Hold Me - Teddy Beats and Mon Rovîa - a Playlist by musicto

Music to Navigate A Life

Follow this playlist:

To have and to hold. From this day forward. For better or for worse. For richer, for poorer. In sickness and in health. To love and to cherish. Until death do us part.

For where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. And where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord do with me, and more, if anything but death parts you from me. Ruth 1:16.

We meet. We fall in love. We marry. And we make these vows! What do we mean by them? Ultimately, I think, we’re asking the same question that TEDDY BEATS and MON-ROVÎA are asking…

Will you hold me when the night comes?

When we fail. When we fuck it all up. When we crash and burn - or when we crash and burn out. When we’re nailed onto our beds, unable to rise because of our broken bones or because of our broken minds. When the shit happens, when the night comes, will you be there to HOLD ME?

This road, will we walk it until we’ve grown old
I turn to skin and bone, just waiting for you to come home

This song has the power to fire up old memories. The desolation of lost love. A wilderness in your soul? An empty, hopeless, hole in your heart. A preternatural physical yearning for someone you love to just hold you again. But perhaps you’re actually one of the lucky ones. Maybe you’re in a perfect relationship, and you know that your soulmate will still be holding you right there at the end; right there on the great day of apocalypse and judgement.

There I go, over-stretching my poor little typewriter again! Perhaps, at the end of the day, it’s just a great song. It’s certainly a superbly measured downtempo/chill production from Washington based American House Producer and DJ Teddy Bloomquist. Starting off almost as if it’s gonna be a ballad by the likes of Ben Howard or Benjamin Francis Leftwich, there’s a sparse acoustic guitar - or at least I’d have sworn it was a guitar until the zen hit me and shouted out Native Instruments!

The real magic, however, starts at just ten seconds in, as you are introduced to the voice of Janjay Mon Rovîa. It’s a sublime tone, somewhat like a fusion of Passenger and Cat Stevens. It’s a voice so smooth and sexy that it almost compels me to start writing in French. Janjay’s lyrics are deep, thoughtful ones too. Like the man says himself “I speak a lot about love, life, and death. What else matters?” What indeed!

Moving on to the 40-second mark, and there’s the first big hook! A beautiful synth - stabbing sunbeams through the lyrical darkness with sonic ziggurats that make you want to live forever. The thing that’s really gonna stay between your ears for a long time though is that refrain of Mon Rovîa’s - Will you hold me when the night comes? Sad, but somehow so beautiful. A mot-valise of meaning.

Teddy, cites his inspiration as artists like Kygo, Lost Frequencies, and Sam Feldt. And on the evidence of this track, he should soon be up there beside them, on the big stages of the world.

HOLD ME is out now on Armada Music/The Bearded Man

Go To Playlist Home Page