New Music: You're a Star by Dominique
An inspirational anthem.
The debut release from Dominique is "You're a Star (Get on Up)."
Dominique wrote the track sitting on the edge of his bed, roughly two and a half hours before he walked into the studio to record it, at the close of a period he describes as the hardest of his life.
After the back-to-back loss of both parents to cancer, Dominique found himself unmoored, eventually experiencing homelessness and addiction.
"So many times I would be outside watching everyone walk by, ignoring everything happening and judging people over silly things like material possessions..." he says. "Sitting there with nothing, while no one would listen to anything I had to say, I knew I still had everything. I was still everything. I was greater in that moment than I had ever been before; just in disguise as a man who had no home."
You're a Star grew directly out of that period as both a private reckoning and a public anthem.
"It's the commanding voice inside that I had to find and listen to in order to get out of that situation..." Dominique explains. "It's like I'm going back in time to tell myself to wake up, get on up, and remember exactly who I am; and not believe what life or society or trauma had tried to turn me into."
He describes the song as a promise kept to his parents:
"I knew they hadn't passed so that I would die on the street. I was going to fight, get back up, and finally do what I was called and prepared to do all along."
The track's influences run from classical structure and church hymns through rock, jazz, gospel, and country, with a particular pull toward the disco and house music of the 1970s and beyond — genres Dominique says once served as an escape during difficult, financially strained years. He also made a deliberate choice to keep the vocal performance unpolished in places, leaving in his breaths and the small imperfections of a live take. "I don't mind leaving in the things that show it really happened, that it was a person who did all of that," he says.
"You're a Star (Get on Up)" is available on all streaming platforms.
Gareth Johnson