50 songs to take to my grave #15: Bully

Bully just kind of fell in my lap really. I first heard it through the blog We all Want Someone To Shout For. The author, Will Oliver, raved about this song and its singer Lissie (who I think he had rather a soft spot for, if you know what I mean) so I took a punt. What happened was one of those jawdropping moments I’ve talked about. 

Bully is just a lovely, beautifully written song, and performed with a perfect balance of emotion and bite. Lissie appeared to have a sound of her own, a singer-songwriter who seemed to appreciate how a ballad should be. It’s not over-produced, it’s not oversung, it’s not got one of those almighty orchestral climaxes with the obligatory key change; neither is it all acoustic guitars and whiny vocals. Instead Lissie sounds like a cross between Stevie Nicks and Martha Wainwright; a folk singer with a blues-rock edge. And damn, can the girl do pop music.

Bully entranced me for all of its three and three-quarter minutes. I immediately played it again and again. It wasn’t even released as a single, which strikes me as rather bizarre. It is an undoubted highlight of her highly lauded debut album ‘Catching A Tiger’. What you might call a hidden gem.