Tag: Julian Perretta

Julian Perretta – Karma

“I’m not hugely in the mood for a coconut.”

Tim: Tom, I was in two minds today. On one side, it would be nice to keep Tropical Fridays going until the end of September, as a decent cut off point, and there are still numerous tracks being released. On the other, I think we gave it a nice farewell last week, and it’s utterly pissing it down outside as I write this so I’m not hugely in the mood for a coconut.

Tom: Euphemism.

Tim: Fair. But what to do?

Tim: Essentially, let the music choose, or rather the lyrics.

Tom: It’s difficult not to start adding the word “chameleon” in there, you know.

Tim: Also fair, but actually not that. Really, once I heard the line “even though you’re such a bitch I need you now”, I was hooked, and then realising the song was in fact being sung to a vaguely religious concept to request that it punishes his ex-girlfriend just dragged me in.

Tom: What the hell’s happened with those vocals, though? There’s some really weird processing on them. That’s not autotune: it’s some weird vocal effect.

Tim: Hmm, perhaps – but then vocal distortions of all sorts have become very much in vogue recently. Admittedly they’re normally consigned to a few syllables in the background, but I guess it’s only a matter of time before it’s everywhere.

The later revelations that he’d already had a conversation with anger and isn’t on speaking terms with jealousy got me figuring the song was too peculiar to let pass by. Not sure we’ve ever had something like this before; to be honest, I’m not sure I should be taking it as seriously as I am doing, because let’s face it it’s just a bit of nonsense standing in front of a fairly decent tropical beat. Inspired nonsense, though.

Tom: You say that, but I think I can tell you exactly what’s inspired it. It’s the canonical pineapple track: Kygo’s Stole the Show. That “karma, karma” is just “darling, darling”. The structure’s the same. The synth pads are the same. “Anger told me that I couldn’t get no sleep” is the same two-tone end-of-verse melody as “our debut was a masterpiece”.

Tim: Hmmmmmmmm…yes, you could be right, and maybe that’s a reason I like it.

Tom: It’s basically the same track. Not close enough to be sued over, perhaps not close enough to be deliberate, but certainly similar.

Tim: Well, I wouldn’t say “basically the same” – I didn’t hear it until you pointed it out – but I’ll give you similar.

Julian Perretta – Generation X

“Greek Late-90s Eurovision Entry”.

Tim: You may remember that around this time last year I went to France —

Tom: “WTF” for short.

Tim: — and came back with three tracks for us to listen to. Believe it or not, the same thing has happened this year, and we’ll discuss them ordered by the amount Frenchness involved in each one. This is not remotely French (though there are lots of countries involved: he was born in London to Italian and Irish parents but now lives in Florida), but France and Belgium (or FAB) are for some reason the only two countries he’s had much success in. I blame Radio 1. (Oh, and I should warn you this is a terrible lyric video, so you’re best off not watching it.)

Tim: When the chorus kicked in, an entire phrase popped into my head: “Greek Late-90s Eurovision Entry”. It’s even three minutes long. And there’s no way that someone would seriously write chorus lyrics that include “kids are getting down” after 2000 or so, right?

Tom: You’d think not, but apparently they do.

Tim: And I heard it just once on the radio, and that ‘X, X, X X, X oh-ey-oh’ has been going round in my head several times a day ever since. I call it catchy; others may prefer ‘annoying’, but they’re wrong, because it’s good. If I was being pedantic I’d dock him points for not realising that he’s about ten years too young to belong to said generation, but since X has a better sound here than Y would, I’ll let it pass.

Tom: This works well with my written-in-the-late-90s theory.

Tim: Hmm. Maybe it’s a whole perspective thing, that no-one’s really meant to get because it’s ART. That would also explain the pointlessness of the lyrics, which are about as meaningless as they come, unless you can work out what’s wrong with everybody looking up. This is suddenly coming across as very negative, so I’ll stop before I go any further and say: this song’s great, lyrics excepted.

Tom: Yep, I can’t deny that. It wouldn’t have won Eurovision, but it’d have probably got 12 points from someone.

Tim: Absolutely: the chorus has a fantastic start to it and doesn’t let up, the middle eight has a proper building sense, as they should, and the ending is, well actually it’s a bit dull but let’s pretend I didn’t write that. I LIKE THIS SONG A LOT.