Europop – Page 19

jens – Before You Let Me Down

“That squeaky string noise is infuriating. Absolutely infuriating.”

Tim: Here’s one you might initially want to file under ‘irritatingly jaunty’, but keep with it because (a) it gets better and (b) it’s only 2:22 long in any case.

Tom: That squeaky string noise is infuriating. Absolutely infuriating. Occasional use as a stylistic choice, fine, but this is like Matt Bellamy breathing in on early Muse tracks: it’s all you can bloody hear! Which is a shame, because I… actually… think I like the rest of this? I know, that’s unusual for something irritatingly jaunty.

Tim: Verses: I can take them or leave them, but after a few listens I’ve largely come around to them. Chorus: yes, I like that, as it’s halfway between the verses and the best bit. The middle eight and beyond: ooh, very much so indeed please yes, because it’s that initial chirpy bit with a whole load of extra stuff on top of it, and it’s right at that point that I’m annoyed it’s such a short song, because I’d happily take at least another thirty seconds or so of it. As it is, there’s only really just enough of it to lift the rest of it above a rating of ‘hmm, so so’, for me at least.

Tom: For once, I’m actually charmed by this rather than put off. But you know what it needs? One more note. I realise that doesn’t play into the theme of the lyrics, but I’d be a lot happier if we just got a closing guiar note to resolve that open-ended bit at the end.

Well, that and less guitar squeak.

Davai, Lovespeake – Broken Hearts

“Is it awful? Arguably, yes.”

Tim: This here has a high number of f-words and motherf-words, which’d normally put me off. Not with this, though, so headphones on if you’re in public and possibly put the lyric video in a background tab, and press play!

Tom: Who put that bassoon-fart-gone-wrong synth in the chorus? And decided to do a weird, brief vocal-sample-edit middle eight? For the second time, I’ve got more issues with the production here than I have with the actual track.

Tim: So, this is just the sort of song where there’s a roughly fifty-fifty chance of me liking it or hating it, depending on nothing in particularly beyond how I’m feeling when I press play. Is it awful? Arguably, yes. But does it have a surprisingly decent melody? Arguably, also yes.

Tom: And at least it’s only two and a half minutes long.

Tim: Well that’s that, yes, and so it’s really just a question of whether one outweighs the other, I guess, and right now I’m really quite in favour of it. Will I be tomorrow? Not a clue.

Moment – Beat Again

“I regret to inform you that no-one has done a JLS cover.”

Tom: Is it a JLS cover? Go on, tell me someone did a JLS cover.

Tim: I regret to inform you that no-one (or at least, not this Swedish band) has done a JLS cover. Advance warning, though: this has really quite boring verses. Forty seconds in, though, you won’t regret keeping with it. I promise.

Tom: Those verses aren’t just boring, they’re “George Ezra album track” boring. (Actually, that’s probably too harsh: I quite like that second verse, with its steady build.)

Tim: And aside from the ‘can our hearts’ having the exact same melody as part of the chorus from Shania Twain’s You’re Still The One, that chorus and middle eight are for me pretty much flawless. Energy, production, vocal power, all there, and I challenge anyone to state otherwise.

Tom: I have an issue with the production, or at least the mastering that got it onto YouTube. There’s a lot of guitar work that’s being lost in the mix there, and all the instruments seem to be arguing with each other. When the backing harmonies come in, it starts to sound just very, very slightly like white noise in places. This needs either a bit of simplification, or someone who can do a proper Wall of Sound mix on it.

You’re right about the chorus, though.

Tim: Yes, and fortunately, those parts make up most of the song, so part of me is willing to forgive those verses. On the other hand, they really are very boring, so I might just go and listen to Shania Twain.

Saturday Reject: Andreas Johnson – Army of Lovers

“It’s got the elements, sure, but they don’t quite add up right.”

Tim: Tom, you’ll be delighted to have it pointed out to you that is is now verging on twenty years since Glorious became the international smash hit he became famous for.

Tom: It is still a great song. And “Sing For Me”, eighteen years old, is also still brilliant. The fact he’s still going is actually a bit heartwarming.

Tim: Put it like that, I guess it is actually. This one got through to Andra Chansen at this year’s Melodifestivalen.

Tom: That really wants to be a Big Emotional Song, doesn’t it? And it doesn’t quite make it.

Tim: Entirely correct. Nineteen seconds into that I thought “this is basically a U2 song, isn’t it”, and then two and a half minutes later I thought “that was basically a U2 song, wasn’t it”. To be precise, it’d be from roughly their early ’00s phase, with songs like Beautiful Day and Elevation, and to be honest that a period of theirs I very much enjoyed. This song, though, doesn’t quite do it for me – it’s got the elements, sure, but they don’t quite add up right, they don’t provide the big moment when everything really kicks off.

