You Are Not Alone, song by Peter Unger
Rev Pete Unger - “You Are Not Alone” Song Review
Reverend Pete Unger is a religious leader in his community of Allentown, PA. He looks like the epitome of a 70’s pastor from Allentown, PA. Anyways, Ol’ Pete is releasing Christianity themed acoustic music. It’s fine, it’s nice, it’s a little bland, but it’s fine it’s fine it’s fine. Perhaps this song, “You Are Not Alone” is not my cup of tea (I just finished listening to that debut Dangers record, so Pete isn’t my kinda guy), but for what Pete Unger aims to do, he succeeds. It’s a pleasant, amiable, milquetoast little tune that passes from one ear to the next without much ado.
Assuming you’ve just pressed play, you’re probably pausing right away to look up and see when Gordon Lightfoot changed his name and moved to Pennsylvania. Pete Unger apes the sound of Lightfoot,John Denver, and other such soft acoustic folk a little too well. It’s not a bad sound to imitate; the problem lies not in what he’s imitating, but rather, the fact that he’s imitating anyone at all. It’s a fine performance, but it doesn’t feel like his voice, his song idea. There’s not enough unique characteristics in this song to be particularly memorable.
The acoustic guitar (along with what I believe to be a slide guitar?) help provide a really lush, chill instrumental for the Reverend to sing his little ballad. I feel like the guitars could’ve used a little less compression and a little more warmth, but I realize this is a nitpicky point to make. It’s well performed and while it might be like any other song in the genre, it’s nice to listen to in the moment. Pete’s vocals are mostly acceptable, but the recording quality and mixing job done on his vocals are terrible. There’s this off-putting distortion on his voice throughout the song, a clear marker of bad mixing and recording. If you focus purely on performance, he does an alright, if somewhat toothless, impression of Gordon Lightfoot.
Okay, so while the lyrics are cheesy and saccharine, I can at least respect where he’s coming from here. He is a reverend, after all, and heavily influenced by folk music. “You Are Not Alone” tells the story of a few different people: a schoolboy, a single mom, and an old man. All of these people are, in their own ways, feeling very lonely and like no one cares. Pete assures each person with a chorus telling them they aren’t alone, ostensibly because Jesus “Friendly” Christ is always there for them. I’m not sure why I keep reviewing Christian artists, but here we are. The song is predictable, but in fairness, it’s fairly well-written. It adheres to the hallmarks of themes in the genre well enough to create a nice little tune with a heartfelt message. The music video is a slideshow of stock photos of sad people with lyrics to the song. I suppose it does the job, and it’s probable that the Reverend isn’t really in it for his image, so it doesn’t really matter how run-of-the-mill the video is.
It’s a nice song, and he seems like a nice guy. If you really love Gordon Lightfoot, you’ll do yourself well to check this guy out.