Jessica Reedy – From the Heart

Jessica Reedy

There’s everything to like about Jessica Reedy’s debut CD, From the Heart.

It contains a superb mix of songs, messages, and musical styles that receive expert production from a battery of top-shelf producers, with lovingly rendered vocals from Reedy and several guest artists.

First and foremost, Jessica Reedy, with her pop-and-gospel infused voice, makes each performance her own. She can at once render the bouncy and feel-good “Put It On the Altar” and shift gears to do the Williams Brothers’ “I’m Still Here,” with the Soul Seekers providing quartet cred. Reedy gives the chestnut “God Has Smiled on Me” a similarly southern soulful reading.

The finest selection on From the Heart is “What About Me,” a pop ballad written from the Lord’s point of view. He appeals to the suffering soul to remember to seek His help before all others.  Man’s neglect of God is reprised in the lyrically fascinating “Blue God.” Here, Reedy suspects that if God were a color it would be blue, reflecting His mood, since He gives far more than He ever receives from His people.

While songs such as “Always,” on which Reedy renders lovely harmonies with Nakeia Homer, are about encouragement, for pure and simple joy, try “Doctor Love,” a duet with the gutsy Faith Evans. To a soul disco beat, the two sing with gumption, girlfriend-to-girlfriend, about how Jesus is the only physician who can heal a broken heart.

From the Heart is a bounteous blessing of musical riches. Packed with songs about good times, bad times and praise times, Light Records couldn’t have made a better debut album for Jessica Reedy than this one.

Five of Five Stars