Singing Scripted Delight

Esperanza Spalding “Unconditional Love”

The main melody of “Unconditional Love” is so gorgeous and graceful that it’s hard to imagine that it was actually written, and didn’t just always exist somehow. Esperanza Spalding’s vocal is like this very elegant curved line that gently curls up to lovely high notes at the top of her range. She leaves a lot of negative space in the arrangement to keep that sound from getting too heavy and rich – the main chord progression is offset slightly, and the percussion seems to trace around the bass notes rather than click into a steady groove. The song sounds beautiful and confident but slightly off-balance. This fits the tone of the lyrics rather well, as Spalding is singing about redefining the traditional narrative of love to be more progressive and less restrictive. She’s absolutely certain about what she wants and has a very clear vision of an ideal situation, but it’s all sort of theoretical. Any bit of distance and doubt in the sound of this song is just the gap between the idea and reality, and the rest is a dare: Let’s do this, what do we have to be afraid of?

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