John Lundvik – All About The Games

“I can’t help thinking that we’ve heard it all before.”

Tim: The Olympics are in full swing, which can only mean one thing: it musical cash-in time! Here’s the official song of Team Sweden, because apparently that’s a thing now.

Tom: This had better not be a Meghan Trainor cover.

Tim: Oh, that’d be wonderful, but no I’m afraid it isn’t.

Tim: And, well, if this wasn’t stuffing SPORTS OLYMPICS LOOK I’M ABOUT WINNING AND TAKING PART I’d mark this off as an Eric Prydz album track, largely because of the Pjanoo ripoff going on through the chorus (because surely no serious dance producer would listen to that without thinking “oh hang on”).

Tom: It’s uncomfortably close, isn’t it? I assume they’ve run it past the lawyers, because let’s be honest, anything to do with the Olympics gets run past a lot of lawyers.

Tim: It’s alright, I suppose, but I can’t help feeling that way more effort has been put into it than it actually deserves. For all that’s going on in there, I can’t help thinking that we’ve just, well, heard it all before, and not just because of the aforementioned chorus line.

Tom: Let’s not forget that the official song for London 2012 was genuinely original, emotional and stirring. This… isn’t.

Tim: It also doesn’t help that it does sound past its sell by date – an Olympic tie-in track should sound current, and this style of EDM’s been and gone. Distorted vocal samples and light tropical beats are where you want to be right now, not EDM from London 2012. I get the intention; I really don’t get the end product, though.

Galavant – Lightweight

“The style John Lundvik should have been aiming for yesterday.”

Tim: Galavant are a Swedish production who have very occasionally featured here before, and today we have a prime example of the style John Lundvik should have been aiming for yesterday. Pay attention, John, because you’ll no doubt want to use this come Tokyo 2020.

Tim: And I think that’s a really good instrumental chorus line.

Tom: I think the first half of it is excellent, but that odd, double speed section afterwards just sounds a little bit unpleasant.

Tim: It’s taken me sometime to get on board with this style, but I am all in right now, and this is a great example of using it without thumping beats underneath, without it becoming a bit of a racket and sounding overcompressed.

Tom: I know we spend a lot of time complaining about that style, the same way we spent a lot of time complaining about dubstep five years ago, but that’s because it sounds bloody awful.

Tim: See, I’ve made the switch already. As long it’s it’s not just loud from the melody, down from an excessive drumbeat, I’m fine with it, and here that’s what we’ve got.

The vocals surrounding it are good as well, and the intermediary verse beats, but that major synth line is where it’s really at, and is very good being there. I LIKE it.

Virtual Riot feat. Madi – Flutter

Tom: An anonymous reader sends this in, describing it as “a sweet chord progression combined with nice and crisp vocals”. Now that sounds more like they’re tasting wine to me, but let’s give it a listen.

Tom: That’s the most disappointing post-build chorus I’ve heard in a long time.

Tim: I read that sentence before I heard the chorus, and I’m not sure I’d agree with you, or at least not in the way I’d expected to. It’s not exactly a let-down – it still keeps the energy going, but it just goes nowhere near where we’d expect it go.

Tom: I realise there’s an argument that this is a deliberate genre choice, not just a poor selection of samples, but that doesn’t change the fact that it doesn’t sound good to me. That loud horn sample is discordant; the chorus sounds more like a disappointingly experimental middle eight; the chip tune samples are just overly harsh.

Tim: It is quite the mish mash, certainly – probably why the first chorus was so disappointing. You’ve got that first verses and pre-chorus being your standard electropop fare, but that drops off in favour of what’s left of dubstep these days, then moving on elsewhere into drum & bass territory with a few random bits chucked in here and there for balance.

Tom: Sorry, anonymous reader. It might be your sort of thing, it isn’t mine.

Tim: Wrong site, I think.

Tegan & Sara – BWU

Tom: Our reader, Alan, sends this in, saying it’s “one of the best tracks off their recent album”.

Tom: Now, that’s not a message you hear from a song very often, and it’s a good one.

Tim: Yeah, I can see why people might go for that – and your right, it’s not very common, though I’d say it’s more likely just that it’s not a widely-held enough view to be worth singing about.

Tom: The chorus is catchy, and manages to get an appropriate amount of happiness and wistfulness to match the lyrics. I can’t remember the verse, but then if you can remember the verse after one listen, then you’ve basically got a number one hit on your hands.

Tim: Or certainly one that deserves to be.

Tom: Maybe it outstays its welcome a little; but that’s always a problem when you’re trying to do a song like this. Nicely done.

