Tim: We didn’t originally review Get Lucky because we both found it a bit dull and uninspirational. Let’s see if the same applies to this next one.
Tim: Yes. Yes it does. It is just as monotonous, just as repetitive, just as mathematically calculated to get stuck in your head, and just as, essentially, dull.
Tom: Which is a great shame, because – for once – it was the intro and first verse that I found the best bit of the song. After that, yes, it just keeps going. Still, at least there’s an actual video this time… even it does go on a bit.
Tim: Does it really only last four minutes eleven?
Tom: I don’t know, I sort of lost track after three.
Tim: I have a thing with rock bands. Basically, I can cope with their music being a bit of a racket, as long the chorus is epic enough, or at least has a decent, generally quite drawn-out, hook to it.
Tom: Crikey. There’s a reason we don’t normally review rock music, folks, and that’s it.
Tim: Kings and Queens, for example – utterly fantastic track. And now there’s this (a fan-made lyric video, by the way – the official seven minute one is full of all sorts of guff).
Tom: I want to go to Iceland now. Disappointingly, though, it won’t have a soundtrack like that.
Tim: So, my question is this: is this chorus big and bold enough that it outweighs the fair racket that is the rest of the song?
Tom: I disagree with your basic premise there. That’s not a racket – the song’s great! And that chorus, in particular. But does that big, bold chorus enough for you?
Tim: I think it just about is, though inevitably if I wake up to it on the radio I’ll think ‘oh, God, can’t we have something a bit calmer’. It’s quite a short chorus, and I wouldn’t mind a bit more, and I can’t quite see it ever rising to Kings and Queens levels, but I think it’s alright. Just about.
Tom: Our reader, Isabella, writes in and notes that we never actually covered this, the song of the summer.
Tim: True.
Tom: She likes it, as – evidently – do most of the record-downloading public: “the only criticism I can find for it,” she writes, “is that it’s more of a Pharrell track produced by Daft Punk than a Daft Punk track featuring Pharrell and Nile Rodgers.”
Tom: So, a confession: I disliked it on first listen; it seemed monotonous and not particularly inspired. And then, as it became the soundtrack to everything this summer, it grew on me.
Tim: See, I never even got to the growing on me part of it. I just don’t get it – I find it, well, dull. Their last album, the Tron: Legacy soundtrack, was fantastic (and the remix album even more so), but this is just boring.
Tom: And I find myself agreeing. Because now the glow has faded; the mists of autumn aren’t far away; and I find that it’s started to irritate me again. It doesn’t go anywhere. It doesn’t do anything. It could be two minutes long or ten minutes long, it’s all the bloody same. It’s impeccably produced, incredibly catchy, but I’m just bloody sick of it.
Tim: You’re right – it doesn’t go anywhere at all. The underlying beat – that eight second, four bar loop – just doesn’t change. Throughout the entirety of the song, it’s there. I don’t want to call it cynical, but it’s perfectly mastered to get stuck in your head and never ever leave, and to keep you listening in the subconscious hope that it’ll break out of its minor-key loop and do something interesting.
Tom: Is it possible to review something properly when it’s been burned into your brain?
Tim: There’s an argument that that’s the only time when you should review something – you’ve had time to digest it, tracked your enjoyment of it, can provide a thorough description of your thoughts, as we’ve done. Unfortunately, they’re not positive thoughts.
Tom: The new Hunger Games movie somehow got Coldplay to do the… well, let’s call it what it is, the Tie-In Song That’ll Appear Over The Second Half Of The Credits.
Tim: Now that there is a beautiful lyric video. It even managed to keep me going throughout the song.
Tom: It’s somewhat in the “Fix You” mould, to the extent that I suspect that a record industry exec, at some point, said “can we have something a bit like Fix You?” The slow build, the long repetitions of the title. It’s a Textbook Coldplay Track, somehow graduating from very calm and measured to becoming a wall of sound… only to fall back for the outro.
Tim: Wall of sound? Are you kidding? “I’m about to explode…” by hitting the piano a bit bit harder than I have been doing previously. Talk about a let down. I don’t want to criticise the song to much – I’m assuming it was crafted around the film (so more like film industry exec rather than record industry exec), so has to mirror it in tone and excitement, but man, I wasn’t particularly interested in seeing the film previously, and now I know I don’t want to see it.
