Wednesday Spotlight: Christina Grimmie's "Cry Wolf"

To start things off with the elephant in the room, I know that it’s Wednesday and I’m posting, so you would (normally rightfully) think that this is my Wednesday spotlight on comic book related things but I’m switching things up with the Sunday spotlight and so SUNDAY is when I’ll be posting about a very exciting current comic series I’m getting into that I recommend you check out. For now though let’s get into my special (and admittedly a little confusingly named) Sunday Spotlight on Wednesday about Christina Grimmie’s new song “Cry Wolf”:

Christina Grimmie’s “new” track “Cry Wolf” was just released last week to much news coverage and acclaim.  I say “new” of course as it is more accurately the official release of a song the singer had recorded in a studio before her untimely death in 2016 when she was killed at her concert in Florida.  

This leads me to what I feel I have to start with: how great it is after all this time to able to hear a clean and professionally recorded version of this song which for years had only been available as a recording of the one time Christina Grimmie performed it live at a 2012 concert.  The music video even references this fact by beginning with the concert video before then transitioning to the professional version complete with lyrics and effects.  

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how the song begins with the lyrics “They say the brightest stars are the ones that burn out first” which Christina Grimmie clearly could not have known how hauntingly appropriate those words would be four years after her death at just the age of 22.  

The rest of the song itself is catchy and definitely worth a listen if you’re a fan of Christina Grimmie, which with the lack of her content for the past few months I’d be surprised if you are a fan and haven’t already listened to the song. “Cry Wolf” should bring in new fans by giving Grimmie the chance to be in the public spotlight again and potentially giving a new opportunity for people to stumble on the song and become fans however it won’t really bring in a different type of audience since the song is in line with the usual type of music that is Christina Grimmie which in itself is clearly not a “bad thing”.  

An aspect of the new song is the surprisingly (and yet also refreshingly) differences it has to the version from the live concert, and not just in production quality but also in how the words are sung.  It is of course the same tune and yet I found I preferred the more “raw” way Grimmie sang some words in the concert compared to the more “produced” sounding version in the music video; which fell more in line with the sounds of pop songs that are heard on the radio.  Don’t believe for a second that the differences are a negative or even that I necessarily preferred one version over the other.  In fact, I see it as a positive that we now have two versions of “Cry Wolf” which are different enough people will be able to say they prefer the live version or the “pop” version in the music video.  Some people may even feel similar to me and prefer certain parts of one version over the other but also vice versa on other parts.  

The music video itself is pretty straightforward and basic which could be expected as there isn’t much that can be done when Grimmie never had the chance to film a video for the song.  I did enjoy the placement of the accompanying lyrics, specifically in regards to the purple flora around them and how that flora sometimes blocked out parts of the words in order to convey a more three-dimensional feel to the lyrics.  As I mentioned previously I also enjoyed the transition from a video of the concert to the professional version of the song, however when at the end of the music video they go back to the beginning of the concert (now including a snippet of her actually singing at the concert rather than just playing piano) I do have to wonder if it wouldn’t have made more sense to instead have included the END of the song to coincide with the end of the video?  Obviously that’s a small criticism for what is a great thing; a new Christina Grimmie song providing a small beacon of light in an otherwise pretty bad year which I personally believe is just what she would have wanted to do while also being something only she could have done as one of “the brightest stars”.