Ole Børud -- Find a Way

 

I've made exceptions and included Western artists even if they aren't part of the Reminiscings of Youth articles since their songs were simply so amazing. That was the case with the duo Young Gun Silver Fox because of their love of performing songs in the vein of late 70s/early 80s West Coast AOR, a genre that I've also greatly cherished over the years.

Well, here is another exception. Ole Børud is a Norwegian singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer who's run the gamut of genres in his 46 years of life. His Wikipedia entry lists them as such: Children's, choral, Christian metal, contemporary Christian music, extreme metal, Gospel, hardcore punk, hymn, jazz pop, progressive metal, pop rock, R&B, soul and yacht rock. Yeah, it's that wide.

Back in 1996, Børud joined a doom metal project called Schaliach as a guitarist, bassist and drummer and they came up with the album "Sonrise" which was about as epic as metal can get.

However from 2008 onwards, Børud made a hard turn and tackled the old West Coast sound with jazz, soul and other musical influences beginning with the album "Shakin' the Ground". I knew about Japanese folk singers making the big jump into City Pop from the 1970s going into the 1980s, but Børud has trumped them.

Anyways, his latest single from April this year is "Find a Way" which absolutely floored me because it sounds so 70s/80s that I forgot that we were currently in 2023. It's that AOR! Plus, "Find a Way" is further fortified with some of the big names from that era and genre: Bill Champlin, Jay Graydon and Michael Omartian. It's such a fun song that it's given me hope that other artists along with Young Gun Silver Fox and Børud can bring back some more new examples of those sleek and smooth styles from decades past.