The song, like the album that it will be featured on dedicated to his girlfriend, will likely bring Christina Grimmie’s many fans to tears and will make people relieved that even four years into her death, Christina is still bringing emotion and entertainment to people around the world.
Article by Jacob Borislow, AKSM News
LOS ANGELES - Stephen Rezza is a rising star who’s new song “Hardmode” is an incredibly personal look back at the troubles he’s already had in his young life from being born to a poor family to the loss of his girlfriend; deceased celebrity singer Christina Grimmie who was killed in 2016 at the age of 22. The line “God put my life in hard mode” is repeated several times through the just under three and a half minute song and from the very beginning sets up the song as deeply personal to Rezza even to those who have no idea of what the singer has been through. The usage of the words “hard mode” are a clear reference to his and Grimmie’s love of video games which they shared with the two undoubtedly both also having experiences with a life in hard mode. The song also references another struggle Rezza had to go through when he had his head surgically opened in order to remove a life-threatening brain tumor. It was during this time that he vowed to release the song about his struggles four years after Grimmie’s death as he discovered again how fleeting life truly is. Almost every lyric in “Hardmode” is a reference to either his girlfriend’s death, Rezza’s brain operation, or about his financial status throughout his life and how he would buy his parents a house if he had the money and an entire article could be written just breaking down the correlation between Stephen Rezza’s life and the song.
My personal experience with the song was when a friend sent a sample on Instagram for me to listen to so that I could potentially write an article on it. Thankfully I ended up listening to the full song on YouTube when it released since the sample did a huge injustice to what the song actually was. The sample for some reason decided to focus on a more electronic beat part of the song that is only briefly even featured near the end while the majority of the song is slower and more appropriately somber. Vocal tracks of Christina Grimmie were used in the background of the track (with the permission of the Grimmie household) and thankfully my fears of them being used too much in order to just sell the song to a wider audience were proven wrong as the vocal tracks were, at least in my experience, only faintly heard.
Moving on to the visuals of the music video, it is appropriately personal with Rezza facing the viewer the entire time while singing the song. While there are effects in the background and filters applied to Rezza, they just serve to enhance the experience of someone singing at the camera for an entire song and are never distracting from the song itself or its message. At the end of the song, Rezza fades out and the song is dedicated to Christina, her mother Tina Grimmie, and Stephen’s relative Marco Rezza. Even without personally knowing Stephen Rezza I can confidently say that he made the right decision in putting out this song and while it is up to the listener to determine the quality of the song itself, no one can argue that personal feelings and emotion went into it. The song, like the album that it will be featured on dedicated to his girlfriend, will likely bring Christina Grimmie’s many fans to tears and will make people relieved that even four years into her death, Christina is still bringing emotion and entertainment to people around the world.