Musical youth.
This is the time of year when people need to take a few minutes to stop and ponder the more important things and for some people, the most important thing for them is Christmas and for a smaller part of that group, its all about the birth of Jesus Christ, who at the time, was an infant. And as an infant, he had a set of ‘Infant Eyes’, which neatly takes us to the title of Ruarri Joseph’s single that we are about to review. The song isn’t about Jesus or Christmas but it was a topical little introduction to the song and not entirely pointless.
It’s a simple song with a simple melody but the content of the lyrics appears to be something that is mightily important to the singer, perhaps its about his child, or a young family relative, no matter, it manages to capture the feeling of joy and wonder than a small child can offer but unless you are the parent in question, its not going to transfer across with the same resonance that the writer obviously intends.
And this is no fault of Ruarri Joseph, you only have to look at tracks like ‘Little James’ by Oasis or ‘Isnt She Lovely?’ by Stevie Wonder to see that even major artists struggle to get across their love for their offspring without sounding extremely sweetly sick. It’s a happy wee tune, the lyrics run through many of the things that a child can do to make their parents go a bit gooey-eyed and tries to tie it up neatly with a wee metaphor or two about how we adults should live our lives, its okay but its not going to set the world alight.
Its also interesting to tie it back to the Christmas theme and compare it to that Nizlopi song about the tractor and Bruce Lee that seemed to bewitch Britain for a few weeks one previous Christmas. Perhaps it’s the season where everyone gets a little bit sentimental and gives a lot of time for tracks that they would otherwise dismiss but you can see this song being in the same vein as that previous, although it does lack a chorus to rival it.