Nepo babies are all the rage, but few families have a business as niche as the McFerrins. Jazz vocalist Bobby is best known as the singer of Don’t Worry, Be Happy, the first a cappella song to top the US charts. More than three decades later, his daughter Madison picked up the baton, releasing two vocal-only EPs that looped and layered her voice into a faintly retro melange of soul and R&B.
It’s fair to say that the younger McFerrin’s work is significantly less grating than the single that made her father’s name – a track widely considered to be among the most irritating of all time – yet she is no stranger to scorn: in 2016, her out-of-tune performance of the national anthem at a Hillary Clinton campaign rally was met with mockery online.
On her debut album, McFerrin supplements her intricate vocal landscapes with beats and synths, matching her beautiful voice with tastefully muted and often vaguely ominous backdrops that nod to a variety of genres: the breakbeat-backed Testify has echoes of trip-hop; Stay Away (From Me) sports strains of piano house; elsewhere there are glimpses of post-dubstep, gospel and electro-pop. The effect is gorgeous, atmospheric – at times spine-tinglingly so – and undeniably cool. Yet she doesn’t distinguish herself from the glut of similarly minded artists from Greentea Peng to KeiyaA. As elegant and generically literate as I Hope You Can Forgive Me is, this particular McFerrin does not seem destined for ubiquity.
