“In context of what’s been released, I knew that it was going to stand out,” he says. Miguel tapped into his real, sensual self by recording in New York City’s midtown Platinum Sound Studio, spending nearly two years in the city and on the East Coast to connect with the rougher edges of his persona. Kelly’s Write Me Back), or ignored altogether (Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange). These raw bits of sexuality and frank freak talk were absent in much of r&b in 2012, either masked in double entendre (Usher’s “Climax”), buried in retro Sam Cooke–isms (R. The man who wants you to tell him your pussy is his (“Pussy Is Mine”) and no one else’s. What he learned, what he believed in and wanted, was to express a deeper, darker side of his personality, the real Miguel. I think I would just say I was learning myself.” I don’t know that I would say it was on someone else’s terms. “That was the purpose of this album, me saying, ‘This is the music I love to make, but I want to make it on my own terms.’ On I was at the brink of discovering what my terms were.
He couldn’t know what he fully believed in until he got a chance to make something he fully didn’t. Thing is, there would be no Kaleidoscope without All I Want.
Kaleidoscope is the album All I Want was supposed to be, Miguel expressing himself, laid bare, taking chances, exposing his raw nerves to air. He did what was expected and, in some regards, what he was told. It showed he had chops, but it gave no sense of who he actually was. It showed he could sing-Gaye, Prince, and (his comparison) Van Morrison all linger in his voice. His name was attached, but it didn’t say much about him. Because Miguel’s debut, All I Want Is You, wasn’t really. They’re usually stinkers, unable to live up to whatever wildly inventive, critically acclaimed debut that came before. Kaleidoscope Dream is Miguel’s sophomore effort, and you know how that goes. It’s the perfect amuse-bouche for the album it kicks off, priming the ears, opening them. The song is about love, of course, but it’s also about longing, yearning, protecting: every aspect and promise of a relationship all rolled up in a tidy, sweet few minutes. “Adorn” has a strong “Sexual Healing” vibe, but you’d be deaf or dumb to dismiss it as a mere knockoff. I knew instantly I wanted to start the album with it and that I had a single.” It’s the only song that’s ever hit me like that. “But, yeah, I guess you could make the comparison. “There’s got to be a better example than that,” says Miguel, laughing, fresh from our photo shoot in L.A., en route to depart for Europe. He couldn’t write down the recipe, because there was no recipe. Like, say, Stephenie Meyer, who went to sleep one night dreaming of shiny vampires and hunky werewolves, and woke up to find the Twilight saga spill out of her, “Adorn” flashed and pulsed in Miguel’s mind’s eye from something or somewhere other. He touched down, wrote the thing in a blur, and doesn’t remember much of anything about the process.īecause that’s often how great art is made-a rush of unexplained and inexplicable inspiration, divine or otherwise, knocks the singer/writer/painter/poet flat over, a happy accident, and a song/book/picture/poem emerges from the fog. The song is “Adorn,” and it hit the young Los Angeles–based Mexican/African-American singer like a flash of light, the chords coming to him on a cross-country flight, the lyrics following shortly after.
The first line of the album’s first song sets the tone: “These lips can’t wait to taste your skin.” You have entered Miguel’s Kaleidoscope Dream, a fantastical, steamy, colorful, gritty-but-polished, polished-but-gritty, dripping-with-sex-sweat bacchanal of Marvin Gaye smoothness.
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