RYAN BEATTY - Sweet Fortune

Ryan Beatty is certainly no newcomer, having already released three albums, including the excellent "Calico" from 2023, and above all boasting an array of illustrious collaborations, starting with the four songs he wrote for Beyoncé on "Cowboy Carter", not to mention duets with Miley Cyrus and guest spots alongside Tyler, The Creator, Benny Blanco and Kevin Abstract. In short, the thirty-year-old Californian singer-songwriter is a hot name on today's West Coast songwriting scene, one of those talents little known in Europe but who has racked up plenty of applause across the States.
For this eagerly awaited fourth album, titled "Sweet Fortune", Beatty abandons his past chamber-folk sound in favor of an approach that occasionally leans toward orchestral—though not overly so—soft-rock, deceptively simple yet layered in every arrangement, as confirmed by the sheer number of musicians enlisted: no fewer than eight, among whom it's worth singling out the jack-of-all-trades Ethan Gruska, who plays everything from piano, percussion, organ, synthesizer, mellotron, Wurlitzer, clavinet, bass, mandolin, dulcimer, tiple, banjo, harmonica and classical, acoustic and electric guitars. And especially Clairo, who helps her friend Ryan with the writing, besides lending backing vocals throughout.

The ten songs on "Sweet Fortune" are “simply” ballads that soothe the soul, written with the grace of someone who has finally figured out the artistic (and personal) path to follow, having knocked down every scarecrow that once stood in his way.
The opener "Phantom" makes this clear right away, with a piano melody that sounds like it was pulled from an old Elton John drawer, while Richard Sanderson's “Reality” keeps knocking at the door throughout, trying to remind us of something unforgettable. The following "White Lighting", meanwhile, crosses the relaxed moods of latter-day John Mayer with the charm of Colin Blunstone at his best.
It's a wonderfully sweet start, then, for an album that also delivers more country-folk moments, as on "Virtuoso", another potential chart single given the recent revival of America's dustiest, most heartfelt genre.

Ryan Beatty then continues his gentle ride across California's sun-drenched prairies with "Secret Language", another romantic, soft-textured excursion, ahead of the title track, the album's beating heart, a lullaby co-written and sung with Clairo. The two whisper an innocent love, often fittingly wild, celebrating desires to be voiced and secrets to be jealously guarded.

Believe in me
My soil for your seed
Yes sir, no siege
I’m surrendered to your keep
I’ll speak, i’ll howl
Arise like wildflower
I’ll bleed, i’ll bow
The show is over now

In this run of enveloping, almost impossibly sweet songs, Beatty emerges from obscurity on tiptoe, his voice dancing over barely-touched piano keys ("Delancey"), laced with the sharp words of a "wounded deer", accompanied here and there by acoustic guitars strumming wide open to sustain the urge to move past relationship failures, perhaps navigating the darkness of one revelatory night ("Annie, Anything").
Ryan sings like a Casper who's reached the sky and is about to fly away, higher and higher, toward that long-yearned-for paradise once dreamed of in the chill of an empty room. It's the gentle wish of a now-mature songwriter who no longer seeks easy sentimentality to impress, and if anything turns his "floating monotony" into his own lifeline—the very stylistic signature with which he stitches together ten songs suspended in some undefined time, where kindness is still a most powerful weapon.

"Sweet Fortune" gathers songs worth playing over and over, songs that make you forget the dark times, the cursed heatwaves and the countless disposable pop trifles churned out daily, so often written in a few days just to pad out a catalogue and join in on the "game".
"Bloom together or wither alone", sings Ryan Beatty at last on "Fleur De Lis", the final marvel of a thoroughly successful record, as if issuing an old-fashioned warning with the naivety of someone simply trying to live out the best years of life without running in circles, gathering as many petals as possible along the way.        

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01/09/2026