Kaleidoscope Dream is the second studio album by American R&B singer-songwriter Miguel. It was released on September 25, 2012, by Black Ice Records, ByStorm Entertainment, and RCA Records. After the commercial breakthrough of his debut album All I Want Is You (2010), Miguel pursued a greater creative role on Kaleidoscope Dream as its principal writer and producer. He recorded most of the album at Platinum Sound Studios in New York City and MJP Studios in Los Angeles, working alongside producer-musicians Oak Felder, Jerry Duplessis, and Salaam Remi, among others.
With the album, Miguel wanted to explore the roots of R&B beyond the genre's contemporary trends and began playing guitar as a compositional source for his songs. With his studio personnel, he incorporated dense bass lines, buzzing synthesizers, and hazy, reverbed sounds into a musical style that draws on pop, funk, rock, soul, electronic, and psychedelic genres. Miguel titled Kaleidoscope Dream as both a metaphor for life and the creative freedom possible in dreams, while wanting to reflect his lifestyle and personality in the songs, which deal mostly with sex, romance, and existential ideas.
In marketing Kaleidoscope Dream, Miguel previewed the songs virally through a series of free EPs. The album was promoted further with three singles, including his biggest hit yet "Adorn", and his touring in North America and Europe from 2012 to 2013. Kaleidoscope Dream debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 71,000 copies, eventually selling 535,000 copies total by 2015. One of 2012's most critically successful releases, it was viewed by reviewers as an innovative and appealing R&B album, receiving praise for Miguel's singing and songwriting.
Background Miguel released his debut album All I Want Is You in November 2010 after it had been shelved by Jive Records for two years, It sold poorly at first and was underpromoted by Jive, amid the label's dissolution. As its singles received radio airplay and Miguel toured in its promotion, the album became a sleeper hit and helped him grow an audience and commercial exposure, along with his fervent concert performances. After Jive was shut down and absorbed by RCA Records, Miguel met a new marketing team to help present him as more than a typical urban contemporary artist, having felt pressure into being marketed as one by Jive. He said that the experience of balancing creativity and business sense on his first album made him more confident in his approach to Kaleidoscope Dream.
Miguel sought to rebrand himself artistically with the second album. Inspired by his more alternative musical influences, he wanted to change the sound and expectations of R&B songs on urban radio. The album's title, according to Miguel, is "a metaphor for our life; everyone has their own Kaleidoscope Dream, it is the life that they project and it is the life that they are solidifying with their conscious decision and their subconscious feelings." Miguel also said that the album represents how fantasies are conveyed through dreams, which he felt embody "the purest form of fantasy we unleash through our subconscious ... the truest freedom we can experience. Totally unrepressed and totally creative."
Writing and recording
Miguel worked on Kaleidoscope Dream for approximately three months. He sought to play a larger creative role than he had on All I Want Is You, with more involvement in the production and songwriting, writing or co-writing every song on the album. The album's writing also marked the beginning of Miguel's use of guitar as an instrument through which to compose songs.
Kaleidoscope Dream was recorded at Platinum Sound Studios in New York City and MJP Studios in Los Angeles; the songs "Arch & Point" and "Gravity" were recorded at Gustavo's Golden Gloves Gymnasium in Los Angeles. Miguel spent almost two years in New York City, which he felt let him explore "the edgy side" of his life and consequently made his sonic approach grittier, saying in an interview for The Village Voice: "I'm not the 'go to the club and pop bottles' kind of guy. That's not my lifestyle. I really like to party, but it's ... just darker. I'm looking for the speakeasy on the Lower East Side that has a secret door and a password." Miguel recorded "Adorn" in 2011 in the bedroom of his Los Angeles apartment, which he used as a makeshift studio at the time. Parts of the album were edited by Miguel and his engineers using Pro Tools.
Miguel wanted the album to be "a pure and honest projection of my lifestyle and my kaleidoscope dream", and used the music's pace and sound to represent his lifestyle and the lyrics to represent his personality. To sustain his creative approach, Miguel avoided media outlets that he usually visited for music, including radio and Internet blogs. He drew on musical influences from early in his life, including classic rock, country rock and funk. An orchestra was enlisted and string arrangements incorporated in the music, along with a drum loop, to the album's title track, which he felt aurally defined the moods of his personality. Miguel also worked with previous collaborators Salaam Remi and Happy Perez, among other producers. Singer-songwriter Alicia Keys co-wrote and sang background vocals on the song "Where's the Fun in Forever"; singer-songwriter Elle Varner co-wrote "Use Me"; and Brook D'Leau of J*Davey played keyboards on "Candles in the Sun".
