Category: Mainstream

Saturday Flashback: Christina Perri – Jar Of Hearts

The best piano-and-strings ballad I’ve heard in a long while.

Tom: Another one from America that didn’t make it over here. Do yourself a favour: just listen to the video in a background tab to start off with. I’ll tell you why later.

Now, just to set your expectations: this isn’t bouncy pop music. It’s a slow piano-and-strings, steadily building, ballad.

Tom: …and it might just be the best piano-and-strings ballad I’ve heard in a long while.

Tim: It is nice, isn’t it? Calming and all that.

Tom: There’s quite a tale behind it as well, if the official story‘s to be believed; it went platinum despite Christina Perri being an unsigned artist.

Tim: A tale to inspire us all.

Tom: Bloody stupid video, though. Which is a shame, because the song doesn’t need that adornment: “To gild refined gold, to paint the lily … is wasteful and ridiculous excess.” Put her in front of a piano, film it well, and you have exactly the kind of video that the song needs.

Tim: You just quoted Shakespeare. I have absolutely no idea how to follow that.

Tom: Knowing you? Generally with a cock joke.

Lady Gaga – The Edge of Glory

I want to talk about sax.

Tom: Everyone’s already heard this, so why discuss it? Well, aside from the fact it’s now formally being released as a single – and that really is a formality these days – I want to talk about sax.

Tim: A noble intent, but first it must be said – this is BRILLIANT.

Tim: BRILLIANT.

Tom: Well, agreed. But when did we last get a sax solo like that in a pop song? Not since the 80s, I reckon. Suddenly, not only does Gaga have the (now sadly deceased) Clarence Clemons playing in her big album-ending track, but Katy Perry’s getting Kenny G to cameo in her terrible video.

Tim: And let’s not forget Moldova’s somewhat under-appreciated entry in last year’s Eurovision Song Contest.

Tom: Now, the sax solo got killed off because it’s over-the-top. There’s even a web site that categorises the solo’s downfall: from the textbook, understated solo in OMD’s ‘If You Leave’ all the way through to the stunningly overblown and possibly-synthesised droning in Eric Carmen’s ‘Hungry Eyes’.

Tim: When it come to Hungry Eyes, Eric Carmen has NOTHING on Eyeopener. (And ain’t that just a video and a half?)

Tom: That was actually James Cameron’s original pitch for Avatar. True story. Also, every time I hear that song, I can’t help but hear the lyrics as “I feel the magic between your thighs”.
Anyway, here’s the question, Tim: is it a good thing that the sax solo is back?

Tim: Erm, yeah, why not. Official Approval.

Tom: I say yes: provided it gets used in moderation. The last thing we need is a dubstep brass section.

Tim: I don’t know about the ‘in moderation’. Some people would argue, the more the better.

Saturday Flashback: The Ready Set – Love Like Woe

Two main problems with it.

Tom: I spent some time in America recently, and heard a few tracks that never made it over to these shores. Here’s one of them.

Tom: I like this song, but I have two main problems with it.

My biggest problem is this: “love like whoa”, I can understand. It’s meaningless but vaguely enthusiastic. That’s what I assumed the song was called. Then I looked it up, and it’s actually “love like woe”?

Tim: Well, presumably it’s how loving her is a bad thing, because she’s a total cow or something but the heart wants what it wants and all that bollocks. I don’t know – the lyrics are too myriad and mind-numbing to actually look through them.

Tom: My second problem is Bieber Syndrome. He’s young, male, pretty, singing meaningless perky ballads about love, and gawping into the camera. You just want to scream at him to get off your damn lawn and find some less ridiculous hair. (And that’s coming from someone whose hair is pretty ridiculous.)

Tim: I don’t know, he’s—hang on. Your starting this with ‘I have two main problems’, combined with the basic premise of this site, mean I pretty much have to defend this, and I’m not sure I really care about him enough to do that. You’re right, his hair is silly.

Tom: Musically, though, I can’t really fault it. It’s interesting, bouncy electropop – even the vinyl-back-and-forth sample he’s using seems to fit in. It’s… well, it’s good.

Tim: Tone down the autotune a bit, perhaps, but otherwise it’s okay.

Tom: Incidentally, if you also suffer from Bieber Syndrome, you may appreciate the Ready Set’s appearance on bizarre Japanese-import schadenfreude-fest Silent Library.

Tim: Every single one of them has stupid hair. Except for the one in the hat, and he’s well, wearing a stupid hat.

Nicola Roberts – Beat Of My Drum

It’s like Billie Piper got a Casio keyboard.

