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Sometimes making great music is an act of courage: the courage to reveal yourself, to share the process of growth and to celebrate the creativity it takes to start again.
On Hurricane, Eric Benét’s harrowing and healing new album on Reprise Records/Friday Records, courage comes from honesty, vulnerability and a stubborn optimism that infuses every note and each word of these thirteen original tracks with hard-earned wisdom and an artistry drawn directly from life. The result is an album that tells one story even as it begins another, bringing the artist and his audience full circle to a promising new beginning in brilliant music with both the unmistakable ring of truth and the exhilaration of self-discovery. “The premise of this album is wrapped up in its title,” explains Eric. “It’s about how everything I knew and loved was leveled and how something real and positive and beautiful emerged from the rubble. It’s a chronicle of my life through the past five years…and coming out the other side.”
Five years is how long it’s taken the Milwaukee native to follow-up his breakthrough 1999 album A Day In The Life featuring the Grammy®-nominated smash "Spend My Life With You." What followed was a high-profile marriage and an even more high-profile break-up that tested and tempered him as both an individual and an artist. It was also the creative impetus for the remarkable musical odyssey that comprises Hurricane. “These songs are snapshots taken at different stages of a long and difficult journey,” Eric continues. “Along the way, I felt all kinds of things – hope and despair, anger and remorse – and it’s that range that I’ve tried to capture on this album. But, in the end, it’s about more than just me. It’s about the human condition; about how we all find ourselves in dark times and about how we can find our way out again.”
Music of this range and resonance isn’t, of course, conjured overnight and for Eric the process was fraught with false starts. “I actually worked on two other albums before deciding to hold back,” he continues. “I guess I still had a lot of growing to do, a lot of viewpoints to explore. At the same time I needed to focus on what was happening in my personal life. I found that I couldn’t compartmentalize what was going on and I wasn’t interested in emotional multi-tasking. I had a responsibility to take care of myself, and the people who depended on me.” At the top of that list is Eric’s daughter India, the subject of a song by the same name and one of the most memorable tracks on an album that goes from strength to strength. “Whatever I’ve learned, in the past few years and over my whole life, I want to pass on to her. We’ve been through so much together and it’s made us both stronger. As much as anything, this music is a gift, an expression of my love for her and my respect for who she’s becoming.”
Remarkably, in the midst of its tumultuous creation, Hurricane also manages to break breathtaking new stylistic ground for an artist who has always walked the cutting edge of contemporary R&B and Urban Soul. “As much as I was getting in touch with my strengths as a human being, I was evolving as an artist,” Eric asserts. “I worked with some great collaborators, especially David Foster who produced a lot of these tracks and Tim Blixseth, who encouraged me through it all, and when the time came, signed me to his label, Friday Records.”
Eric’s approach in the studio was exceptionally consistent, considering the album’s five-year gestation. “I just tried to open myself up musically without any thought to whether it was going to sell or not. I wanted to use as many real instruments in as live a setting as possible. That seemed like the best way to stay true to the spirit of the songs.”
It’s that spirit that infuses Hurricane with its unique power and perspective. From the opening notes of the inspirational “Be Myself Again,” through the full emotional spectrum of such standout selections as “Where Does The Love Go,” “In The End,” “Still With You”” and the abovementioned “India,” Eric Benét proves conclusively that an act of courage is a thing of beauty.
www.ericbenet.net
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