Tom: I wonder why not? He’s got the voice, the track’s got all the elements, it just… doesn’t work somehow. It’s down the composition, I guess: some things resonate and some don’t.

Tim: And so I guess it’s done for. Shame, really, as there was a small bit of potential.

Beatrice Egli – Terra Australia

“I’d have a hard time working out if it’s just earnest, some sort of German joke that I don’t get, or a badly misfiring Australian tourist board advert.”

Tim: You might be wondering what the lyrics to this are; it’s basically “Australia, you’re bloody amazing”. So please, enjoy the didgeridoos.

Tom: “One way ticket” and “Down Under” appearing in that opening verse makes it even more ridiculous than it already is. Schlager often edges close to the line of self-parody: honestly, if this wasn’t published on That Big Official Schlager YouTube Channel, I’d have a hard time working out if it’s just earnest, some sort of German joke that I don’t get, or a badly misfiring Australian tourist board advert.

Tim: Nope – it’s just earnest, true love for the country. I did, on first listen, find this largely unremarkable, although I can’t think of many other songs off the top of my head which are just plain love letters to different countries, and certainly no other recent pop songs with didgeridoos.

Tom: There’s a reason for that.

Tim: True, but experimenting’s rarely a completely awful thing to do. I did, however, find the chorus stuck in my head a couple of hours after first hearing it, and I reckon that must count for something.

Tom: I’ve modified my “if you can remember it, it’s good pop” motto in recent years: you have to remember it and ALSO not be bothered by it. This definitely fails that second test.

Tim: Maybe, but at the end of the day, it’s basically good catchy German pop. And by and large, that’s a very good formula.

Lydia – Slow Clap

“If you’re trying to get publicity, I guess it’s one way to do it.”

Tim: “Hey mate, it’s Lydia, we met the other night and you said you were a copyright lawyer? Yeah, just out of interest, if I wanted to rip off a bassline but not to pay for it, I’m good to change just one out of every ten notes, right? Cool, cheers.”

Tom: Hey, if the KLF said it was okay, go for it.

Tim: I mean really, this isn’t a case of ‘hope people don’t notice’, it’s a case of ‘we’ve checked, and we think we’re staying the right side of the line’.

Tom: And if you pull down the description to see the credits, you’ll see that none of the Macarena composers are credited.

Tim: This is Scooter copying Otto Knows all over again, and part of me actually admires it, as it takes a special kind of audacity to do it on your debut single.

Tom: Not only are you going to be compared to a song everyone knows, but you’re going to be compared to a novelty hit that a lot of people hate. It’s a bold choice, but if you’re trying to get publicity, I guess it’s one way to do it. Pity it’s not that good a track, though.

Tim: Yes, yes there is that. Still fair play to her – well not fair play, in fact, distinctly unfair play – and let’s see what happens. I’m guessing we’ll either never hear from her again, or three months from now we’ll be discussing a song that is 99% Saturday Night.

Saturday Reject: Ingrid Berg Mehus – Feel

“Who takes a fairly strong dance tune and thinks ‘right, what this really needs is her taking time out to play the violin’?”

Tim: “Hmm, it’s not bad, I guess, but it still needs a bit more. Any idea?” “Ooh, Alexander Rybak did well when he played his violin that first time, we could try that again?” “Eh, give it a go, could work. Ooh have lasers. LOTS OF LASERS.”

Tim: It annoys me that NRK don’t release the voting numbers for Melodi Grand Prix, because I’d love to know what happened with this. Out of ten it didn’t make the top four, but I’m wondering if it managed to get, well, any votes at all. Because it’s just weird.

Tom: It is an odd one, isn’t it? At least they’ve managed to contain her in some kind of laser-powered summoning grid. But it’s a strange combination of things that don’t quite work together.

Tim: Admittedly, that doesn’t necessarily make for a bad Eurovision track – Netta was proof enough of that – but seriously, who takes a fairly strong dance tune, with a strong club vibe happening on the stage, and thinks “right, what this really needs is her taking time out to play the violin”? I mean.

Tom: Also: who co-ordinates all those camera moves and then sticks a big bulky mic pack on the dress? I know women’s clothing is a nightmare for microphone staging, but there had to be a better solution than that. Not technically a complaint about the song, but still. Sorry, you were talking about the music.

