MATT OAKLEY - Fire & Water - C2 Records
Layering 2024 with hotly received singles “Can’t Take The Dogs,” “Single This Summer,” and the autobiographical, “Soldier’s Son,” rising sensation Matt Oakley used last year to further amp the buzz on his forthcoming debut album, Outside Looking In.
Coming off this past November’s nostalgically driven “Party on 95,” he now kicks off the new year with his brand-new single, “Fire & Water.”
Co-written by Matt, David Ray Stevens, and Philip Mosley, the song layers its depth with a softness that laces the acoustic led instrumentation, allowing the edges of Oakley’s voice to carry the awestricken realization of opposites not only attracting, but perfectly fitting together as the missing piece of a complex puzzle.
“In a world where most heartbreak songs focus on differences pulling people apart, I wanted to write one about how our differences balance each other out,” explains Oakley. “We used fire and water as the metaphor: when I get hot-headed and my flames burn brighter, she is there to calm me down, just like you would use water to put out a fire.”
Check listing comparatives of things that aren’t meant to go together throughout the opening verse– a storm with no thunder, a sinner on Sunday, etc. – brilliantly accents his confessional, Biblical like metaphor of how when she rescued him, she came down from heaven to bring him up from hell.
Showering praise-filled humbleness in the 4-line chorus sees a transformed Oakley fully comprehending their personality differences while shining light on the grace-led inspiration as to who she is to him and what she means to his newly found and saved direction of life.
“Girl, we're like fire and water
Forgiveness and sin as my flame burns hotter
Your rain pours again that’s when you reign me in
As I'm chasing the wind we're like fire water”
Fueled in the emotional space between passion, unconditional love, and reflective redemption, the unevenly yoked couple finds even footing within each other that transcends their surface differences to find comforting peace in the individual depths of who they are at each other’s side.
Having already grabbed interest with his previous releases, Matt Oakley’s unashamed boldness in pulling influence from the greatest story ever told brings that level of intrigue to even greater heights as he opens the year with a song that’s not only relatable to the madly in love couples who are falling more each day, but one that also tugs the heartstrings that may be frayed to become the reminder of why we need each other.
(Review Written By: Jeffrey Kurtis)