Tim: Indeed. Did annoy me that it took me a while to work what BWU stood for, mind.

Saturday Flashback: Runaway Zoo – Youngwildblood

“There’s nothing I want from this song that isn’t already there.”

Tim: Concluding our review of this lot’s Mess Without You on Tuesday, I remarked I wanted to hear more. Well, here’s more – their previous track, from back in May.

Tim: And, to quote that wonderful Saturdays song, I just can’t get enough.

Tom: That’s wasn’t… you know what, their version was better, I can live with it.

Tim: It so was.

Tom: I can also live with this song: that’s one of the best introductions and first verses I’ve heard in a long while.

Tim: Isn’t it? Admittedly, lyrically it could be describe as a bit wanting, but on the other hand that single call and refrain repeated so many times is so effective with the build underneath it up to the thumping, beating chorus. We get so many songs of the “we’re young, we can do anything we want” variety, yet I can’t remember it ever being drilled in so definitively or maturely – a weird description perhaps, especially as I’m not quite sure how I mean it, but it’s one that springs to mind.

Tom: It is a really, really effective build. We’re seeing more and more songs that effectively have two choruses, and this is one of them.

Tim: And returning to that thumping, beating chorus: I like it a lot. It teeters on the edge of the boom-wherp thing–

Tom: “Overcompression” is the term, but yes. It’s close, but not quite enough to hurt. I can live with it.

Tim: Me too, because here the song knows exactly how not to do it badly, and how to make it sound good instead. On Tuesday, I had just one complaint, which wasn’t even really a complaint. Today: I got nothing. There is nothing I want from this song that isn’t already there.

Oh, and also, nothing to do with the music, but at the bottom of the video description: “Youngwildblood by Runaway Zoo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.” How often does that happen?

Tom: For anything that isn’t stock music? Very, very rarely.

Juno Im Park feat. Hannah Trigwell – Never Gonna Give You Up

“TROPICAL – they’ve got palm trees in the video and everything.”

Tim: WELL THEN. Juno Im Park are a German duo, Hannah’s British and off YouTube, and this song is, well, I’ll copy and paste:

“With Rick Astley having just secured both a UK no.1 album and a silver record, alongside British supporters of the European Union unofficially adopting the song and slogan as “Never Gonna Give EU Up”, the long-planned collaboration has unintentionally surfed the zeitgeist to become extremely topical.”

Tom: I dislike pretty much everything about that statement. Does it get worse?

Tim: Topical (as long as six weeks afterwards still counts as topical), and TROPICAL – they’ve got palm trees in the video and everything.

Tom: Okay, I’ll say this much: those are lovely vocals, and the retiming and occasional changed notes work really well.

Tim: Hmm, yes, that’s all true, but it doesn’t help with my biggest problem, which starts with the “long-planned” bit. Why? That implies there was a distinct importance to this, and yet let’s face it that there is a cover that never, ever needed to happen. I’m going to be harsh about this, because, well, it deserves it.

Tom: Why?

Tim: I don’t often think this about a track, but I genuinely can’t imagine any situation where anybody would ever think “I want to listen to a tropical house version of Never Gonna Give You Up”. What was the thinking behind this, beyond “that song was big on the internet for all the wrong reasons, so we should absolutely rerecord it in a modern yet increasingly stale sound”? I can’t fathom it, I really can’t.

Tom: See, I think there’s almost always room for a good cover, and this is at least a cut above the normal.

Tim: Oh, sure, it’s competent enough – decent vocal, above average production values – but just… why?

Tom: You could ask that about any human endeavour, Tim. Because it was there.

Dolly Style – Unicorns & Ice Cream

“Prepare to have your expectations missed.”

Tim: Dolly Style have a come quite a way since their Melodifestivalen debut last year – for a start they’ve had three follow up singles, which is a good three times as many as I’d have originally predicted.

Tom: Given my initial reaction to seeing their name was “oh, not again”, that’s an encouraging first line.

Tim: As for what to expect: well, see the title, but prepare to have your expectations missed.

Tim: And that’s really about as bubblegum as bubblegum pop gets, isn’t it? Right from the opening Looney Tunes reference, the jumping around, the pastel colours and the actual unicorns in the video.

Tom: It’s not bad as these things go, but it still misses the mark. It’s possible to make something like this sound really, really catchy: instead, it comes off as try-hand and a bit irritating.

Tim: Perhaps, maybe – but the thing is, despite their name, history and unicorns: it doesn’t fit too badly in the current scene of pop that encompasses Katy Perry and Carly Rae Jepsen. Lyrics would be laughed out of the radio studio before it got anywhere near airplay, mind, but musically it’s a decent shot – I can actually see myself listening to an album of it.

