Synth Single Review: "When I Was Me" by GMNI88
by Karl Magi
GMNI88's "When I Was Me" drifts with cobweb delicacy as trembling weight joins brilliant light and GMNI88's voice flows with remembrance and passionate trembling, while the drums add more shape. Flourishing percussion launches GMNI88's earnest and emotionally honest performance as he carries a yearning melody, painting images of youth and the complexity of growing up.
As the percussive force keeps the beat, hushed tenderness permeates GMNI88's voice, driving home the power of his lyrics. All of the synth sounds wash with irradiating light, and the past pain flows into the song from the well-crafted words.
The song glides into a floating segment in which affection and a hint of bereft emotion are tinged with cosmic light before the rebounding underpinnings move again and GMNI88 reaches for my heart. The song closes with impassioned feeling and intensity as the delicate background mingles with the gripping vocals.
As our storyteller muses that perhaps he was the closest to being free when he was himself, he wonders if "maybe I forgot how to be while I was me." He feels that he's rushed through life and "burned through the days that I had," but as he looks back, he realizes you can't begin without an ending. Unable to find his dreams from the past, he adds that "this life has got a hold of me," and he wonders where he'd be when he was himself.
Watching TV was his "soul escape when times were tough and I could break," as he committed all of the ending scenes of "Technicolor broken dreams" to his memory and watched the '80s unfold on the screen in order to "feel a world unseen that faded into static blur and left the person that we were." He believed that he knew a better way and "couldn't wait to leave and stray."
"The world was framed outside my door, I thought that there was something more," and he wouldn't doubt his delicate hope before the credits came to an end. He adds that "the broken years have made me cold, a tarnished story to be told," pointing out that every one of his scars makes everything seem surreal. He concludes, "There's nothing left for us to fear, no wasted time left to disappear."