Tom: Released last week, this has been sent in by our Radio Insider, Matt. If you don’t recognise the name “Nicola Roberts”, feel free to substitute “the ginger one from Girls Aloud”.

Tim: Indeed. Gaga has her Monsters, Justin has Beliebers, and Ms Roberts has Team Ginge.

Tim: No.

Tom: It’s like Billie Piper got a Casio keyboard.

Tim: Yeah, but Billie Piper had good music. Mind you, so did Nicola before Girls Aloud broke up. SORRY, ‘went on hiatus’.

Tom: This really irritated me on first listen, but I realised towards the end that I’d started to enjoy it in a Ting Tings kind of way. So I hit ‘play’ again and, now that my brain had gotten used to it.

Tim: One of the problems I have with this is the chorus. Not that it’s a bad chorus (though it is, but that’s not relevant right now), but that it’s the sort of chorus, what with the letters and everything, that is crying out for a dance. You know, like YMCA or Macarena or Saturday Night, that everyone can get excited about and do at a school disco or cheesy nightclub or suchlike. And there isn’t one. There are three, at least, which is stupid. ESPECIALLY since in the first chorus when she’s moving her arms up bit by bit, they’re horizontal on the V and V-shaped on the E. Idiotic, I tell you.

Some people say I go on unnecessarily lengthy rants about tiny unimportant things. I’ve just realised they’re actually sort of right, aren’t they?

Tom: Yes. They are.

Anyway, don’t get me wrong – the versus and the first part of the chorus are still terrible, but the cheerleader chants and one-note-drone bits of the chorus have a certain Toni Basil something about them. I think.

Tim: Who?

Tom: Hey, Mickey!

Tim: OLD.

The Wanted – Glad You Came

“We are The Wanted, and we make videos in which WE ARE MEN.”

Tom: I’m fairly sure this will be one of anthems of the summer.

Tim: We are The Wanted, and we make videos in which WE ARE MEN.

Tom: Not because it’s particularly good – it’s not – but it’s not bad, and it’s got all the by-the-numbers ingredients.

Tim: Look at our RIPPED TORSOS on the beach, where we play football and dive into the sea because WE ARE MEN.

Tom: Synth pads, clap-along percussion, lyrics about drinks and love, and a massively heterosexual video just to make sure that all the stereotypical Club 18-30 types feel comfortable dancing to it.

Tim: Then we go to clubs and HAVE SEX in the toilets with PRETTY LADIES. GRRR. MEN IS WHAT WE ARE.

Tom: Notice how I’ve avoided all innuendo so far?

Tim: Have you? Sorry, I was too busy watching the MEN of The Wanted doing tricks on a BMX, as all grown men do at pool parties.

Beyoncé – Best Thing I Never Had

I was really enthusiastic about this – and I can’t explain why.

Tom: Let this one run for a minute or so before you start to judge it. It’s a slow burner.

Tim: Ooh, that chorus is good. Like, actually good.

Tom: By the time it got to the bridge, I was really enthusiastic about this – and I can’t explain why. It’s not close to anything we normally review, but it’s got this steady, inexorable build to it that means that the final chorus is a proper lighters-in-the-air moment.

Tim: Part of it, for me, is that it’s not typical Beyoncé. That’s also one of the reasons I really liked Rihanna’s most recent one – woke up to it on the radio, thought ‘ooh, this song’s good’, then Dev stuck his general rubbishness in and said it was Rihanna and I sat up with a ‘WHAT’.

Tom: Pity about the “sucks to be you right now” lyric, which rather spoils the moment for me, but I can live with it.

Tim: Meh, I’m not bothered. I do sort of wish the verses could be as energetic as the chorus, but, as you said, I can live with it. Very much, in fact.

Tom: I’ve just figured out how to save the verses: sing the verses of ‘I Want It That Way’ by the Backstreet Boys over the top of them. Seriously, try it.

Avril Lavigne – Smile

Avril Lavigne has made some good songs. This is not one of them.

Tom: Avril Lavigne has made some good songs. This is not one of them.

Tom: “Last night I blacked out I think / what did you, what did you put in my drink”. A classy date-rape reference there.

Tim: Ah, rohypnol. Every man’s choice when they want their reluctant girlfriend to, um, get a tattoo. Riiight.

Tom: I think the very last frames of the video sum it up for me. She’s smiling at the camera, showing the heart – don’t ask me how that metaphor works – bouncing along after doing all the rolling-on-the-floor shenanigans. She backs away – and the video director doesn’t quite cut away soon enough, as the smile disappears from her face in an instant and the spell’s broken.

