“We Stayed Home” (Single) by Dan Ashley

No other year in the history of the modern music business has been as strange and unpredictable as 2020 has, but even so, that isn’t stopping Dan Ashley from doing what he does best in the studio and turning his fans onto another sweet melody in the new single “We Stayed Home.” As its title suggests, “We Stayed Home” is a song from the other side of the protective shields that stand between listeners and artists these days as an ongoing pandemic rages on, but more than this, it’s an interesting perspective on humanity from the man singing its verses for sure. 

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Ashley gets a little aggressive with his execution in the chorus, but personally I really like the pumped-up attitude he throws in our direction around this point in the track. It’s a different look than what a lot of his contemporaries are toying with right now, and undisputedly something he was a little reticent to try in his first couple of songs to see widespread release in 2019 and 2020. I want him to get a bit more swaggering in the future, as the confident sound he has here is definitely among the best he’s ever produced. 

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I would have liked more emphasis on the percussion, particularly in the midsection of “We Stayed Home,” primarily to appreciate just how much texture it has to contribute to this song. There’s an understated urgency we get from the rhythm it generates in the background that has had me enamored with the beat every time I sit down and listen to this final mix, and if it were given just a little more room to breathe, I think that this single might have been a lot bigger right out of the box than it has been thus far. 

When Dan Ashley is belting out some of the verses in “We Stayed Home,” it’s rather difficult to pay attention to anything other than the melodic ribbonry his singing is yielding – which is no small statement for me to make when taking into account just how much is going on behind him in this single. His is one of the few natural vocal talents I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing in the last year, and if this is only the tip of the iceberg for his emerging career, I can only imagine what he’ll be recording after getting a full-length album under his belt. 

While I only just found out about Dan Ashley in the last few months, I’m really hoping he’s got more content like this waiting to see release in the near future. He’s got an energy that is charming from top to bottom, and with some additional tools put before him in and outside of the recording studio to perfect his songwriting wit and abilities as an arranger, I don’t see anyone being powerful enough to stop his steady ascent through the underground hierarchy. Ashley has made a believer out of me, and soon enough, I think he will you, too. 

Mindy McCall