Bibi Bourelly Arrives With Scorched Blues Burner “What If”
The songwriter Bibi Bourelly wrote Rihanna’s raw, scratchy-throated, late-night drunk dial “Higher,” from ANTI. On a purposefully messy, frank album, it was the messiest and frankest moment, and also the most stunning. “This whisky got me feeling pretty” was Rihanna’s slurred sign-on, which was polite considering what followed. Hearing Bourelly sing her own material, like on her slow-burner knockout “What If” from her new EP Free the Real (Pt. #1), you will experience an uncanny-valley sensation: “This person sounds like they are doing their best Rihanna,” you will think, reasonably. But that hitch in Ri’s throat wasn’t there before “Higher,” and it’s all over the material Bourelly supplied her (Bourelly also wrote “Bitch Better Have My Money”). It’s clear that Rihanna was doing her best Bourelly.
Unlike, say, Bonnie McKee, an ace songwriter who pens hits for pop corporations like Katy Perry but struggles to distinguish herself alone, Bourelly is a vivid presence; when she’s singing, you don’t find yourself wondering where the star is. Also unlike others in her field, she doesn’t seem interested in the “hook in the prechorus, hook in the verse, bigger hook in the chorus” mandates of 2016 pop radio. “What If” is a rough, sloppy rock song, a few chords strummed hard on a guitar, like a busker determined to rise above the subway noise. It’s a throwback in its way, a song that could have fit comfortably on ‘90s radio. Bourelly pours a lot in: “What if I told you/That I done lost my mind/I get lost in the night/And I drink myself to sleep in the morning sometimes?” she demands on the chorus. The song lurches, in a sort of bar-band stagger, right over the radio-formatting line separating rock from R&B. Bourelly is loose and intuitive enough to grab us from whatever spot she chooses.
[Listen to “What If” on Apple Music]
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