Europop – Page 108

Icona Pop – We Got The World

In a similar vein, but largely absent of what we didn’t like.

Tim: Cast your mind back six months, and we weren’t all that keen on I Love It, their last release. For a few reasons.

Tom: And just like last time, I’ve got to add a quick video warning here, for what the BBFC would describe as “occasional, brief nudity”.

Tim: This is in a similar vein to the first, but fortunately is absent of much of what we didn’t like.

Tom: Yep. This is actually a song, and an incredibly positive and unbeat to that as well.

Tim: There’s a much better melody, with less of the plain shouting. Yes, it’s still present, because that’s their style, but it’s in just the right quantity to get the idea across but not outstay their welcome. Most importantly of all, though, it’s got exactly the same enthusiasm for absolutely everything that was there before, and I think it’s brilliant.

Tom: Right. And for once that’s reflected in the video. I want to go back to Vegas. Preferably with them.

Danny Saucedo – Delirious

That’s a lighters-in-the-air moment and no mistake.

Tim: We didn’t feature his last one, All In My Head, barely a couple of months old, because I didn’t like it much and didn’t have much to say about it, and those are basically my two criteria. This one, on the other hand, fits into both of those nicely.

Tim: This is odd – it’s a strange deviation from the musical journey he seems to have been on, from his pop beginnings in E.M.D. through to drum and bass, via dance tracks, a half and half tune and then full-on D&B like All In My Head.

Tom: If he can keep shifting genres this well, though, that can only be a good thing: after all, Robbie Williams managed to put out an entire album of swing covers, and that seemed to do well. There are some artists where you know exactly what you want the new single will sound like – and some where it’s a good thing when they mix it up.

Tim: That’s true, and I prefer this so I don’t have a problem with it.

Tom: Yep, it helps that this is a really good track.

Tim: I do have a problem with the first line of the chorus, which gets me suddenly wanting to sing the chorus of Jar of Hearts, and I slightly wish it wouldn’t take quite so long to get get going, but once the first chorus hits it’s all plain sailing. I’m happy with it.

Tom: What a final chorus, too: that’s a lighters-in-the-air moment and no mistake.

Tim: It really is…although, and I know I’m dragging this out a bit from yesterday, this could easily be a JLS track and if it was I probably wouldn’t like it.

Tom: Are you having a crisis of confidence or something, Tim? What with this and your recent ‘not sure about schlager’ thing, I’m wondering if you’re going through some kind of mid-blog crisis.

Tim: Oh, I don’t know.

Robin Bengtsson – Cross The Universe

“I promise you it gets better, so just work through it. “

Tim: This starts out like a very dull Ed Sheeran-style track. I promise you it gets better, so just work through it.

Tim: And actually, I’m probably being a tad unfair on that opening bit, but if we’re honest it doesn’t bode well.

Tom: I just started singing “Wonderwall” over the top, and that got me through it.

Tim: Not a bad song to sound like, though. And never mind what it bodes, because that chorus is brilliant. It’s upbeat, it’s quite catchy, it’s the sort that makes you stop typing so you can play the drums on your desk, really.

Tom: As long as you’re not playing them on your keyboard.

Tim: I don’t know – probably wouldn’t make much less sense that most of what we write. drtdkhjefw4hilg rjkn∂©®ß`tlk ngrsjknrj nkkjngrs`njgr`lknrgjnrs l’r3jnbfljknfxthxfbj negw`njklzrgd ndfb. You see?

Anyway, and then there’s the background vocals in the closing section, which are lovely because they’re quite understated but they make so much difference. Lovely.

Tom: Surprisingly good middle-eight as well: it feels like the instrumentation’s been nicked from something else during it, but I can’t think what – and it does work, anyway.

Tim: This track actually made me realise something – I am vastly inconsistent with what I say I want in a track. Just now, I said I don’t actually mind that quiet opening, but if it was in a different track or by a different artist (to pick one totally at random, Ed Sheeran) I may well be getting incredibly angry with.

Tom: Ultimately, there is no objective way to analyse music – and both our opinions will be shaped by so many transient factors that… hm. Well, I was going to say ‘we’re wasting our time here’, but I think we both knew that anyway.

Tim: I don’t quite know why – it seems that if I like a song I’ll appreciate all elements of it, but if I don’t like it I’ll use every part of it to criticise it. Basically, I have no idea what I want in a song – I just want a song that I like.

Tom: And on that, I can agree.

Carina Dahl – NLTO (Not Like The Others)

A largely inoffensive piece of pop

Tim: No idea what the point of the acronym is, since the title also includes the expansion of it, but never mind. Prepare for an utterly gratuitous profanity in the pre-chorus.

Tim: And that is a bit weird, actually, because the rest of NLTO (Not Like The Others) is so family-friendly, entirely standard pop that you’d expect from any current female act. Slightly reminiscent of the ‘shhh’ in the first Little Mix single – not there to do anything except be a bit “ooh, how rude!”

