Saturday Flashback: Kelly Rowland feat. Wiz Khalifa – Gone

“Who needs the artistic bit?”

Tom: I reckon, Tim, that your thoughts on this will be very much coloured by whether you recognise the track it’s sampling.

Tim: Ooh, is it Basshunter’s Now You’re Gone?

Tim: Oh, it isn’t. But yes, yes I do.

Tom: Because I do. And it’s a folk music classic. Or a slightly more modern pop classic. Or… well, yes, Counting Crows covered it too.

Here’s my problem with this: it never resolves the chorus. Yes, fine, occasionally you’ve got the “got ’til it’s gone” line in there, but the actual resolution is the next line, “they paved paradise” and so on. That’s important. And it’s just not here.

Tim: That’s a very, very good point you’re making, but there’s the question you’re bypassing here which is: why include the sample?Just reusing it because they can? Because the lyrics fit? Or to give it a recognisable hook to hand an otherwise fairly dull track on? Because if it’s the latter: you’ve got the recognisable bit. Who needs the artistic bit?

Tom: Well, apparently no-one. And sure, you could say they’re doing something original and new. I don’t know, you could use a word like ‘recontextualising’ or something. Fine. Except Janet Jackson did the same thing twenty years ago, and that didn’t resolve either.

Tim: Bastards, all of them.

Tom: Harsh.

Tim: Fair.