Blake Morgan is a New York-born and-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and the founder and President of ECR Music Group. In his role as President of ECR Music Group, Morgan’s ideas, opinions and editorials on music and the music business have been regularly published by a number of major media outlets including The New York Times, Billboard Magazine, CNN, Newsweek, Variety, The Hill, NME, The Huffington Post, and The Guardian.
As a producer, Morgan has collaborated with a who’s who of music from Lenny Kravitz to Lesley Gore, and a lengthy list of others. Since the release of 2013’s Diamonds in the Dark, Morgan has been extremely busy: he has a remarkable six-year run of sold-out shows at Rockwood Music Hall that often feature guest spots from a number of Grammy and Tony Award-winning artists, who join him for unique, on-stage collaborations; 150,000 miles of touring and sold-out shows on both sides of the Atlantic; and production work on over 20 albums by some serious A-list artists.
Late last year, the New York-born and-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and music biz exec released “Down Below Or Up Above” to praise from the likes of The Aquarian, Post-Punk.com, Culture Catch and my dear friends at Glamglare.
Morgan’s fifth album, Violent Delights was released last week through his ECR Music Group and in the lead-up to the album’s release, I wrote about two of its released singles:
- “My Love Is Waiting” a rousingly anthemic and brazenly hopeful love song that views love as the important, necessary and powerful force of our world. But underneath its anthemic hooks, the song, which at points nodded at The Police‘s “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” Joe Jackson and JOVM mainstays Palace Winter revealed a penchant for old-timey pop craftsmanship paired with an uncanny knack for a well-placed, razor sharp hook.
- “Baby I Would Want You,” a swooning and euphoric guitar pop song that manages continue a remarkable run of brazenly earnest love songs while nodding at Elvis Costello and XTC‘s “Mayor of Simpleton.” While unintentionally referencing — and being fitting for — our current, near apocalyptic moment, the song’s narrator seems to say to his love, “welp, the sink is sinking, the water is rising, and there ain’t much else we can do — but we got each other.”
Violent Delights‘ latest single, album title track “Violent Delights” is a slow-burning, pop ballad featuring angular, reverb-drenched guitar and angular bass lines, and bursts of twinkling keys paired with Morgan’s plaintive delivery and his unerring knack for sharp, rousingly anthemic hooks. Much like its predecessors, “Violent Delights” is a proud, unabashedly earnest love song full of very adult yearning.