The Naked and Famous – Blinding Lights

“Risky, but sure, it’s lockdown, why not.”

Tim: Covering a six month old hit by one of the world’s biggest acts? Risky, but sure, it’s lockdown, why not.

Tom: Well, that started out disappointing, didn’t it? The thing that draws you into Blinding Lights is that driving boots-and-cats percussion matched with a really dark vocal. This is… not an improvement.

Tim: Probably worth mentioning that as far as The Weeknd goes, I am basically entirely neutral – his music’s fine, he has a ridiculous name, that’s kind of it, so I’m open to this, with no advance feelings at all.

Tom: Whereas for me, I really like Blinding Lights, and I’ve been really impressed with the live performances he’s been doing: he’s someone who knows the medium well enough to play around with it.

Tim: And so, it’s…perfectly fine. To start with, anyway, as for the first 49 seconds I was wondering ‘why have they done this?’, because it doesn’t do anything new, doesn’t bring anything of them to it. But then it changed! The second and fourth lines of the chorus, we’ve their echo-y chanting sound, and then the guitar post-chorus is definitely new and notable, and now it’s worthwhile.

Tom: You’re right, that electric-guitar is a really interesting way to play with the synth line. And this does redeem itself by the final chorus. The additional two-beat hesitation in there is clever. It’s just that there seems to be so much missing up until then.

The Postal Service’s cover of Against All Odds did this right: it’s so different in genre, at least to start, that it doesn’t invite immediate comparisons. By the time it actually gets going, you’re not expecting to hear the original.

Tim: Better or worse is obviously up to your genre preference – but it terms of a cover, it’s good.