Tom: Film the video in someone’s backyard, edit it on a Mac, and bang, you’re done. This isn’t a big-label production – but it’s managed Radio 2 playlisting despite that.
Tom: Straight to the point: I love the music. I love the sound, the feel of it. It’s got a beautiful combination of old instrumentation and new production values. And her voice sounds incredible.
Tim: Yes, I can see that. Style doesn’t do a huge amount for me, but I can go with it.
Tom: But I really, really dislike the lyrics. It’s like a crap self-deprecating stand up comedy act. Oh, look, I did this. And then I did this. I can’t explain why, somehow, this particular set of lyrics have wound me up, but wound me up they have.
Tim: Or maybe it’s some sort of cynical psychological thingy she’s got going on with her fans – look at me feeling sorry for myself, prove I’m wrong by buying this record.
Tom: Which is a shame, because as I said – the rest of it’s lovely.
I have no bloody clue what’s going on in this music video.
Tom: I have no bloody clue what’s going on in this music video.
Tom: Anyway, everyone’s favourite ginger female Noel Fielding lookalike is on form as ever. I’m not sure if she’s recognisable more from her voice, or from the inevitable harp that appears in the background of every track.
Tim: It’s the voice. Always the voice, that some people really like and other people hate, and other people, such as myself, find every so slightly grating when I’m not in the exact right mood.
Tom: That’s not a bad thing, though, because that chorus is just beautiful, with all the trademark Machine soaring…ness.
Tim: Soaring… ness?
Tom: Yeah, that adjective got away from me.
Tim: Ah, don’t worry. I got my pronouns mixed up earlier, so I think I can forgive you this once.
Tom: I’ve heard quite a few people say they don’t really “get” her musical style – and I can see why, for the same reasons that many folks (myself included) don’t “get” Kate Bush. But the track’s just so spectacular that I’ve got to at least appreciate it.
Tim: Hmm – any more spectacular than her other hits, though? She’s always had the big voice, backing instruments and everything else trying to make the songs sound epic, so this seems a bit more of a formula track. Decent formula, though.
Remember INJU5TICE? Well, these guys aren’t quite as bad.
Tim: Long intro time!*
* Slight advance warning: this may or may not be because the story’s more interesting than the song.
Tom: We’re not talking musically here, are we? Right, I’ll brace myself.
Tim: One of my friends on Twitter recently posted this as the reason he despised UK boybands – “typical wardrobe, shit hair cuts, emo air grabs…just one big mother [ahem] cliche!!!” So, naturally, I had to check it out. And, um, remember INJU5TICE? Well, these guys aren’t quite as bad.
Tom: I just Googled INJU5TICE to see what was happening with them recently. I think they may have forgotten to renew their domain name.
Tim: And yet somehow no-one has noticed.
Let’s have a bit of an introduction to these guys. They are “already tipped to be the next big British R&B/Popular music success”, though we’re not told by whom, they “combine soulful vocals and first-class songwriting prowess”, and they are “preparing to unleash their unique vocal style and heart moving songs to the music world with the debut single release in 2010!”
Tom: Hold on, hold on. 2010? Is that a typo, or are they rereleasing something?
Tim: No, I think it’s just forgetting to update. Everything here comes from their Facebook page, you see, as their actual website just redirects to the iTunes page for one of their past singles, and their management’s website is “comming soon“.
Tom: If ever something deserved a [sic] after it…
Tim: Finally, though, before we hear the track I must tell you that “another unique edge that these boys have is the fact that they are all over 6 foot tall, and any lady will feel safe & secure around them but they will never be the ones to cause any Friction.”
Tom: Or, indeed, “FriXion”. Wait, you’re 6′ 7″. Do the ladies feel safe and secure around you?!
Tim: Depends whether I’m dancing, in which case people often run for cover.
Now let’s begin.
Tim: So yes – wardrobe and haircuts are all in attendance, and there’s a cracker of an air grab at 2:17, but there are a good few issues here.
Tom: The aspect ratio of the video’s one of them. They might be over six feet tall, but they look like squidgy munchkins because someone can’t encode a video properly.
Tim: A good point. Second up, we have the fact that it’s about a minute longer than a song like this should be, which, given the effort they put into the second chorus wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, but here it is, because of the third problem. What the HELL were they thinking after the middle eight? KEY CHANGE, people. A boyband like this NEEDS a key change, or at least get one of them to sing high above the others.
Tom: You’re right about that air grab, though. It’s a cracker. As ever with something like this, though, I can’t fault the members of the band – everything above is down to the producers, not them.