Tom: Considering that the association I had in my head was Sesame Street’s “One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others”, that was a bit surprising.

Tim: That aside, though, NLTO (Not Like The Others) is a largely inoffensive piece of pop, and I think one of very few singles that manages to sit perfectly on the fence between banger and ballad.

Tom: Yep. It’s difficult to sit on that fence: cracking piano intro, decent melody, and just the right amount of – to use a vague word – ‘oomph’.

Tim: Indeed, but this manages it – the vocals could all be underpinned by a gentle piano piece if so intended, but without much effort the energy in the backing could be cranked up to floorfiller status easily enough. Not many songs can do that, so top marks to NLTO (Not Like The Others).

Tom: I. (Indeed.)

Alesso feat. Michael Koma – Years

Piano dance has been huge this year, but it’s rarely been done this well.

Tim: I woke up to this last Thursday, and I thought it was great so I scribbled it down to listen to later. Then I remembered that I did the same thing with the latest JLS song, and realised I might be letting myself in for a fall. And then I listened to it and found there was nothing to worry about whatsoever. (But feel free to skip the first 30 seconds, and everything after 3:30.)

Tim: Piano dance has been huge this year – occasionally overly so – but it’s rarely been done this well. So often it’s seemed like producers thought, “Hey, that’s a decent synth line, let’s put a piano on it because everyone else is doing that,” but here it seems different – more like the piano has set the way and then everything else has been built around it. It’s a lovely melody that we hear on its own to start with, and then the pounding stuff happens, but then when the vocal comes in you realise “oh, so that’s what they were doing”, and I like that a lot.

Tom: It’s not entirely led by the piano either, which helps.

Tim: True – they’re not afraid to drop that a bit and let the synths carry the weight. But since I think I’m in danger of romanticising this a bit too much and becoming overly eloquent, I’ll move to say that the heavy pounding stuff on it is RIGHT GOOD and BANGING and AMAZING.

Tom: Can’t disagree with that.

Tim: The nerdy part of me also appreciates that it’s set at 128bpm, because it means if part of it ever does get boring we can relax in the knowledge that at every thirty second mark precisely something different will come along.*

*On a tangent, if you ever want to spoil your enjoyment of a fantastic dance track, I recommend counting the beats in Rank 1’s Airwave. Like clockwork, every 32 beats it shifts slightly, or something interesting happens, and every 64 it switches direction. The most literally formulaic track ever.)

Tom: Ha! You’re right – that’s exactly on the 30 second mark, each time. It’s as if they were writing music for schools TV.

Titanix – Precis Som Jag Är

As if someone put thirty years of schlager in a blender.

Tim: This is the lead single from this Swedish Grammis-nominated dansband act’s new(ish) album, and, well, it’s not exactly dansband as we’d expect.

Tom: Dubstep dansband?

Tim: Not quite…

Tim: It is, in fact, as mind-numbingly schlager as it comes.

Tom: Not dubstep dansband. Although that is something I’d listen to. And my word: this is as if someone put thirty years of schlager in a blender and made a generic smoothie. A wonderful, mixed-metaphor smoothie.

Tim: Three minutes long, a ridiculous key change, as traditional as they come, really. So is it too much? I’m not sure, really – it’s nice to listen to, but it’s just so formulaic that it seems almost dull, really.

Tom: I broke out into a grin when it started. Half way through, I noticed the glockenspiel playing in the background and grinned again. I started dancing in my chair at the key change. I have no problems with this song at all.

Tim: Or maybe my music tastes have changed – what do you think?

Tom: Well, they do change: you’ll remember that I dismissed dubstep as noise two years ago, but now my ears have adjusted to it. But if you didn’t enjoy this: man, I’m not even sure I know you.

Tim: Actually, you know what? I’ve just listened to it again after a couple of days, and I have no idea what I was blathering about up there. It’s BRILLIANT. And you’re so bloody right about that glockenspiel.

Saturday Flashback: DJ Sammy – Heaven

Arguably the defining song of the Eurotrance genre

Tim: I know we’ve had two “ten years ago” posts already this year, so sorry for the lack of originality, but we surely can’t not feature this, arguably the defining song of the Eurotrance genre, which a decade ago entered the UK chart right up at number 1. So sit back, try not to pay too much attention to the weird video that came with it, and enjoy it.

Tim: Vastly better than Bryan Adams’s version of the song, of course, but then cover versions rarely beat the originals, so that’s only to be expected.

Tom: Eh? That doesn’t make sense – the Bryan Adams version is from 1985…

Tim: Oh, God, you haven’t been brainwashed by his lot as well, have you? Look, follow the logic: in a lot of songs, it is entirely possible, from as early on as the first chorus, to see exactly where it’s going, yes? So therefore, by extrapolation, in the land of music it’s entirely possible to predict the future, and thus have a song being covered BEFORE the original was actually written, as happened here. DJ Sammy wrote the brilliant original, and Bryan Adams did a fairly dull cover of it seventeen years earlier. FLAWLESS LOGIC.

