Taylor Jules New Single “Adickted”

Galloping to life with a blanket of piano-born melodicism as familiar to lovers of a classical sound as it is to occasional pop enthusiasts, Taylor Jules doesn’t give us anything but pure, unadulterated excitement from the moment we begin with her new single “Adickted” onward. The strings roar but fail to intimidate the other instruments, or the audience, as their bittersweet harmony begins to take shape. We’re listening to an aural Adickted coming together one dedicated punch of the piano keys at a time, and when Jules lays that verse strand of lyrics on us, she has the mood of the entire room exactly where she wants it to be. Don’t let the high-profile stylization in the credits fool you – this is her show and nothing else’s. 

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Jules is delicate with the melodies she creates as a singer in “Adickted,” but her actual vocal presence in this single is potent beyond what I was initially expecting to find. She’s unafraid of the hook, and for that matter, the rigidity of the beat that leads her to the climax of the song. Her swaggering attitude is part of what makes the narrative in her lyrics accessible to the audience, not unlike the structure of the verses as they stand independently from the instrumentation. Brick by brick, she builds a poetic tower from which to admit anything she wants, and she’s using this particular occasion to extol the virtues of having self-confidence in every situation life presents. 

The instrumental guts of “Adickted” are loud, proud, and influenced by the R&B school more than they are slightly more generic pop concepts, but Jules counters them with a vocal that makes me wonder what she could do with this sound in the future. This is unquestionably her most soul-oriented piece of material to make it into the mainstream, and while it’s not replacing her vocal-centric attributes with an intensity that I would normally expect to find in more hip-hop-influenced music, this single gives her a little more of a groove to straddle than previous releases have. It will be interesting to see how she follows up on this song, but in any case, we learn something new about her just by its existence that we wouldn’t have otherwise. 

If you’re not already a fan of Taylor Jules’ music, I’ve got a feeling that what she does in “Adickted” is going to leave you with a solid opinion about her future as a pop singer/songwriter in the competitive American underground. 2023 has brought forth some intriguing efforts from her contemporaries, but among the feel-good pop singles I’ve reviewed that have touched on instrumental soul themes, “Adickted” is in a category by itself. I admittedly wasn’t entirely sold on the buzz Jules’ career has accrued just this year before her new single dropped, but if this is a snapshot of who she is when ambition is allowed to take the wheel, I won’t miss out on following her next professional move for anything. All in all, she’s one we need to be watching this season.

Timothy Ball