Buford Pope, (a.k.a. Mikael Liljeborg) was born in 1971 on Gotland, a Swedish limestone island in the Baltic Sea. This is his eighth album.
As someone who was ”totally blown away” by Bob Dylan at the age of 15, he sings about America with a small town boy’s sense of yearning (“I hear you beckon me”).
In writing about struggling to write a love song, he reworks Neil Young’s My My Hey Hey into Hey Hey Aha. Like Young, the voice is fragile, vulnerable and deliberately unassertive.
Pope wears his sensitivity on his sleeve as he reflects on identity and fidelity with humility. The absence of macho posturing is laudable but these songs take the safe option of following familiar highways rather than seeking new routes.
Buford Pope’s website
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