Tom: Right.

Tim: Now this has everything a decent dance track should have, and it should rightly be celebrated here and now.

Tom: Yep, there’s a reason that it’s still a standard – and still getting re-edited into new cash-in compilation CDs – ten years later. It’s one of the tracks that can tie most of a generation together: they’ll recognise it even if they don’t know where it’s from.

Tim: It’s also notable for being the song that gave birth to the idea of the Candlelight Remix; whether that’s a good thing or not is debatable, but it didn’t stop Cascada doing the same thing several years later. And actually, I’ve just listened to both of those and it was a brilliant idea, so well done to whoever did that. In fact, well to everybody involved in this, because it’s just brilliant all over.

Eric Saade – Miss Unknown

It’s so middle-of-the-road, almost generic.

Tim: Yesterday’s was a disappointment; let’s see what today’s brings. But I’ll warn you: while that official lyric video was vaguely creative, today’s one, while still official, has made the typical 14-year-old fan’s error of prioritising fitting in as many LiveText transitions as possible over even basic proofreading.

Tom: Oh, man. I’m no professional designer, but that is bloody awful there. So many errors, so many bizarre choices. (An electricity pylon? Really?)

Tim: Fortunately, though, that lyric video doesn’t put me off it all that much; unfortunately, the music does a good enough job of doing it that the video’s become somewhat irrelevant.

Tom: I find it difficult to write anything about it. It’s so middle-of-the-road, almost generic: for someone who’s put out cracking tracks before, this is just meh.

Tim: It is – it’s just dull. I don’t know if I was expecting too much, both from this and yesterday’s, but this barely sounds special enough for an album track. There’s still a bunkload of autotune on there, though at least not quite so much; the multitude of ‘eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-etc’ towards the end of the chorus are only vaguely less irritating that INJU5TICE’s ‘eh-oh-oh’s; it fades out without anything special happening towards the end; the lyrics are massively banal; anything else I’ve missed?

Tom: I don’t think there’s anything else there to miss.

Eric Saade – Marching (In The Name Of Love)

OH GOD THE AUTOTUNE.

Tim: Two new songs from Eric Saade dropped last week.

Tom: Well, pick them up then.

Tim: Very well, I shall. Let’s start with this one, and we’ll get to the other tomorrow. Sound good?

Tom: Crikey, that’s a long build. 90 seconds of lead-in to a not-particularly-heavy beat that doesn’t last all that long. It’s almost begging for some kind of dubstep remix, particularly with that much autotune on it.

Tim: Oh, the autotune. OH GOD THE AUTOTUNE. Why? He’s a very competent singer, he doesn’t need it for that. It can’t be to sound current, because that phase seems to have finally (and thankfully) died out. It’s just horrible, and I don’t understand why.

Tom: Maybe it just wasn’t that interesting without it? It almost sounds like a track from a soundtrack album: it’s trying to be all uplifting and euphoric, but it just seems like it’s trying too hard.

Tim: And as for the rest, it’s, well, alright – it’s a decent chorus (though the intro to it does get uncomfortably close to having a Flo Rida-esque “look at me, I’m so brilliant” vibe) and a nice dance bit following it. I just wish it didn’t sound quite so 2009.

Darwich feat. Anna David – Solstorm

“Middle of the end of year compilation CD dance music.”

Tim: Is your Danish not quite up to scratch? But do you still want to know what your favourite song’s lyrics translate to? Well, never fear – EMOJI’S HERE!

Tom: Oh, blimey. For those not up to speed, these are the little glyph icons that you can get if you mess about with the settings on your iPhone. Still, at least it’s an original approach to a lyric video.

Tim: Let’s be honest: a record label called KASHCOW is never likely to prioritise deeply thought-out, meaningful lyrics that took a week to come up with with soulful music behind them that someone’s spent days pondering over.

Tom: At least they’re honest and up-front about it.

Tim: Exactly. What they do instead is scribble three minutes worth of generic Danish ‘I love you, isn’t this brilliant’ words and spend a couple of hours fiddling around in Logic Studio. Let’s not, therefore, complain that this is bog-standard, as it comes, middle of the end of year compilation CD dance music.

Tom: It is, isn’t it? It’s the filler in the middle of the “DANCE CHOONZ 2013” CDs that are being peddled all over the airwaves now that the run-up to Christmas is starting.

Tim: Let’s instead enjoy it, because it has got exactly what it needs to make it sell – a catchy and somewhat irritating chorus, a decent backing track with just enough of a melody to it to make it original, and a lyric video in a style that I’m genuinely surprised no-one’s thought to do before. Well done Kashcow, for thoroughly living up to your ideology. Though I’m disappointed you didn’t fit this one in somewhere.