Otis takes the quiet ache of William Bell’s original and deepens it. His voice trembles on the refrain as if regret incarnate, aware the well ran dry long before he could bear to admit it. He sits beside you in a small room of remorse, with the slow breath of spare horn and organ cushioning his confession: "In the beginning you really loved me, but I was too blind".

The Memphis-soul production is wound tightly around a single human failure. Each moment his voice cracks, the failure echoes, and you hear every promise unkept, every “I’ll change” unsaid, and the ghost of a man who once had exactly all he could wish for but lost it anyway. We're gripped by this internal furore because, in our human condition, we’ve been there too - and we lay to bathe in this regret alongside him.

It remains for us one of his quietest, least flashy performances, yet one of the most devastating. A soul song stripped to its bones, delivered by a man who knew how to bleed into the microphone without ever whining.

Sincerely,

Rhune