Dylan – Lonely At The Top (Song Review)

Dylan is a 21 year-old aspiring artist out of Ohio. The young musician is “striving to be a diverse artist who can do it all, and make original music.” Lonely At The Top is Dylan’s first major release and we’re happy to give honest feedback this early in his career. Dylan states that he uses music as “therapy”, to feel a release from the personal problems that he’s dealing with. Listening to the track, we could definitely tell.

The artist brings authentic lyrics and a ton of emotion to go with a nicely selected instrumental to fit the vibe. Our main critiques are centered around his cadence and flow as he delivers his lyrics, and the basic structure of the song. We look forward to Dylan’s music journey and hope that he takes our feedback to improve his craft.  Let us know what you think of the track below!

Song Review

The NFM Team rated this song on Authenticity, Production, Ability, Delivery, Cadence & Flow, and Replay Value to determine a final rating out of five stars. Keep reading!

Dylan raps about his own life experiences and the things he is going through on a day-to-day basis. That is something we can really appreciate. In a world of ‘cap rap’ and spinning imaginary blocks, we have to highlight the artists who are truly expressing themselves in their music.

The production was one of our favorite aspects of ‘Lonely At The Top’. We felt as though the engineering was where it needed be. Listening to the song in headphones, laptop speakers, and car speakers, we did not find any issues. The artist’s vocals were also clear and nicely layered with the beat. We didn’t feel like the instrumental was too loud or the vocals were too soft. On top of that, the beat itself is hard! Shoutout to Dylan on the beat selection.

Dylan put real feelings in his lyrics, filling the song with substance. We believe he has the potential to be a great songwriter through the expression of real emotions. The beat selection was also on point! However, his overall lyricism has room for improvement. The verses did not flow well together and lacked consistency. The song structure also needs work. Dylan needs to clearly divide his verses using a chorus or bridge.

These days, delivery can make or break a song. While Dylan’s voice is clear and unique, it was the exact same tone for over three minutes and sounded a bit strained. We encourage the artists to challenge himself by playing with different pitches and voice inflections to add more style to his verses.

Dylan’s flow trailed away from the beat quite often and also lacked consistency. Keeping a metronome on while rapping and simply counting eighth notes while listening to the instrumental could strongly improve this.

While Dylan sounded pretty good over the beat, the lack of flow throughout really hurts the replay value. Improving the verses, rhyme scheme, and adding basic song structure can easily raise the replay value.

Final Thoughts

Overall, we rated this single 2.5 out of 5 stars. Seeing as this was Dylan’s first official release, there is so much time for the young artist to work on his craft. At this stage, feedback is everything and we hope that we could be productive. ‘Lonely At The Top’ is a decent song with a lot of potential . We have a great amount of respect for the lyrical content, but the delivery and cadence need to be improved. Studying other artists that you admire is a great place to start.

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