Apart from sexual themes, Miguel wrote about conversational and existential topics. When writing "Pussy Is Mine", he drew on his sexual behavior as a single man and "moments of power and vulnerability" with a sexually promiscuous woman. Miguel originally co-wrote "Where's the Fun in Forever" with Alicia Keys in Jamaica, a collaboration for her project. Miguel deemed the notion of the song "such a personal thought and perspective", and felt very attached to it when the song was completed. Keys ultimately did not use the collaboration for her project, which Miguel was happy about, explaining to SoulCulture that "[Keys] was gracious enough to let us keep it and it's one of my favourite songs on the album". He wrote the album's title track in reaction to Jive's request for more conventional urban songs, with unusual lyrics that lacked a hook, chorus, or form.
Music and lyrics
According to The Independents Holly Rubenstein, Kaleidoscope Dream is "widely considered a leading example" of alternative R&B; Miguel himself described it as "avant soul". In the opinion of NPR's Frannie Kelley, the record combined R&B, pop, funk, rock and soul genres. Its music features sparse production, eccentric details, thick basslines, buzzing synthesizers, and hazy, reverbed sounds. AllMusic's Andy Kellman found the album "funkier and weirder" than All I Want Is You and observed an "illusory atmosphere ... intensified by some unexpected touches". Maura Johnston said much of it "sounds, as the title might suggest, fractal."
As an R&B album, The A.V. Clubs Evan Rytlewski said, Kaleidoscope Dream deviated from genre conventions by minimizing the influence of hip hop; Jim DeRogatis believed it notably draws "on elements of great psychedelic rock and pop to color [the album's] soul and R&B". Austin Trunick of Under the Radar compared the album's "often-hypersexual subject matter" and "unusual production" to Prince, while Rytlewski said Miguel evokes the musician's "pop instincts" and "loud, funk rock guitars". Alex Macpherson of The Guardian perceived a "headier aesthetic" than on All I Want Is You, with "faded psychedelia" and "intimate experiments in Purple Rain-esque rock". Writing about the record for WNYC, Gretta Cohn claimed Miguel was "redefining what contemporary R&B can be". Mark Edward Nero of About.com considered the album "eclectic, artsy R&B-pop". Miguel said he "definitely think[s] it's an R&B record, though other people may not ... [Listeners] are so conditioned to expect certain things out of current R&B, and it's about following a formula. But R&B was once live music, it was psychedelic, it was rock, it was funk, and all these genres stem from soul music ... There would be no hip-hop or rock without R&B. It was important for me to be true to what R&B is, and that is soulful."
The album's lyrics generally deal with themes of adult love, meaningful sex, and romance. Andrew Ryce from Pitchfork interprets its "overarching theme" to be "the highly sexualized seen through the lens of the eager and innocent." Miguel's lyrics express modesty, yearning, vulnerability, and cheeky humor, with Kelley likening his songwriting to Tony! Toni! Toné! while also observing "Little Richard-level insinuations" and "absurd provocations in the style of Akinyele". DeRogatis views that Miguel avoids braggadocio and is "man enough to admit his own insecurities and question whether he's worthy of love—or lustful indulgence." The album explores the anxiety and momentary nature of sex and clubbing. Consequences Jeremy D. Larson views that Miguel employs a "fangs-out approach to R&B" similar to Frank Ocean and The Weeknd, writing that "nothing shrouds Miguel and his directives, and worries, and prayers, and cat calls – it's all there, full of light and love, refracting through a kaleidoscope of rocks glasses, rainy windshields, and blood-shot eyes." NPR's Frannie Kelley said the album is "made up of love songs, but they are more specifically songs arguing for love, acting casual, wishing and hoping and then imagining what it would be like to consummate ... It's soul-baring, but mirrored and fairly guarded."
"Adorn" has both digital and analog sensibilities, with lyrics featuring brazen declarations of affection, and promises of adoration to a female subject. "Don't Look Back" features amplified bass, bombastic drums, and metallic synths. Rob Markman of MTV News writes that the song "represents the morning after when the reality of the previous night's efforts creep in." Its closing interlude has Miguel crooning lyrics from The Zombies' 1969 song "Time of the Season" over sentimental synths and musky, psychedelic music. "Use Me" features hollow, electronic sounds, heavily multitracked vocals, metronomic rhythms, and an industrialized mix of guitar and percussion. Its lyrics blur expressions of sexual nerves with gentle dominance, as the narrator instructs his lover how she can toy with him. An atmospheric pop rock song, "Do You..." portrays a narcotic tryst and mixes amiable come-ons with drug imagery. The psychedelic title track incorporates synthesizer arpeggios, minor chords, oscillating blips, fuzzy guitar, and a bassline interpolation of Labi Siffre's 1975 song "I Got The". The sample's groove is played at a different tempo than other instruments on the song. The song's lyrics feature synesthetic imagery ("I taste you, infinite colors"), and a boast by the narrator about kissing his subject's third eye.