Tim: There was a TV show in Norway a few years back called The Stream, standard music talent show format with the USP the contestants who went through to the next round were decided by…
Tom: The length of time they could spend holding their breath under the surface of a stream?
Tim: Nope.
Tom: The length of their stream of urine?
Tim: Eww, NO, and no more guesses. It’s the number of streams they got of the song they’d covered the previous week.
Tom: Right. Well, sure, that’s an option, I guess.
Tim: Here, three and a bit years on, is the winner’s first proper song.
Tim: Godawful artwork, but I’m thinking the track itself is pretty good, no? The production’s great, the melody’s nice, and the emotion’s coming through, particularly in the verses. If I was allowed to make one change it’d be to make the post-chorus a bit shorter – it might just be personal taste, but it does seem drag to on a bit after a while.
Tom: It dragged immediately for me: it’s by far the weakest part of the track, as far as I’m concerned. So I’m not sure “shorter” is the right idea.
Tim: In that case, possibly scrapping it entirely from the end of the first chorus, turning it into a middle eight before coming back for that final bit. That’d be nice. But, still, it’s fine as it is.
Tom: “Fine” about sums it up. There’s nothing wrong with this, as far as I’m concerned: it’s just okay.
Tim: Oh, and if you’re wondering how successful the show was: it ran August to December 2016, there hasn’t been a second series, and NBC picked up the American rights for it midway but have yet to do anything from it. Oh, well.