The first song that comes to mind, once Mr. MooQ’s “Dreaming in Color” starts playing, is Hall & Oates’ “One on One.” It’s a similar quiet, gentle groove that floats like a puffy cloud in the sky. The guitar part is a jazzy, soulful electric strum. The bass line is also sweetly unhurried. It’s all about dreamy love, too.
The song’s lyric is an expression of love. Sometimes, when true love comes into a person’s life, it can seem like switching from a black & white TV, to a high definition color model. Mr. MooQ sings, “Dreaming in color/Waking up so much in love.”
This vocal starts with an electronically modified sound, before going into a more natural tone. In contrast to the sound bed’s yacht rock gentility, Mr. MooQ’s vocal is relatively rough and passionate. There’s a scratchiness to it that hearkens back to classic soul music.
It’s a song where this lover visits him during his dreams. “Even the darkness can’t take what you leave,” he states. Love is the ultimate antidote for darkness, and its fearfully imposing nature. We call bad dreams nightmares, but Mr. MooQ is living in an overwhelming in-love dream state.
Nevertheless, the question about whether we dream in color or not is still up for debate. Some research has shown that 70-80% of our dreams contain color. However, around the middle of the 20th Century, Sigmund Freud’s research found that most of his subjects described dreams being black and white. Perhaps this evidence was due to the preponderance of black and white images, such as black and white photographs.
Whether humans actually dream in color or not, though, is immaterial to Mr. MooQ. This lover has certainly brought more color into this man’s life, whether that be the way he views his dreams or how he sees the world during his waking hours. There’s a sweetness and hope about this song that makes the listener feel good while it plays. And at the end of the day, how a song makes one feel is all that really counts.
-Dan MacIntosh
