Veronica Maggio – Den första är alltid gratis

“It just pushes so many wonderful buttons for me.”

Tim: Cat Stevens reckoned the first cut is the deepest; Veronica here thinks in Swedish that ‘The First Is Always Free’.

Tom: That is an incredibly tenuous link, well done.

Tim: Well, I try my best.

Tim: And with ‘first’ here she’s referring to basically everything – first time, first kiss, first dream, even the first betrayal. Over time, though, it becomes expensive, apparently. But that’s all beside the point, because for me here’s it’s all about the music, and that track just pushes so many wonderful buttons for me.

Tom: I wasn’t expecting it to kick in the way it did: mid-first-verse is an odd place to suddenly add percussion. It does work, it just surprised me.

Tim: It doesn’t even bother me that the video’s largely nonsensical – that good vocal, that nice melody, the second half of the middle eight, that string section that builds into him getting slammed into the boot of the car–

Tom: Not technically part of the music there, but I’ll allow it because, hey, string section. It’s a good string section.

Tim: More than anything else at all, though: those backing synths are just utterly glorious. This is plain wonderful, and I won’t have it said any other way.

Kevin Borg – Young At Heart

“It’s not just unremarkable: it’s completely forgettable.”

Tim: The video’s been deleted now, but about a year ago someone worked out what Man of Steel would look like without the ludicrous colour grading they did in post production, and a lot of people quite liked it. Apparently, though, someone didn’t take the hint.

Tim: The song itself is largely unremarkable: uplifting ballad, but as a former Idol winner, Kevin really should know that your standard choruses should be at least at the level that that final chorus is at.

Tom: I can’t even remember that final chorus. It’s in one ear and out the other. It’s not just unremarkable: it’s completely forgettable.

Tim: Everything here, except possibly the first verse and maybe the middle eight, is way too underplayed for this to be the uplifting ballad that this wants to be. The video, on the other hand – well, I’m not sure who’s responsible for those bedroom scenes, but they should take a long hard look in the mirror and consider whether they’re actually in the right job, because (for me at least) that excess of blue genuinely took attention away from the song.

Tom: As someone who’s just had to do a tricky colour grading job: sometimes you do the best with what you’ve got. I think they might be trying for a “day for night” shot there: if so, it hasn’t really worked. Too much blue.

Tim: Yep. Mind you, my attention loss could be partly the song’s fault for not being exciting enough in the first place.

Agnete – Icebreaker

“Bizarre.”

Tim: So here’s Norway’s Eurovision entry; I know we did Eurovision tracks a few weeks back, but two things: first, this has a new video, and second, it’s worth discussing because a part of it is utterly bizarre.

Tom: I just can’t get used to it. I know if you listen to a song enough you’ll get used to it, but it hasn’t happened yet.

Tim: Nor me, really, but let’s start with the video, and it’s nice – plenty of ice, certainly, although disappointingly little breaking. And then there’s the music, which (justly) beat Norwegian Daz. The verses are great – they have a Euphoria-esque quality to them, with the backing underneath sounding very similar and then the standard but effective build in the pre-chorus.

Tom: There’s a few late-90s synth patches in there as well, which surprisingly work well.

Tim: Very true – there’s lots of good stuff there. Except then we go quiet for a bit, and suddenly the chorus comes in with a completely different time signature, dropping from your standard 4/4 down to two step, and it’s entirely weird. The quiet bits each side of the chorus I can only assume have been put there to make that a bit less distracting.

Tom: It’s just such a bizarre choice: everything changes so much, it’s like there are two completely different production teams working on it, and some notes got lost between them.

Tim: All of this doesn’t make it a bad song, of course – it’s a great chorus coupled with very good verses, and the vocals and production are all top notch. I just slightly wish they were verses and choruses from the same song, because this isn’t a song I’d hugely look forward to dancing to.

Lena Philipsson – Gråt inga tårar

“Timpani hits!”

Tim: Back to the good stuff, and let’s have this from Lena – in case you need an intro, she’s Swedish, has been going over thirty years, representing Sweden at Eurovision 12 years ago, and this here, translating as Shed No Tears, is her second release from album number 13.

Tim: Starts big, stays big, and indeed basically just is big.

Tom: Timpani hits! There are timpani hits in there, I think, or something very close to them. Not something you hear in pop music since… well, since Aqua, perhaps?

Tim: Quite possibly. It’s not a modern sound by any standards, but it’s picking up plenty of plays on Sweden’s equivalent of Radio 2 so the target market clearly like it, and I do too.

Tom: I know I’ve heard something very similar to the first line of that chorus before in a few places, but I don’t give a damn. It’s a really good first line.

Tim: Not a huge amount more to say about it, really – it’s a good track, more or less exactly as we’d really expect from anybody still going strong for as long as she has. Great to know she’s still got it, and here’s to albums 14, 15, and all the rest.

Saturday Reject: Samanta Tīna – We Live For Love

“Heck of a dress.”

Tim: Remember Germany last year, when the person who’d been chosen to represent pulled out immediately after being crowned? (If not, here’s the car crash moment, and you don’t need to speak German to feel the cringe.)

