“Bad Boy” by Lori P. Davis Project

“Bad Boy,” the new music video from the Lori P. Davis Project, opens with a powerful image both lyrically and literally, and from there, launches into a textured visual experience that embodies all of the emotion on our singer’s mind, particularly when it’s been forced upon us out of nowhere. Davis comes into spring with the sonic goods and some sweet, spacy shots that are surprisingly blunt and unfanciful in this video, but to be truthful, I didn’t need a colorful depiction of the lyrical content to understand the depth of emotion that this singer is working with in “Bad Boy.” From the jump, the music makes it clear how personal a statement this song contains. 

We begin in a tizzy of harmonies that slowly unravel before our very ears in the next ten seconds. Lori P. Davis doesn’t waste any time in getting right into the guts of the narrative with her wispy words, which wrap around the percussive track before crushing us with an impossibly large blow in the chorus. The road that leads us into the hardest-hitting hook in the song is rigid and full of an unstoppable poetic vanquish, but there’s never a sense of depression in the air; underpinning every verse is Davis’ fearless energy, which serves to remind us that at the end of even the darkest of tunnels lies the light of a new day, and a new set of possibilities for our lives. 

The chorus circles us in stereophonic audio, replicating a predatory shark preparing to zero in on its target for the kill. Davis’ voice soars into the sky like a free-spirited eagle, subsequently lingering above the backing band for what feels like an eternity. She’s in no rush here; there’s nothing that sounds forced in “Bad Boy,” and in the video for the song, the transition from shot to shot feels dragged out intentionally, as if to make the ache of the imagery last as long as it would in real life. Surrealism has been all the rage in 2023, but I don’t believe that I’ve seen its basic construct employed in the way that Davis does here. She’s incorporated a conservative approach to a monolithic means of artistic communication, and the results of her experiment are a lot more tantalizing than one might assume them to be in theory. 

The Lori P. Davis Project’s latest single concludes just abruptly enough to warrant a second listen if you’re as turned on by its tempered grooves as I was when I first had the chance to explore its melodic ribbonry recently. Without a doubt in my mind, I can confirm that “Bad Boy” is a smashing exhibition of this young lady’s well-cultivated talents, which have become quite the force to be reckoned with since the release of her debut; this is a track that shows us a very promising singer/songwriter to put it quite mildly. I’m confident that she’s well on her way to the fame and fortune that artists work so hard to achieve, as this song and music video have raised the bar for her future output substantially. 

Mindy McCall