Izellah’s latest track Treat You highlights a different side to the young singer-songwriter’s talents. The song is a pop ballad about pushing through negativity and hurt using self-respect and common sense. Co-written with US songwriter Tucker Murray Caploe, a rising star himself on the American songwriting scene,
Treat You is a finely wrought classic-sounding song with a powerful lyric and compelling, emotive melodies. The latest track follows on from Where Nobody Knows Me, a track that received a great amount of attention on radio and forms part of Izellah’s growing list of exceptional releases.
Treat You’s minimal aesthetic not only enhances the sentiment of the lyric but vividly reveals the extent of the skills and acuity of Izellah’s prodigious talent. From the moment the piano begins and Izellah’s voice emerges, the tone for heartfelt and forthright communication is set. We learn the travails of a troubled friendship in the first verse with the line, ‘You shouldn’t judge me cause I don’t judge you’, which could be seen as a summation of the focus of the lyric. It’s a subject we can all relate to; discovering disappointment when there should have been acceptance. But Izellah’s take on this very universal theme is to push back against negativism, with this line from the chorus nicely encapsulating her attitude: ‘And even though you treated me so bad, that’s not how I’ll treat you’. This is the kind of song that will no doubt stand the test of the time, with Izellah’s stirring voice the centrepiece, and the piano backing embellishing the impassioned performance.
The song’s brilliantly crafted melodic sequences seem especially suited to this subject matter yet this merely outlines the competence of the writing; matching two modes of expression to the one and creating a whole that resonates with enduring qualities. Treat Youis a high point in Izellah’s music career, one of the many still to come.