Pixie Lott – Break Up Song

Tom: Our regular reader CB sends this one in, and since we had a run of “morose” songs last week, it seemed like a good fit.

Tom: Well, “let’s have sex one last time” isn’t a standard song template, that’s for sure.

Tim: No, but it’s not a bad one. Better than “let’s not have sex one last time”.

Tom: I reckon this is a good example of making a sad song still enjoyable to listen to.

Tim: I reckon that’s exactly what this is.

Tom: There’s enough light to balance the darkness: the gospel organ chords and soulful voice work really well. Even with the rather emotional video.

Tim: A fun video, though. But yes, a bit emotional.

Pixie Lott – Lay Me Down

“Surprisingly flatulent-sounding brass section”

Tom: This one’s sent in by a reader, who says “didn’t like it at first, but it’s all good between us now”, which I think implies a somewhat closer relationship to Pixie Lott than one would otherwise suspect.

Tim: Perhaps a briefly disappointed father?

Tom: I wasn’t sold on this either until that surprisingly flatulent-sounding brass section hit, along with the whistling and woah-ohs that came along in the middle eight. It’s like they steadily built everything up, in order to make the final chorus properly exciting.

Tim: Hmm – similarly with you, I wasn’t hooked at first, but dissimilarly, I got it at the first chorus, and after that thought it was great, both with and without the flatulence. As for the build up? Well, that’s the point really isn’t it, and it certainly does build up because ‘properly exciting’ is a very good way to describe that last chorus.

Tom: Pity it took so long to get there, though.

Tim: Seems we have have different ideas about where ‘there’ is.

Pixie Lott – Kiss The Stars

Imagine I’m, like, a sex toy, yeah?

Tom: This song starts with “baby, baby”. Sometimes that can be a brilliant sign (The Supremes, Britney Spears)… but mostly it’s a sign that the lyricist has run out of ideas. Where does this one fall?

Tom: Yeah, the lyricist ran out of ideas. It’s tired technology metaphor time!

Tim: OKAY GUYS, I’ve got this like totally great idea. If we can say, like, ‘push the button’, like the Chemical Brothers or the Sugababes, then that’ll totally be, like, yeah, he’s turning me on, yeah? So then, let’s do that – WAIT, WAIT, I’m not done – let’s do that, but now imagine I’m, like, a sex toy, yeah? So we can have it like ‘go for hours’ if you ‘hit the switch’ and ‘we can have it all baby you and me’ and ‘kiss the stars tonight’ with total pleasuring.

Tom: Mind you, the composer and producer have done a solid job with what they’ve been given – it’s a solid middle-of-the-night club track. There’s the increasingly-popular mock-dubstep middle eight – that wub wub wub is becoming almost mandatory now.

Tim: I mean, yeah, it, like, needs to be recharged every now and again, so that doesn’t seem so great, but it is, cause we can do like ‘put the plug in the socket’ and it’s like a total double entondray, yeah, cause, like, recharging, and then the other type of plug, yeah? So yeah, am I like totally right?

Tom: …it’s like I’m there in that record company meeting.
 
Anyway, the video appears to have been inspired by every 90s German hi-NRG Eurodance track ever – not least her hairstyle. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, objectively – it’s a good video – but the connotations of dodgy dance music are probably something they could do without. I’d love to see some of the rushes from this before all the visual effects were added; just shots of her reacting to nothing against a green screen.

Tim: Well, yeah, that’s like totally great, but what I really want, like, is for her to do the next round of Ann Summers adverts. COME ON PEOPLE HOW CAN WE MAKE THIS HAPPEN.