JGM Pick of the Week: November 4, 2019

“Saved”
April Hall
Enon Music Group (release date: March 27, 2019)

By Bob Marovich

The featured soloist on Damon Little’s 2016 Billboard-charting “I Won’t Be Defeated,” April Hall returns with her own single, “Saved.”

This new take on a traditional song finds Hall singing with austerity while the musicians and background vocalists move at double time. Halfway through, she drops the austerity and begins to deliver her trademark church-wrecking shouts, growls, and whoos, learned from a lifetime of listening to gospel quartets in her hometown of Baltimore, Maryland. By the end, you can imagine her engaging in a holy dance.

April Hall ministers at Baltimore’s New Antioch Church under the leadership of Bishop Orlando Wilson, and is assistant music director at the city’s Southern Baptist Church, under the leadership of her cousin, Bishop Donte Hickman.