Saturday Reject: Margaret – Cool Me Down

“I find myself almost angry.”

Tim: Most of the time when we look at rejects, I’ll think either “yep, sensible” or “okay, this could have worked but I guess we’ll see what happens”. Here, though, I find myself almost angry with the 35.89% of the Polish people who wanted to send a dreary ballad sung by guy standing wailing on a stage, over this. Annoyingly, the proper performance isn’t available online, but here’s the lyric video (with a muted-for-copyright-reasons performance here if you want to try and sync them up – it’s slightly worth it).

Tom: And that’s the first use of “on fleek” to make it into a song we’ve reviewed. Thinking about it, I’m surprised it wasn’t sooner.

Tim: Admittedly, this isn’t the sort of music that I’d choose to listen to – I wasn’t remotely sold on it until the chorus came along – but what we undeniably have here is a modern 2016 sounding song.

Tom: That’s true: it’s Rihanna-style, isn’t it? Perhaps with a bit more pop in it. Admittedly though actually including the lyrics “run this town” in there is getting a bit too close.

Tim: Stylistically at the very least, this is what gets you put on the Radio 1 A-list, and invited on the X Factor results show to perform. And the best thing that it doesn’t say “got the style, we’re done” but it’s a great example of the genre. I can see this performing well, I can see it getting a top 10 placement, rather than ducking out mind-table in the semis. Were it to get a release via a major label with enough pushing, this could hit the charts – it really is a great track.

Tom: Yep. Again: not quite my style, but this could have done very well indeed.

Tim: In short: POLAND YOU’RE MORONS except for the 24.72% of you who did vote for it.