To make your Mondays a little brighter, we’ll be bringing you one song or music video to check out, every week.
“Doesn’t this guitar sound so good?” Whether you’re familiar with Tai Verdes or not, based only on this spoken opening line, you already know that you are listening to something special. The melody begins, and it does sound good. “So sweet”, the singer adds, as if he’s agreeing with what you’re thinking.
Released on May 6th, A-O-K falls in line with many songs meant to uplift one’s morale. But it isn’t here to preach that everything is going to be fine. Rather, it is about making do with what one has. Verdes sings that he’s going to be “a-o-k” because that is the attitude he has chosen to deal with whatever kind of lemons life throws at him. He’ll just “be making lemonade,” even if it ends up tasting not so great. The song is fun and might even seem “light” at first listen, but it actually embodies much of what the 24-year-old singer-songwriter stands for.
Before getting his break on TikTok in spring 2020, Tai Verdes used to hold a 9-to-5 job at a mobile carrier store in Los Angeles. He worked on his music as a side-project, whenever he had the time, hoping to be able to pursue it full-time someday. After having had a not-so-successful attempt under the name Tylersemicolon and being rejected from a TV singing competition for the seventh time, he decided to get seriously better: at singing, at writing, and, simply, at making it happen for himself.
Fast-forward to a year and a half later, his song Stuck In the Middle started gaining traction on the video-driven social media platform, and ended up on top of Spotify’s viral chart in the United Stats. Ever since, the musician has only been working harder and growing a bigger fanbase.
I’m just stupid enough to think I’m gonna be in an arena, you know, some time, somewhere.” – Tai Verdes
But for him, it isn’t about the numbers. “If I cared about numbers, I mean… someone else would be, you know, in control of my happiness,” he says in a video posted on his YouTube channel. Making music he genuinely enjoys is what it’s about.
Out of all the material he has released so far from his forthcoming EP T.V. (May 20th), this single shines a light on that the most. With quirky lyrics (that might make you smile a couple of times) and a highly catchy feel-good melody, Tai Verdes is having the time of his life. It’s not just a party-for-one, though. He hopes to “make you feel 2% better” with his song.
