Devil Is a Lie

The falsetto arrives before you're fully prepared for it — Tommy Richman's voice shooting upward into a register that trembles between gospel ecstasy and secular urgency, a sound that belongs equally to a church choir and a sweaty club at 2 AM. The production around that voice is deliberately spare in places and then suddenly dense, a rhythm section that locks in tight and grooves with the kind of confidence that doesn't need to announce itself. There's a funk current running beneath everything, a memory of 70s soul transformed through contemporary production aesthetics — cleaner, more precise, but with the same commitment to the body's response. The song takes the figure of the devil as a provocation and a celebration simultaneously, the kind of theological mischief that Black American music has always understood how to wield. Richman doesn't sound afraid; he sounds exhilarated. The mood throughout is defiant and slightly euphoric, like someone who has looked at a long list of reasons to doubt themselves and decided, audaciously, not to. You feel the lyrics as a posture before you understand them as argument. This track arrived in 2024 and immediately sounded like it had always existed, slotting into a lineage of falsetto soul and funk without seeming derivative. Play this at maximum volume in a car, or in a kitchen while cooking something that deserves occasion.