By Ron Powers

Valentine’s Day is coming up so I thought it would be nice to dig up a love song to write about. In 2017 the lead singer of The Black Keys (Dan Auerbach) released his second solo album which includes a heartfelt and sweet love song called “Never in My Wildest Dreams”. The song has a quiet and shy feel to it and reflects a gentle side of an artist that is typically delivering tough blues-rock. Blown-out love songs full of fiery passion are all well and good but on “Never in My Wildest Dreams” Auerbach expresses a more endearing side of love that I appreciate. Listening to this song is a pleasant experience from start to finish and might be the perfect tune to share with your Valentine this year.

The song begins with a lovely acoustic guitar arrangement that has an up-close and intimate sound. We hear the rhythm acoustic deliver a simple country strum pattern that alternates between bass notes and chord strums while the lead acoustic plucks out a sentimental melody line. I love the production quality of these guitars. Dan Auerbach captures the raw essence of the instruments in a way that is so sweet to the ears. You can even hear the creek of the strings as callused fingertips press the notes down on the fretboard.

For the first verse, we hear Auerbach deliver a pleasant yet catching little melody that sounds like it comes straight from the softest part of his heart. I like the second half of the first verse’s lyrics in particular when he delivers the lines “You’re just too good to touch / I can’t discuss it much / I get too choked up / Don’t what to make a seen / Never in my wildest dreams”. The second half of each verse acts something like a pre-chorus and chorus in that the melody repeats throughout the song. And each time the melody ends Auerbach tops it off with the lyrics, “Never in my wildest dreams”. Listening back to this song I realized there isn’t a clear-cut chorus section. But the song is so enjoyable. It obviously doesn’t need one.

Between the verses, we hear a charming and romantic instrumental. You can almost see two sweethearts on a dance floor slow dancing to it. My favorite part of this instrumental is the horn section. It’s composed of a simple rhythmic melody and combines with the other musical elements to create an extraordinary pleasing and mellow feeling. Under the acoustic guitars and horns, we hear a smooth shuffle drum beat along with a slow quarter-note bass line that emits a nice round sonic shape.

Dan Auerbach has been hard at work since the release of his solo album back in 2017. Since then, he’s released two full-length albums with his band The Black Keys and played shows all around the world. If you’d like to listen to “Never in My Wildest Dreams” or any of Dan Auerbach’s fine solo work, you can find it on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and most other places music is streamed or sold. If you’d like to learn more about Dan you can follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

About the Author: Ron Powers is an independent A&R specialist and music industry consultant and is constantly searching for, discovering and writing about new talent.