Tom Odell has decided to start again by releasing ‘Best Day Of My Life’. It was difficult for him to achieve certain success in 2021 when he released his last but experimental album ‘Monsters’. It seems that the mix of urban and Latin sounds to his melancholic and angry style of pop didn’t quite match well. Odell tried to combine or connect with sounds that were close to artists that inspired him at the time, such as Rosalía, Billie Eilish, or Bad Bunny. But the album he released remained just that, only an experiment. Now, the English composer is back, sounding more like the Tom Odell of all times, but he has kept that little “electronic” sound he played with previously.
The change in sounds was very drastic between 2018 (‘Jubilee Road’) and the release of ‘Monsters‘ in 2021. Now, Tom Odell has found a way to balance the sounds. ‘Best Day Of My Life’ is an album recorded essentially raw. He and his piano in a studio singing heartbreaking thoughts. In terms of sounds, this is perhaps his most heterogeneous album to date. And perhaps it borders on the excess of melancholy, despite being an album that already announces a certain joy with the title. It is up to the listener to decide whether this new mix presented by the author of ‘Another Love’ has the right measure of what is asked of him.
BDOML begins with the song of the same name. It seems that Tom Odell wants to start this new stage with a certain renewed happiness that moves away from the sufferings he has shown on other occasions. ‘Best Day Of My Life’ tastes of a hopeful, soft and comfortable emotion that continues in ‘Sad Anymore’. It sounds like the singer is inviting the listener to sit on the sofa on a winter’s evening, relax and feel embraced by his warm, deep voice and the endless sound of his piano.
A therapeutic journey with Tom Odell
This album is the most intimate of all those the English author has presented so far. Listening to ‘Best Day Of My Life‘ in its integrity is equivalent to the same feeling you get in your body after a session of therapy. Like when you and your trusted psychologist both find a wound that you didn’t know was there and you both try to clean it up together while it bleeds in order to heal. That’s what the saddest songs on the album sound like (‘Just Another Thing We Don’t Talk About’, ‘The Blood We Bleed’, or ‘Giving a Fuck’).
In addition, the composer introduces a piano composition that has a complete classical influence. ‘Librium’ transmits in a minute and a half what Chopin’s ‘Marche Funèbre’ or Mozart’s famous ‘Requiem’ do. In these seconds, it seems as if Odell is putting something to death forever. Perhaps it is those scars that, ten years later, are healing. Or so it seems later in ‘Flying’: “Right now I am flying (…) I am not scared of dying (…) I don’t wanna write another love song”.
Throughout the album, you notice how Tom Odell welcomes the audience into his living room to tell them about his greatest fears and emotions. And you notice how, at the end of the album, after going through ‘Enemy’ or ‘Monday’, the author has a renewed air in his voice and melody. That’s what ‘Smiling all the way back home’ expresses. It sounds like the sadness and anger from the beginning of his career has vanished after years of struggling with bleeding wounds that have now healed.
Listening to Tom Odell’s ‘Best Day Of My Life’ is like a journey in therapy. The author comes in, slowly opens himself up, and shows his hurts, and one day, he comes out of the therapy session feeling like those wounds are already healing and the soul is renewed. That is why Odell smiles all the way back home after letting go of all the sadness that had been weighing him down for so many years.
