Aleksander With – Better

“Dark and gloomy on first listen.”

Tim: Yesterday we were all happy and lovely, and today, I’d like to take away all that happiness and put it through a shredder while you listen to this.

Tim: Aleksander’s off Norwegian Idol from bloody ages ago, and after five years off he’s throwing his hat back in the ring, and I don’t think he’s chosen a bad song to decorate it with.

Tom: I’m not sure that’s actually a working metaphor, but okay.

Tim: Sure, it’s dark and gloomy on first listen, and you have to listen fairly hard to realise what it’s about, because I first misheard it as “we could be doing much better” which let’s face it is only a couple of steps away from Love The Way You Lie, but ANYWAY IN POSITIVITY NEWS that’s not remotely what the song’s about.

Tom: I was going to say! “It’s darkest before the dawn”, which is the lyric that stuck out for me, seems rather optimistic.

Tim: It is in fact a track to say just hold on, keep going, push forward, stick with it, eventually you’ll be fine. And it works, sort of – I get why the music is so downbeat, in a sense of wanting to start down low and then push up for the chorus, but I still kind of wish it didn’t.