Tim: True, but these are the guys that inevitably get loathed. And loved, I suppose, but only by people like zalikhah1, who wants us to know that “i havent known emm 4 tht long but wen i strted i loved emmm nd nw i aint gonna let emm gooo i will support em alwaiiz”.
Final problem with the song, if we’re still interested in that, is that it has a ridiculously long outro. Although I suppose that sort of means the two radio DJs that decide to play this are less likely to talk over any important bits.
Tom: That sentence is being generous in several different ways.
Tom: Not for the made-up, ridiculously airbrushed version in the glossy music video – but the t-shirt-wearing woman with the fantastic voice on stage.
Tim: Oh, fair enough.
Tom: I really like this song. So the question is: am I being distracted by the fact that I am now, by definition, “a fan”? Well, that’s where I need your opinion. I reckon this has one of the best choruses of the last few months – for the same reason that I like, for example, most of Pink’s stuff.
Tim: You’re right, it does. A good pop-rock chorus with everything that pop-rock needs to make it good – decent beats, a good hook, and ridiculously excessive levels of effort from the vocalist
Tom: As far as I’m concerned, the chorus is brilliant; the verses back it up well; even the middle eight fits in. It’s a good track. Am I right?
Tim: Yes. Although it isn’t as good as My Life Would etc etc, so putting that link in is a bit of a distraction. OH WELL IT’S DONE NOW.
Tom: Full marks to the backing dancers in this video: there aren’t many of them, and they’re in the middle of some stark environments, but they’re still giving it their best shot.
Tim: Though they never quite match up to her own dancing at about 2:57.
Tom: Occasional bits of the verses remind me of The Feeling and various Disney songs – but all mashed up with a high, falsetto voice and an instrumental that seems to go all over the place.
Tim: Ah, see I think occasional bits of the verses remind me of pop music in general, and I like that a lot. This is standard pop, I feel, and done fairly well.
Tom: A ridiculously long middle-eight with a long euphoric build at the end. It promises great things, but it doesn’t quite deliver.
Tim: There, I absolutely agree with you. It’s far, far too long. Really, faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar too long. (Do you see what I did there?)
Tom: I see it. I wish I didn’t have to.
This isn’t bad – and I’m always appreciative of gratuitous lingerie shots in music videos, of course – but it won’t be reaching my regular playlist any time soon.
Tim: IDEA: we use music to prompt a discussion of current events.
Tom: Ooh, I got an idea! I’ve got this shark here. Shall I jump over it?
Tim: OH COME ON.
A couple of days ago some American university decided they wanted to stop a load of people having fun, and want to ban the word amazing. It seems we would both find this a bit annoying*, and so I present this 2009 track in response to them.
* MATHS tells me we’ve used the word amazing in a little over 13% of our posts. That’s quite a bit, isn’t it?
Tom: It’s a bit worrying, but not as worrying as the fact you bothered to work that out.
Tim: Here we have a track that celebrates the target of it being off drugs, but also makes sure the target is okay. I’ll be honest: I’ve never been a cokehead, so I don’t really know the difficulties involved, but I can imagine that being called ‘amazing’ by everyone, as the lyrics suggest, would make me feel much better than being called, say ‘really quite good, actually’ or ‘surprisingly healthy’.
Tom: “He doesn’t look too bad, you know, for someone who was out of his head last month.”
Tim: Indeed. And a song entitled ‘Very Satisfactory’ just wouldn’t sell. That would be a shame, because this is actually quite a good song. Despite the occasionally negative tones of the lyrics, the overall tone of the song is, well, amazing. Uplifting, powerful, all that malarkey, you’re AMAZING!
Tom: Excellent video as well – that’s how you do a “just stick him in front of a greenscreen, we’ll figure it out in post” video properly.
Tim: Also also, if we weren’t allowed to use that word, we wouldn’t have Inna’s track either, which would be a bit of a shame.
And finally, AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING.
“Constantly distracted by Background Percussion Man.”
Tim: Here’s a live performance. Even though we never do live performances here. I’ll explain in a bit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn2r48o0bs8
Tom: I was constantly distracted by Background Percussion Man during that video.
Tim: Fair enough.
Tom: Fair enough?! Have you seen the man? He’s grooving. Grooving like few men have ever grooved before.
Tim: Well, you’ve clearly forgotten what I get up to on the dancefloor, haven’t you. Anyway, I think we may be getting distracted here. I love this song, almost entirely because of that chorus. It is, in my view (and therefore it just is), utterly fantastic.
Tom: Now, that’s unusual for you; I’d have called you as saying it’s a bit boring. Why d’you like it so much?
