RX dives into pop on “Over the Moon”

Release date: March 29th, 2019

RX dives into pop on “Over the Moon” March 29, 2019

Dan Ray

Raised by a single mother in the suburbs of Detroit, Dan discovered an early passion for singing, songwriting, and the arts as a whole. She got her BA in English and music at the University of Michigan, where she reported for the school’s paper, The Michigan Daily. She worked as a Senior News Reporter on the government beat, transitioned to arts writing, and eventually became the managing editor of the social media department. She moved to Seattle in 2017. After losing her job during the COVID-19 pandemic and discouraged about the lack of press surrounding Seattle’s music scene, Dan made the decision to turn Dan’s Tunes, a fully fledged music journalism website focused on showcasing the Seattle area’s musicians, into its own startup. There’s so much music happening in the city that spawned Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and Jimi Hendrix — among others — and Dan’s Tunes is determined to find and expose those outstanding acts. The goal is to have satellites in every major US city, uplifting diverse and compelling voices and helping music communities thrive. In 2020, Dan was featured in the Seattle Times’s year-end music critic poll. Other than her musical endeavors (singing, playing ukulele, and auditioning for American Idol four times before the age of 24) Ray is passionate about food and education around the American food system, and she’s also a large proponent of eliminating the stigma around mental health. Ray loves cats, especially her own, who is named Macaulay Culkin (but she’s a lady).

Photo courtesy of RX

RX — or Robbie Christmas — is quickly cementing himself as a musician to watch in Seattle.

“Over the Moon,” his latest drop, comes less than two months after the single release of “Misery,” a wonderfully disturbing tune about the cycle of a toxic relationship. After seeing RX in concert back in November, I instantly became a fan of his easy-going, acoustic style. His set was stylistically similar, but his songwriting and stage presence kept a rapt audience.

When “Misery” came out, I was impressed by the sheer artistry of it — the video features Betty Boop-style animation that becomes truly unsettling as the plot evolves — but the song itself stuck firmly in the singer/songwriter tradition.

On RX’s new single, “Over the Moon,” the singer/songwriter challenged himself to create something new. “The song started out as a writing exercise: I was challenging myself to be more visual and create scenes in my writing, not just feelings,” he said.

RX does incorporate images of skipping rocks on satellites and cherry-picking stars throughout the track, but, what he really achieves on “Over the Moon,” is a new sound.

As opposed to the simplicity of his previous work — mostly just RX and his guitar — “Over the Moon” has faster rhythms, more harmonies, and sing-along-ready melodies. It’s still the cornerstone of who RX is, with full and steady guitar parts and solid songwriting, but it dubs in a layer of pop-rock, radio-ready charisma that we haven’t heard from him yet.

“Over the Moon,” a listen-on-repeat, feel-good-jam, comes at the perfect time, as the sun comes out to play and Seattleites dare to drive with the windows down. As RX sings “we keep on going higher / we can’t stop going over the moon” over hard drum beats and claps, it’s hard to image a world where we can’t just jump as high as we can and land, sitting peacefully, gazing at the stars, on a moon-cheese crater. It’s like a Rachel Platten song gone good.

The music video itself is nothing special, but it achieves its goal. Throughout the three minutes and 13 seconds, RX sings himself through various outdoor scenes, complete with campfires for RX to “rise up like smoke from fire.” The story is lacking — especially since one of RX’s aims on this track was to create a world — but it fits well with the overarching feeling of the track: unfazed, youthful hope.