Taylor Briggs - California Life

Taylor Briggs

California Life
self-released; 2016

3.4 out of 5

By Jamie Funk
​

Taylor Briggs is a musician that isn’t even the legal age to vote in the US but still has ten years experience playing music. He picked up guitar, bass, and cello at the tender age of seven. On his release California Life he makes straight up pop music.

His music has a lot in common with Kim Kardashian and People magazine in some ways. His music does not penetrate past the surface and sometimes that's perfectly fine. It's not exactly deep music and that's kind of appropriate for the age Briggs is right now and what he is trying to do. I’m guessing as Briggs get older he will dig a big deeper. 

The pictures he has on Soundcloud are indicative of his sound. Flashy, trendy and let’s go to a Hollywood premier type of vibe. The title track is the song that drips with some of the aforementioned qualities. He sings “Green Trees, Blues Skies, California is my life.” The song will appeal to teenagers and possibly young people waiting to get into a club.

Briggs has some success with “Tell On Me.” The song is stripped back and well written. With that he needs to lay off the auto tune effect. It sounds over used and I preferred his natural singing voice. There are a lot of songs on this album and some songs fare better than others. He does have a good voice and the songs are constantly catchy. 

Briggs so young it's hard to know what his music will be like in ten years. I’m nearly twice as old as Briggs and when I think back to stuff I have written recently compared to when I was his age it's not even comparable. 

​He will undoubtedly evolve as an artist but I have some advice. He has a picture on his Facebook page of him playing guitar along with two other guys on bass and drums. I’d like to hear what that side of his music sounds like. He seems to have a raw side and I would like to see some of that come out in his songs. The songs on California Life are glitzy, glammy with a gloss. Don’t be afraid to turn off the auto tune so we can hear what's inside.

Tweet