Writing a music blog means that you get to listen to a lot of music, some good, some not so good and occasionally, some really good.  I love bringing you new music and new voices in particular and I recently heard a lovely new voice and wanted to share it with you.  Marga Lane is a music graduate from the USA who is shortly to release a new EP, Undressed which draws heavily on her ‘old school’ musical influences to display her raw, yet versatile voice.

The music is simple, pared down in style which is a departure from Lane’s previous music.  In Lane’s own words (from our recent interview), “I wanted the EP to not be over produced, the intention was to be simple.  My previous music was heavily produced…I love Nashville and Country music and I love how a simple melody evokes such emotion from the voice”.

Undressed is self penned  and it feels as if the songs are rooted in real experiences and emotions – undressed emotionally as well as musically. I asked Lane if any of the songs were written from her own perspective and she confirmed that “yes, they are about my current relationship, I can finally write love songs.  Experiencing these things personally means I have so much more emotion to put into singing them.”  It seemed that this was Lane’s favourute question, in fact she declared that “this is my most fun question…I used to see interviews and think who is that song about and now I get to answer that question”!

Undressed‘s five tracks reflect a musical past shaped by Motown, blues, pop and folk and indeed, Lane confirms that her earliest influences included Motown and Michael Jackson, collectively referred to as ‘old school’ as well as The Spice Girls although it seems that this was more from a performance point of view than the music.  We all had a favourite spice girl and Lane’s was Scary Spice aka Mel B.  My favourite track is Forgiven as it shows a more complex song writing structure and is more thought provoking emotionally.  I was left contemplating the nature of forgiveness, something a three minute song doesn’t normally do.

Lane’s road to success started when she studied music at Berklee College, Boston and one of her strategies for sharing her music is to sing before NBA games and also at fashion shows.  Asked how this came about, she says “I love singing the national anthem and I reached out to NBA co-ordinators, sending them clips of me singing and a few of them invited me to sing before games.  It’s nice to have that on my resume and people find out about my music”.  Performing at fashion shows is slightly different in that there’s a backing track and a DJ but this apparently makes Lane feel like “a pop star…there’s more exposure there and opportunities to speak to people”.

For 2017, Lane hopes to tour the EP before going back into the studio.

Undressed is released on 2 December and is available here:

thanks for reading and sharing

if you like what you see, why not subscribe?

lots of new music straight to your inbox

xx