Tim: Seriously? It has a brilliant tune (repeated often, but here not a bad thing), and the words – aside from not making much sense until you remember that ‘kicks’ is an American synonym for (what we two Brits, at least, call) ‘trainers’ – are great, with a ‘run run run, faster than my bullet’ sense of encouragement and enthusiasm.
Once you throw the verses in, though, it becomes a bit dodgy, because in the recorded version they’re all mushed up, so much so that it’s almost unlistenable (hence the live version).
Tim: Yeah, and it’s as annoying for me here as it was there.
In their defense, there’s a good reason they’ve become mushed up: the lyrics, when listened to properly, turn the ‘faster than my bullet’ from a metaphor into an instruction*, and that’s really not radio-friendly (though that did apparently disappoint the band, who wanted it there as an anti-gun message to get people thinking and all that). But still, it goes a fair way to putting me off the whole song, which is a proper shame.
* “He’s found a six-shooter gun, in his dad’s closet, box of fun things…he’s coming for you, yeah, he’s coming for you”
Tom: You like it, then?
Tim: All in: I love the chorus, I’m not so keen on the verse. But it’s still one of my favourite tracks of the year.
This sounds like the Strokes. It also sounds really good.
Tim: Well, this is nearly it for this year, but annoyingly there are some songs we never got round to writing about. I propose we spend this last week looking back at the best five tracks of what we missed. Sound good? Good. You go first.
Tom: “Last night, she said, oh baby don’t feel so down…”
This sounds like the Strokes. It also sounds really good.
Tim: Certainly does.
Tom: Okay, so it wasn’t quite as instantly memorable as some of the stuff of their past albums, but it’s a heck of a decent single.
They kept their old sound, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s exactly what I’d want a Strokes track to be: it makes me bob my head, it leaves me feeling vaguely happy, and it’s still got a drummer who’s addicted to cymbals.
Tim: Always fun. I like this too – a good track that just keeps going and going at a good heavy rate. Typical stuff, really.
Tim: There is a proper video of this, but it’s a six-minute palaver of faffery with no real added benefit.
Tom: There’s an innuendo in that last sentence somewhere, I’m sure.
Tim: No, I’ve given up on innuendo. Instead, I’ve started inserting the occasional vaguely rude word in the middle of sentences at random.
Tom: This should be fun.
Tom: Well, that’s a smiley song if ever there was one.
Tim: Isn’t it? Chirpy. Upbeat. Happy. Whistly. A repetitive PENIS message. Some surprisingly not particularly annoying rapping. I’m feeling good. You’re feeling good. Life is, basically, good. Feeling down? Stop it. You BREASTS shouldn’t.
Tom: Subtle.
Tim: This is a song with a message, and it conveys it nicely. Love it.
Tom: It sounds like a World Cup song, doesn’t it? With the crowd chanting in the background and everything. Could use a bit more tempo or a bit more bass, I reckon – after two minutes, I thought it was ready to end – but it’s nice enough.
Tim: As it happens, it sort of reminds me of another song, more in the general FORNICATION mood than the tune.
Tom: “Fornication”? Really? Anyway, what’s this other song?
Tim: That song is the equally chirpy, upbeat, happy and whistly You’re My Mate. Blimey, that’s ten years old now.
Tom: And Pitbull does look just a bit like Richard Fairbrass. (whistles) Taxi!
Tom: That’s the most 80s start to a pop song I’ve heard in a while.
Tim: Isn’t that fantastic? She got ditched by RCA after her first album, apparently as a result of directional differences blah, and if this does anywhere near as well as it deserves to they’ll have made a bit of a cock-up, really. In other technical details, it’s been produced in conjunction with Norwegian electronic act Donkeyboy (them who did the original of Joe McElderry’s very good track Ambitions, and of whom more soon), and any influences they’ve had have almost certainly been a very good thing.
So, the track itself: well, as I said, fantastic.
Tom: And that’s where we disagree.
Tim: Seriously? It’s got a great underlying electrobass line, brilliant vocals, verses that stroll along nicely and a chorus that goes from strolling to skipping around the fields in a nice jumpy fashion.
Tom: I agree that the chorus is lovely, and that the whole song’s generically pleasant, and that she’s got a lovely voice… but it’s like it never really takes off. The final chorus almost saves it, but I wouldn’t go so far as fantastic. It’s… nice.
Tim: More than that. And as for the lyrics: well, I myself am not crying, but at a recent funeral I discovered I am in fact an emotional robot, so I won’t let that bother me. Finally, the best thing of all? It’s an actual free download, which you can get for yourself here.
