Review of themex’s Cover of Fallin’ by Alicia Keys – Vibes Web3 Music Competition Week 40

I will start by thanking those who created this space for us @verbal-d @lordbutterfly @silentscreamer.

@themex sang a cover of Alicia Keys’ Fallin’ and that was brave and fresh. The original is a tough song. It has to project, and only a gutty singer can do it justice. Rather than approximate a sound just like Alicia, he went his own way. His middle-of-the-road tenor held nicely, and the harmonies he interspersed kept the song sounding full and layered. It was almost like two voices blending, even though it was him.

What came through, in other words, was how he balanced emotional directness and formal control. The mellower lines were sincere and the chorus hit hard enough that she's still getting sympathy cred for a relationship struggle. Smart to change the key. That made the performance feel real, not an artifice. It enabled him to focus on the feeling of the song instead of having to look for notes he wasn’t finding. The end result was a reproduction as close to the original as possible.

Listening to it offered me an opportunity to reflect on music and writing. Fallin’ is about love’s highs and lows moments of laughter, then moments of agony. Everyone can relate to that. I could see his version with a poem or short story about those emotions. The harmony parts could hunker back, even as the words narrate the cycle of leaving and returning. A fusion of the power of music and writing would be something great.

Thinking about past weeks in the competition, there’s been a lot of variety. Some performances were upbeat and playful, others were soulful. This cover slowed things down. It focused more on feeling than on big notes, and that’s what made it memorable.

The judges often reward artists who take risks, and covering Fallin’ is definitely one of those risks. It’s the kind of song that could quickly show mistakes. But @themex handled it well. He showed growth, not just in his singing, but in knowing how to shape a song to fit his own voice. Out of recent entries, this one felt the most heartfelt.

The Vibes Web3 Music Competition is all about giving artists space to grow, and this cover showed that clearly. A great performance doesn’t have to copy the original to make an impact. It can carry the heart of the song while giving us something fresh. For me, this cover was one of the highlights so far.

I’d love to see more performances like this bold choices that are reshaped in a personal way. It would be even better if singers and writers worked together to build on songs like Fallin’. Music feels stronger when it inspires new ideas, and this performance did exactly that.

Link to the entry