It happens every year. I spend hours on days on weeks on months compiling musical collateral and general industry know-how, then mere days after I make an array of conclusive end-of-year posts, I come across a set of absolute gems from the year I just closed out. It was inevitable at best; no matter how carefully I comb the musical landscape, immense amounts of sediment are bound to sift through my hands. The problem here is that Gallant’s work had been sitting right on top of the sand, but I unfortunately failed to reach out and seize my initial opportunity at exploration.

“Weight In Gold” was Gallant’s definitive breakout song, being featured in internationally televised commercials for Red Bull and gaining nearly 20 million views on Spotify. Unfortunately, the rest of his second major studio album Ology received mere fractions of the same attention. After watching and listening to Gallant’s Tiny Desk Concert hosted by NPR, I quickly realized the grave misstep I had made in essentially saying “Oh, ‘Weight In Gold‘ is a good song” and subsequently moving on to a new artist in my research. Song after song on Ology is a deserves to chart, with common emphasis on subtle choruses, expressive lyrical range, and electronic jazzy instrumentals that any generation can support. Songs like “Skipping Stones” display vocal pitch equivalent to greats like Prince, yet they use a modern approach to tastefully writing high altos into songs similar to Miguel or Frank Ocean. The man’s talent quite honestly blows me away, and all I can do at this point is offer my sincerest apologies for not praising him earlier.