Tom: It’s not going to be a “Fix You”. It’s not going to be a “Speed of Sound”. It’s going to be on the soundtrack CD, and everyone’ll take their money, and they’ll move on to better things.
Tom: The media circus surrounding Miley Cyrus has gone even further than I reckoned it would when her last video came out. So here’s the new one, the next single from her upcoming album — which is, incidentally, called “Bangerz”. I’ll leave you to comment on that.
Tim: There’z a part of me that wantz to write thiz whole review in that ztyle. Probably better not doing, though.
Tom: And a quick heads up: this video is probably not safe for work.
Tim: Oh good Lord.
Tom: Look, I know we disagreed on “We Can’t Stop”: I liked it, you didn’t. But can we agree that this is just an absolutely fantastic track?
Tim: Actually, having heard We Can’t Stop a few more times, it’s grown on me ever so slightly. But with this, on the other hand, we’re in agreement right from the off.
Tom: The chorus. Oh my word, the chorus. It takes a while to get there, but without that calm start I wouldn’t have been completely blown away by it. This is perfect emotional pop.
Tim: That chorus really is brilliant – it just comes out of absolutely nowhere, and blown away is exactly the right expression to use. It fits the wrecking ball picture very well as well – the two-step nature of it kind of sounds like the slow swing of said ball.
Tom: The video swings wildly between exploitative, arty and sensational: I’ve no idea what to think of it other than the combination of it and that chorus left me just a bit stunned.
Tim: I just hope she knows where that sledgehammer’s been.
Tom: Right now, Miley Cyrus is the biggest pop star in the world, and with tracks, videos and management like this, she deserves to be.
Tim: Icona Pop have a new single out – it’s called My Party, it’s a re-recording on a track that was on their first debut album but with a different guest vocalist and it’s basically the shouty stuff that we all know.
Tom: You say that, but I reckon it’s bloody awful: an unnecessary screwing-about with a not-particularly-good classic track, backed by mostly noise.
Tim: This, though, has also just been released to promote their second debut album, on which it will feature (as will the new It’s My Party), and it’s actually somewhat melodic.
Tom: Well, that’s much more like it.
Tim: Now, I’m not really sure what Icona Pop are doing at the moment when it comes to releasing stuff – I had to check various sources for that introduction, and I’m still not certain it’s entirely correct, but there you go.
Tom: Downloads should have completely knackered the singles “release schedule”; yet somehow publicity and airplay still wins out. I don’t understand it either.
Tim: The main thing is that they’re making music, and branching out a bit from all of their main international tracks. This has more to it than just a chorus shouted loudly, which – actually, it’s good and bad. Because the truth is, it doesn’t strike me as particularly memorable. That’s not too bad a thing – it’s a plenty decent enough track to dance to – but it does mean that it might sink a bit, because people will think Icona Pop, they’ll think I Love It and My Party, which both have massive repeating choruses, whereas this just doesn’t. Hmm. Oh, well, still good.
Tom: It’s a nice mid-playlist track, which sounds like a bit of a backhanded compliment but wasn’t meant as one.
I have found myself yelling it out, apropos of nothing at all.
Tim: Another track off the previously mentioned Poptronik compilation, from February of this year.
Tim: The chorus is fantastic. Isn’t it? Yes, it is. Since I first heard it, I have found myself yelling it out, apropos of nothing at all, just because the vocal on it is so loud and passionate that it’s just great.
Tom: What’s startling to me is not just the strength of the vocal, but that it’s able to compete with — and come out on top of — all the other loud, busy, thumping instrumental bits that are going on at the same time.
Tim: Well, there’s that as well. And you know, for the first time ever, I slightly understand what people mean when they say it’s good for an artist to write their own tracks. Obviously I still don’t think there’s anything at all wrong with not doing, because as I’ve said before songwriting and singing are two completely different skill sets, and it still annoys me when bands say they want to write their own stuff just to be ‘authentic’.
Tom: Let’s be fair, though, singer-songwriters rake in the cash. Authenticity may not be their first priority.