Tom: It’s definitely not the lead single — or at least, it shouldn’t be — but yes, I can see what you mean.

Tim: And that’s a hell of a development since Hello Hi.

Rod & Ebba – Summer Paradise

“This would have been a bit dull and clichéd twenty years ago, and as it is… no.”

Tom: Been spendin’ most our lives, liv… no?

Tim: Oh, really really not. Elba’s new to us, but we’ve met Rod before – you’ve probably done your best to forget it, though. It’s an improvement on that, by quite some way, though not quite as good as Simple Plan’s song of the same name.

Tim: So, a couple separated and dreaming of where they met. And (by the way, I’m about to do that occasional thing whether I ruthlessly and pointlessly overanalyse the lyrics)…

Tom: …oh boy. Go for it.

Tim: I don’t know whether to be annoyed that they’ve given up reading one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies three quarters of the way through, or disturbed by the fact that she’s singing a song like this whilst simultaneously planning to [spoiler alert] fake her own death. I mean, they’re making a pact to meet up again and everything, and she’s going to pull that on him? That’s just cruel, it really is.

Tom: Right. Romeo and Juliet isn’t a good romantic reference, folks.

Tim: On the other hand, music’s fine.

Tom: It’s really not.

Tim: Well…

Tom: This is such an anaemic mix: it’s like it’s been massively overcompressed, and run through a filter to remove all the bass. I listened to an official version and, no, it’s deliberately mixed like this.

Tim: Okay that much I’ll grant you.

Tom: This is plodding. The first two lines of the chorus barely move from one note.

Tim: Hmm…also a fair point.

Tom: This would have been a bit dull and clichéd twenty years ago, and as it is… no, I just don’t get it as “fine”. It’s not even “meh”. It’s poor. Even the middle eight doesn’t save it, which is saying something.

Tim: Fine, I get it as being largely unimaginative, and basically the sort you’d find two-thirds of the way through a budget compilation dance CD, the ones that can’t afford the likes of Guetta or Tiësto. But I’d dance around to it, and wouldn’t object if I was drunk at a beach party at half one. You’re that taken against it?

Tom: This would get knocked out in the first round of Melodifestivalen, and it’d deserve to be.

Runaway Zoo – Mess Without You

“I want more of it. Much more.”

Tim: These guys are a band from Finland, and, well, I’m not sure if “synthrock” is a genre, but if this is anything to go by I’d like it to be please.

Tim: Couple of brief individual notes – I always find it a bit disconcerting when bands split “fine” over two beats as “fuh-ine”, because there’s the initial possibility that the song could go off in a completely different direction.

Tom: I didn’t understand what that sentence meant until I heard that line. Yep, that’s not how my brain completed that line.

Tim: Also the “baby, your” kicking off the chorus brings What Makes You Beautiful to mind immediately, never a bad thing.

Tom: These are both very specific notes, though.

Tim: Yes, so more generally: I love this track, almost every single part of it. The single part I don’t like is that the opening instrumental part of the middle eight, which is absolutely wonderful, doesn’t also appear as a post-chorus earlier in the song as well. Having nothing there makes the song go too quickly, and when I hear that fantastic instrumental part I just want more.

Tom: It’s odd to hear all your comments being specific rather than wide-ranging. For my part: good instrumentation, lovely arpeggios, and — as you said — surprisingly good and joyously old-school middle-eight synths. The rest of it…

Tim: I don’t often say this about a song, but it’s too short. I want more of it. Much more. MORE OF THAT MIDDLE EIGHT.

Tom: …yep. As is so often, the best part is the bit that isn’t like the rest of the song.

Regina Spektor – Bleeding Heart

“It could be moving and original, if the chorus was entirely different. “

Tom: Our regular reader, Luca, sends this one. He includes a paragraph of text that closes with “this was the most moving and original song released this year”.

Tim: Ooh.

Tim: Erm.

Tom: Nope.

Tim: Well, not entirely nope. It could be moving and original, if the chorus was entirely different.

Tom: Sorry, Luca, but I don’t hear it. Each line of that chorus is just two notes ping-ponging back and forth. Is it catchy? Yes. But I don’t want it to be. That’s a really irritating chorus to have stuck in my head.

But I think I know why you might think that: because that middle eight sounds like it belongs to a completely different song entirely.

Tim: Yeah – and also the verses, which do come across dark and emotional, and could arguably be described as moving, but that chorus undoes all the work they put in.

Tom: Which is a great shame! There are small parts of this that are powerful, that are well-written, that tick all the boxes. The chorus? I need to listen to something else to get it out of my head.