Tim: No, it’s Eurovision, everything’s up for discussion. But yes, the music, and I guess the violin’s one way of removing the standard EDM failing at Eurovision, where for the instrumental chorus the singer stands around doing nothing, but even so, still weird. Nice lasers, though.

Isle of You – Hold Tight

“I don’t know why on earth they’d want to risk putting off a load of people by describing it as a waffly ‘timeline of emotions’.”

Tim: So, at the risk of alienating you, I’ll quote directly from them PR guff, which says this is “more like a timeline of emotions than a pop song. Instead of writing a ‘verse, pre-chorus, chorus’ song which has already been done about eleven million times, we wanted to create something that sounds like what falling in love really feels like, when all of your worst fears get mixed up with all you ever really wanted.”

Sounds garbage, right?

Tom: Sounds like someone couldn’t make the structure work and decided to go “that’s a feature, not a bug”.

Tim: Certainly not what you want to hear from a group who’ve previously out some great electropop. Except…

Tim: …it absolutely is a standard “verse, pre-chorus, chorus” song, and I think it’s pretty damn great, so I don’t know why on earth they’d want to risk putting off a load of people by describing it as a waffly ‘timeline of emotions’.

Tom: I’m not convinced it “sounds like what falling in love really feels like” either.

Tim: Well, I don’t know about that – for starters, even if the first couple of verses and choruses weren’t enough (which they absolutely are), that middle eight and beyond is one of the best minutes of music I’ve heard this year.

Tom: I wouldn’t go that far, but I’ll agree with you that it certainly kicks in at the middle eight: before that, despite the structure (or lack of), it did feel like a bit of a mess.

Tim: The song is absolutely marvellous, and I’m very upset that there is still no sign of any album on the horizon, because God knows we’ve had enough decent tracks from them. I WANT MORE DAMMIT.

Aura Dione – Shania Twain

“Inspired by the power that Shania sung about in her songs.”

Tim: Meghan Trainor and Charlie Puth gave us one of the greatest tunes of 2015 with their ode to Marvin Gaye.

Tom: I… no, you know what, I’m not going to start arguing before we even get to the song. I will agree, though, that there was definitely a song in 2015 called “Marvin Gaye”.

Tim: And it was a RIGHT BANGER. Anyway, Danish singer Aura is going for a similar vibe, inspired by the power that Shania sung about in her songs.

Tim: And that there is a song that I absolutely and entirely love.

Tom: I know you’re generally more enthusiastic about, well, basically everything, but: why?

Tim: The mix of heavy country and great dance is done so well, and when the two combine for that second chorus and beyond it just becomes absolutely joyous, and the first song in a while that I want to properly shout along to, with those backing vocals. Even the little things, like the ‘Twain, Twain, Twain’ vocal effects, sound great.

Tom: Ah, I just don’t get that. There’s something in the tone of it that just grates on me; and that ‘Shania Twain’ lyric just lands with a clunk in my head. I’ll admit that I can sing the chorus after one listen, though.

Tim: My only problem, of course, is that it’s just too short. So, all together, ALL OF MY LOVERS, ALL OF MY LOVERS, ALL OF MY LOVERS LET IT POUR ON ME, ALL OF MY LOVERS, ALL OF MY LOVER LOVERS etc.

Saturday Reject: Adrian Jørgensen – The Bubble

“Specifically, I thought ‘this is Æd Sheerån’.”

Tim: I’d slightly have liked this to win for a couple of reasons: partly because it’s a fairly decent track, and partly because it’d give an answer to the tedious ‘we should just send Ed Sheeran or someone and we’d win’.

Tom: I listened to the first bit of this before reading that introduction, Tim, and I’m happy to say I had the exact same thought. I mean, specifically, I thought “this is Æd Sheerån”.

Tim: That’s a song that’d fit comfortably on ÷, and might even do fairly well on it. We’ve seen previously that artist familiarity doesn’t translate to success – Cascada coming bottom five in 2013 put paid to that. As for how it’d do at Eurovision, well that’s anyone’s guess really, but probably not do spectacularly well, and then in the hypothetical situation following a Sheeran appearance we’d be on to “oh well see this just proves everyone hates us, why do we even bother”, and God knows we’ve had enough of that.

Tom: Odd choice here to add a second vocalist most of the way through the track.

Tim: Yeah, I though that as well – weirdest of all is that she’s very front and centre, but not even slightly credited.

Tom: I can’t deny it works. Still, Norway decided that Discount Sheeran wasn’t a good choice, and I think I agree with them.

Tim: Likewise. And as it is, we can enjoy it as a fairly decent guitar pop track, safe in the knowledge that it won’t affect anything at all.