The short answer is that she's not Kimbra. As for the long answer...
I habitually download all the songs put up as free on iTunes, since I don't really have the resources to buy a lot of new music. It works well for me, as their freebied music tends to be the genres I like. This additionally occasionally pays off in me having heard a popular song weeks or months before most people. This can make me look like a hipster, though the reality is that I'm just kind of a cheapskate. Besides, whenever that happens, I'm genuinely and unhipsterishly excited that the artist or song is reaching a wider range of people. Which leads me to Kimbra.
I first was introduced to Kimbra when iTunes put the music video for "Settle Down" up for free in November 2011. Between the striking visuals and the legitimately clever lyrics, I was hooked. Over the next few months, I scoped out more of her songs -- easily available, as her debut album was already out in New Zealand -- and even pre-ordered the American version. It was around the time that Vows was released that I started paying attention to the Billboard charts from week to week. I hoped to see Kimbra's album launch to the top of the Billboard 200 the way Adele's 21 had the year before. Here, surely, was another amazing artist deserving of recognition like that.
Alas, it was not meant to be. Vows peaked at #14 and quickly slid down into obscurity, something I would later realize seems to be pretty much just what happens to most albums. I supposed I understood why this would be. It was admittedly difficult to envision Kimbra's music playing on Top 40 stations... or, at least, it would have been if not for the small fact that her album dropped while "Somebody I Used to Know" was in the middle of spending eight consecutive weeks at #1 on the charts.
During the aftermath of that song, I kept waiting and hoping that one of her singles would take off. One of her more cheerful and poppy singles, I thought, or perhaps her collaboration with that guy from Foster the People, if the world wasn't ready for her to be her own solo artist. But, no, nothing doing, and I watched unhappily as the Teen-Beat-esque musical stylings of Carly Rae Jepsen and Justin Bieber and One Direction swamped the charts, leaving hardly any room for the sort of deep, introspective songs I wanted to see.
At least, that was what I had thought, but then the middle of the summer saw a new song surge up into a Top 10 that for weeks had been the same dozen songs trading chart position. It was a song that wasn't about partying or awkwardly asking for a guy's phone number, but instead a rather tragic-hopeful reflection on being young and afraid of the world and finding comfort in small things. And, I have to admit, my immediate reaction to "Lights" by Ellie Goulding was little short of disdain.
Who was this girl, anyway, to suddenly get a hit? Why this song? I would later learn that "Lights" was a sleeper hit that took more than half a year to crack the Top 10 list, but I don't even think I would have cared had I known that at the time. I thought it was inane, childish, and melodramatic, the opposite of what I had wanted. I had a horrible suspicion that this was to be the next indie darling, the new Adele or what have you, and I was entirely offended, especially since she wasn't Kimbra.
Hindsight makes it obvious that this would never happen, and it didn't; Ellie Goulding's niche seems to be more like that of Sia, singing the choruses or hooks to dance music. No one has really become the next Adele, in part because, y'know, we still have Adele. But, still, my idea of a new indie darling seems to be slowly realized in the form of one Emeli Sandé.
I first heard of Sandé, once again, through a free iTunes song released in January 2012. "Daddy" drew me in for much the same reason as "Settle Down" did, with its dark, well-penned lyrics demanding and receiving my full attention, and I often listened to the two songs in the same playlist. I never really gave Sandé more thought, however, as I figured that her material would probably be centered around subject matter as bleak as the cycle of abuse described in "Daddy." Then I started hearing her on the radio this year. And then she was on the soundtrack for Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby. And now she's a featured artist on some song by a band called Labrinth which, when listened to in the right mindset, feels like an opposite-day version of "Somebody I Used to Know." They're good songs, and I like listening to her sing. She seems like the sort of artist who acquit herself well in live performances, the sort of act I'd want to go and see live. And it's fantastic that she's finding mainstream success here, right? Right?
I want to be happy for her. Well, I mean, I am happy for her. A cursory glance at her Wikipedia page shows that she's done a lot to get where she is today. But the admiration I feel for her is tainted, ever so slightly, with the sense that her success is a sign of Kimbra's having been truly passed over. If you bring up Emeli Sandé in conversation right now, anyone who listens to mainstream music will probably nod and know what you're talking about. Try that with Kimbra, and you get a blank look until you amend it to "that girl from that Gotye song." Maybe it's unfair to compare the two artists, but since I came into contact with them at about the same time, I can't help but do so. Kimbra does seem to get some recognition out in New Zealand and Australia, as she should, but I can't shake the feeling that she was cheated here in America.
Oh well. It's still ultimately good to see Emeli Sandé succeed, and I can only hope that her presence on the charts will continue to be a positive one. And, who knows? Kimbra's day in the sun might still come to our shores. I certainly hope so.
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