I know that’s how all music videos work. I know it’s acting. I know you can’t possibly be that genuinely happy all the time, particularly when you’ve heard your own song for the fortieth time that day and don’t have the energy left. But that’s what this feels like to me – by the numbers pop-punk. Dare I say it – it’s got a bit of the Nickelback about it.

Tim: Re: the metaphor, I sort of get it, but IT’S THE WRONG SONG. What we have in the video – and the whole heart-collecting thing would actually be quite a good video – is a girl who’s had her heart broken and is gradually getting better. By the end of the song, she’s fine, she’s over him, let’s have a one night stand with a randomer thank you very much. This song? Not remotely like that, and it’s STUPID. It could even just work if they changed the word ‘stole’ to ‘broke’. But no. STUPID AAARGH.

Johan Agebjörn – Watch The World Go By

“Pretty damn good.”

Tim: A similar style of music to last Thursday’s rather wonderful Magic, and indeed a not all that different video, although instead to having two kids having fun all on their own, it’s two grown-ups.

Tim: It’s not quite as fantastic, obviously, but it sure as heck is pretty damn good.

Tom: Is there a name for this genre of music? Still has a beat to it, but nots of pink-noise sand-falling transitions, overexposed hippie-esque videos, and so on? It’s all rather lovely, and I feel like I can’t easily categorise it.*

*As we all know, categorising things is serious business.

Tim: I don’t know – this sort of thing generally gets described as a mix of synth-pop and indie electronica, though that’s a bit of a mouthful.

Regardless of what we define it as, though, it’s enchanting, the video’s full of pretty colours, and it’s got the same honey quality you used to describe the first Sound of Arrows track we reviewed – it captures you and then you just drift along nicely, and you think ‘ahh, this is nice. What was I doing? Oh yeah, I’ve just broken my arm. Man, this hurts. Ooh, but this music’s good. Ahh, this is nice.’

Tom: I did start singing the ‘na na na’s from Kylie’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head over the top of the quiet bits, though.

Tim: And here’s something we’ve not done before: have a Spotify link to the released-a-couple-of-months-ago album: WHOOSH.

Dionne Broomfield feat. Lil Twist – Foolin’

A cracking track with a completely unnecessary rap bridge.

Tom: This is a cracking neo-Motown track with a completely unnecessary rap bridge added to it.

Tom: Now, I love this style. Sounds like it came straight out of the seventies, only the lyrics have been updated and the sound mix is a bit more modern and compressed. And that voice! That’s a proper soul singer voice is ever there was one.

Tim: I don’t like it. She’s TOO YOUNG, DAMMIT. FIFTEEN. THAT’S FIF. TEEN.

Tom: What. What? You’re kidding me. That voice is incredible – without the photo, she could be any age at all. The rap part isn’t bad – it actually fits the track very well, and in another track I’d say it was good – but it just seems an unnecessary way to add spark to a track that’s doing really very well on its own, thank you very much.

Tim: See also Flo Rida interfering with The Saturdays, and Alexandra Burke, Pit Bull interfering with Jennifer Lopez, and many, many others. Yes it sucks, but we just have to try and cope. And that is what album versions are there for.

Ricky Martin – Más

Ooh, like it a LOT.

Tom: My opening sentence was originally going to be: “I expect to see an English version of this out in a couple of months, probably with a harder beat behind it.”

Tim: Ooh, like it a LOT.

Tom: Turns out that Ricky Martin’s management are way ahead of me, and “Freak of Nature” will be out pretty damn soon.

Tim: Still good, but to be honest I wasn’t really listening to the words – just the general sound of it. Probably because I was still in a ‘this is foreign’ frame of mind.

Tom: I still prefer the original, though. It’s got a great shoutalong chorus (“más” means “more”), whereas the English chorus of ‘fun fun fun’ is a bit too Beach Boys-esque to really work in this track. It’s bloody good, quite frankly.

Tim: It is, it really is, although after about three and half minutes I was ready for an ending. And not in my usual ‘I’m bored’ way, but in a ‘this is dragging a bit’ way.

Tom: Somehow, it manages to still sound like Ricky Martin while still being a modern pop song: for someone who most of the world still associates with Livin’ La Vida Loca, that’s not a bad feat.

I have to ask, though – what’s going on with the lopsided half-shaven hairstyle?

Tim: Well, I saw that and immediately thought prison. It’s probably not that, though.