Tim: A good point. But even so, here I really get the feeling that the singing and feeling comes from deep down, rather than singing words off a page, and it works so so well.
“There really is a dearth of good singles about lately, isn’t there?”
Tom: There really is a dearth of good singles about lately, isn’t there? Or at least, singles that have anything notable for us to talk about.
Tim: Around and about Britain, certainly. Anything notable about this one?
Tim: Hmm.
Tom: See what I mean? It’s very much a by-the-numbers track, designed to sit happily in the background of pop radio and not really bother anyone.
Tim: Which is exactly what it’ll do. A soundtrack to the slow drift from summer into autumn
Tom: The spoken interjections do bother me a bit, incidentally, but I find it… well, I find it difficult to care. Yep, chorus. Yep, middle eight. Yep, dodgy bit designed to stop people ripping it off YouTube. Maybe this is how some people feel about all pop music, not just… well, not just this.
Tim: It’s also possibly one of the least inventive videos of all time – even the product placement is just “yep, I’m holding a speaker. Nice, isn’t it?” Oh, I’m sure things’ll pick up. Elisa’s, for example, have recently announced there’s a full Christmas album in the works to complement this triumph, and so has Hera Björk, so there’s those to look forward to.
Tim: It’s a slight shame that Celine’s SoundCloud has her name on it, because it would be quite fun to play a “guess the singer” game after you’ve heard this. Beauty and the Beast it is not.
Tom: Oh, that’s strange, isn’t it? It’s a dark ballad written for a modern pop singer, but that’s obviously Celine’s vocal performance. I… I rather like that.
Tim: This is not a place I, or indeed pretty much everybody else, ever really imagined the Taking Chances hitmaker to visit, and yet she has, and with an almost surprising amount of success.
Tom: I really shouldn’t be surprised by this – she’s got one hell of a voice and the eighth best-selling single of all time. With hindsight, this is almost an obvious step to take – but only with hindsight.
Tim: Aside from the frankly incredible Tony Moran mix of My Heart Will Go On, dance music was never really something I thought Celine Dion could work with, and certainly not two-step. But yet – it’s brilliant. It was written by Sia (most notable for being half of David Guetta feat. Sia) and features a very modern sound, but still brings the epic vocals that she’s best known for. This really is quite the triumph.
Tom: That’s who else it sounds like! Yes! It sounds like a Sia track – that’s brilliant!
Tim: If this isn’t enough for you, she’s described her upcoming album as her ‘edgiest record to date’, and features two tracks written by Ne-Yo, one of which is called Incredible. Really. But now we’re going to finish with this. Because every Celine Dion discussion should finish with this. And open with this. And, probably, consist solely of this.
Tom: So the three ex-Sugababes — the three with the most awkward names to spell — have their first single. This ought to be an absolute cracker, right? I mean, there’s no way that they’d start out with anything other than a bit of pop genius, right?
…right?
Tim: Right. This is, by the way, a track I’ve heard a lot about but never actually cared enough to listen to. But I suppose I should really give it a go. Like you say – it ought to be great.
Tom: …oh, man, is that ever an album track.
Tim: Oh, now that’s quite harsh.
Tom: All the way through, I was hoping for more: that the lacklustre first verse would turn into a brilliant chorus, that the second chorus would be greater than the first, that the building middle eight would resolve into a glorious finale… and each time, I was disappointed.
Tim: I know what you mean about wanting more – I felt a tad let down when the chorus hit following that first build to it, and the close isn’t really as strong as I’d like it to be – but dismissing it as album track material is harsh. Mind you, it’s not what it should be as a “LOOK AT US, WE’RE HERE” track.
Tom: The ending is… nice, I suppose? But “nice” really isn’t what I was looking for here.
“A flatline that ought to be a wave.” That pretty much just sums up the song, doesn’t it?
Tim: I’m not sure – looking at it objectively, beat-heavy dance pop is what we want and what they did as the Sugababes. People hearing from them, such as us, will probably want that same stuff, and be disappointed; on the other hand, they presumably want to say “actually, we’re MKS, not the Origibabes”, and this is the right way of doing it. Will it work? I don’t know – Origibabes fans won’t like it immediately, but others might.
