The Veronicas – On Your Side

“And now someone’s given them some tropical synth pads.”

Tom: You mentioned this last week, but I thought we should cover this — because it’s a band we’ve talked about before, and one that’s been going for twelve years.

Tom: And now someone’s given them some tropical synth pads.

Here’s what I’ve noticed about songs like this, where an otherwise-mainstream artist has suddenly hooked into this style a bit too late: they never write a decent chorus with it.

Tim: Hmm…maybe.

Tom: It’s almost like they write the synth melody, figure that it’ll do, and then someone insists they put some vocals in the chorus too: so they sort of mumble something in the background. A pop track doesn’t have to be singalong, of course, but it rarely hurts. In this case, all you’ve got is a few notes of a hook. It’s not a bad hook, as these things go, but it’s not all that catchy.

Tim: I don’t know; you’re certainly right that there’s no shortage of tracks where it seems the composer’s written a dance song and only afterwards remembered that pop tracks are meant to have vocal choruses. Here, though, I think it’s slotted in okay. It’d work just as well if the vocal cut off after “Even if you believe it”, but I think it works as is. Catchiness, I’ll agree with you – the only part that stays in my head “Life isn’t pretty…”, and that’s only really because it comes straight from Fast Car.

Tom: Even at under three minutes, this feels like it outstays its welcome a bit.

Tim: And there I definitely disagree. Whatever you may think of the vocal, the instrumental part of the chorus is a lovely melody. I think I recognise that from somewhere as well, but I don’t mind. It’s great.