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Song review: Even If It Breaks Your Heart by Eli Young Band

All right, so I'm so behind in my reviews and want to start getting caught up. This song has been out for a little while, but I still wanted to talk about it so that's what I'm doing. And you can obviously see. Getting right to it.

"Even If It Breaks Your Heart" was written by Will Hoge and Eric Paslay and is performed by the Eli Young Band. This is basically a song about holding onto your dreams even if it hurts. The idea is another well used one, but it's well used because people will always be able to relate to it. In this case, it's specifically about trying to make it in the music business, but can easily apply to just about any dream. I'll be honest and admit that I had to warm up to this one a little bit. For me, the first couple of times I heard it I didn't get pulled into the lyric and the song just didn't really resonate with me. This is one where you need to focus on the words, I feel like. I liked it more when I did that. 

It's nicely written and I seem to appreciate it a little more with each listen. I really like the last couple of lines of the first verse, "Every note just wrapped around his soul/ From steel guitars to Memphis all the way to rock and roll". It's a pretty unique way to describe what happens when music takes a hold of you like that, the first part is almost poetic. 

I feel like the ultimate weakness of this song might be the opening. Musically speaking, there's not much to grab onto. It doesn't get my attention right away and that's never a good thing. I think that's why I never focused on the lyrics at first; the music never stuck out to me. It's not bad necessarily; just not terribly interesting. I'm not a fan of the production on this either. I feel like it needed to be a whole lot bigger. It needed a lot more. There's honestly nothing that stands out musically for me here. The strength of this song is the lyrics themselves.Vocally, it's a very nice delivery by lead singer Mike Eli. I like the tone of his voice a lot; he maybe could've put a little more feeling into this. But still a nice vocal. The background vocals were practically nonexistent in this. 

I find this song very frustrating because with the right production, it could have been great. The lyrics are very solid and the band has the talent needed; it's like they had everything that they needed, but that somehow wasn't enough. I wanted to like this a lot more than I do. I hope that this is one that comes to life more when performed live because it needs it. Now the song is doing very well and seems to have struck a chord with fans. I like Eli Young band so I want them to do well. But this song just doesn't do a whole lot for me personally. As always, this is obviously just my opinion and should be taken with a grain of salt. 

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