Dan Rodriguez’s new single “Passenger” is a true highlight in a year of more slow ballad sad tracks this year’s music seems to offer thanks to the reactionary vibes of a post-Covid world. Starting with a breathy count Rodriguez laments the feeling of helplessness like he’s a kidnapped victim of the literal devil but it’s the angel on his shoulder that’s betrayed him. While he sings with a beautiful tone with each “Ooooo”, it almost feels like a cry for help, like he’s being forced against his will and there’s nothing he can do. Rodriguez has certainly led an interesting life for him to reflect on this, growing up in a particularly religious household where he was homeschooled and unfortunately watched his brother pass from cancer at ten. He cites music as a way that he was able to heal and you can definitely feel it’s almost therapeutic effects in his performance, like in a way that things just make sense for him and can help others too.
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/danrodriguezmusic/
Lyrically, it’s pretty heavy I’m not gonna lie, with a lot of emphasis on implication and subtlety even when the sound progressively gets louder with each reprise of the hook. It’s an incredibly catchy hook though, one that almost makes you forget that you’re listening to a guy on a ride that won’t stop. Rodriguez makes his personal hell our sonic heaven however as his guitar and bass playing is handled with deft precision.
You can tell for him it’s about the music, which I know sounds hokey, but there’s nothing cynical about this even though it’s a dark song about looking at your past mistakes. It might have helped a few times for the song to have dipped its toes into a more minor key structure just to really emphasize the darker thematic elements, but even then that’s just music nitpick. The sense of escalation on this is fantastic and the sounds are full thanks to his back band, the mixing, and the backup vocals of Megan Rodriguez who works perfectly even when the two have lighter registered voices that in lesser hands could have potentially been a mess.
That’s kind of the best way to describe this track: “it could have been a mess”. Sometimes its imagery and uses of iconography are a little rote (cars, angels, devils, and all that), but it feels fresh and lived in and the production and composition do a lot of the heavy lifting. I highly recommend this track for anyone looking for a fantastic pseudo-indie act that feels like he’s finally hitting his stride in a mainstream audience.
APPLE MUSIC: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/dan-rodriguez/336324136
You can get excited too knowing he’s got a full EP and album headed down the pipeline which aims to cover a lot of what he’s been up to since his last release back in 2018 and hopefully the songs are a fraction as good as this one is. This is one of those rare songs where you can tell who’s influenced the artist, but this track is in a league of its own and Rodriguez has done stellar work to get here.
Chadwick Easton