32 EUR for download) is in line with that. In fact you get seven songs (skip the intro), you likely know the title track and the final three ones are really nicely written, but there are some similarities. This is just not sufficient to be called an album. The Wikipedia interpretation, naming it an EP and also pricing it in line (you simply can’t complain that people don’t buy music if you try to fool them) would have been the much smarter move.

 

Media Review (2022 Women Country)

Here are all my Media Reviews of 2022, which are related to female country artists:

 

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