Tom: Has it happened again? Oh, tell me it’s happened again.

Tim: Not quite, but something similar happened in Latvia, though it wasn’t quite so last minute – just after performing, Samanta rushed over to say that actually, she didn’t think her song was good enough, and wanted to withdraw. That was with a different song, though – here’s her second song, which somehow didn’t make it past the first heat.

Tom: Heck of a dress.

Tim: Isn’t it just? I mean, in any sane world, that dress alone should be enough to get her a pass straight to the final – we may have had projection mapping a few weeks back with Wiktoria, but I’m fairly sure this is the first time clothing has ever been used for set design.

Tom: Also, full marks for eyelashes. Not sure about the interpretive dance in the background though.

Tim: Well, they could just hide behind the dress. (Again, not something you could say about many clothes.) Sadly, though, that seemingly wasn’t enough to overcome things like that weird slightly nasal tone her voice takes on in the chorus, or – well, I don’t know, really, because that’s the only thing I don’t like about this.

Tom: There are a couple of duff notes in there, and while that’s a harsh thing to grade on when the rest of her performance is great — Europe’s voters won’t give any leniency there.

Tim: I’d have thought the rest would be good enough to proceed through at least the semi-final, but alas, no – guess she’ll have to try another year. After all, after your fifth attempt you might as well keep on going, right?

Rod feat. Soundstreamers – Light It Up

“It’s certainly awful. I’m not sure about wonderful.”

Tim: You know how people often have a negative view of European dance and pop music, and we’re stuck defending it and saying that actually it’s very well produced and original and definitely not rubbish? WELL, lets have some fun on a Friday as we sit back and be entirely unable to defend this, from a Swedish production duo and a singer off Albania’s The Voice (yup, really).

Tim: Oh, isn’t it wonderfully awful?

Tom: I mean, it’s certainly awful. I’m not sure about wonderful. That’s the most monotone verse I’ve heard in a long while.

Tim: From the first notes that come straight out of Pitbull’s cutting room floor to the mediocre rapping, from the myriad weird effects in the video to them occasionally forgetting to remove the snow overlay from the interior clips.

Tom: Is that snow, or is it just dust being shown up by the lighting?

Tim: Well that’s one hell of a dusty workshop, he should be ashamed of himself. I want to list more from…to… bits, but it truth there’s so little variation it’s almost impossible to. The chorus, admittedly, is comparatively not bad, but I’d say that there are nineteen seconds of this track which are actually enjoyable – from the key change at 3:09, through the fairly decent chorus with the layered vocals, until it drops back to the Pitbull reject beats at 3:26 and stays far beyond its welcome.

Tom: You forget the bizarre overlaid voice at 3:20 that sounds like an error in the mixing.

Tim: See I like all those overlays – provides something of interest to the song.

Tom: Remember, though: if you don’t know the genre, if your ears aren’t attuned to pop: this is what most of the stuff we listen to sounds like. Those people who think all hip-hop’s just people yelling over a sample, or all opera’s just some bloke yelling notes?

Tim: Ehhhhhhh…maybe there’s something to be said for that. Just, ever so slightly, maybe. But, having levelled all the criticisms – would I dance my absolute nut off to this with enough rum & diet Coke in my system? OH HELL YEAH.

Benjamin Wallfisch & Disa – New World Coming

“It is quite Tim Burton-y.”

Tim: Tim Burton’s got a new film coming out in a few months, apparently; here’s this from the soundtrack, composed by Benjamin and sung by the Icelandic Disa. Before you push play: it is quite Tim Burton-y.

Tom: Takes a while to get going, but yes, you’re absolutely right, it’s Tim Burton-y,

Tim: Isn’t it? It’s a cover of a 1970 track by Mama Cass, and it couldn’t really sound more different. That is upbeat and jaunty, giving the impression that the new world will be happy and wonderful and, well, full of peace, joy and love. This keeps those lyrics, but you can’t quite help thinking that there’s a little more to it than that – much the same way that I Think We’re Alone Now goes from being a sexy banger to a really disturbing creepy number when you cut it down to half speed.

Tom: It also reminds me of Lorde’s absolutely spectacular cover of Everybody Wants To Rule The World. In fact, I think it suffers from that comparison: because I don’t know the original, and because it doesn’t have quite as much… well, “oomph” to it, I think I’m slightly set against it. There’s nothing actually wrong with it, it just sounds like a regular movie soundtrack song.

Tim: In any case, I think this is a wonderful interpretation – just her lovely but eerie vocal for the first minute, and then some magnificent backing instrumentation underneath following that. A middle eight that is decidedly unorthodox, but then bringing back the main line, slightly faster, for the closing part. It’s not one I’d put on regular rotation, because of the whole creepy factor, but it’s a lovely piece of work.

Kygo – Raging

“It’s a bit of a change in synth pad, I’ll give him that.”

Tom: First track from the new album. Given that everyone’s copied his old trick, he needs a new one.

Tom: That is… hmm. Well, it’s a bit of a change in synth pad, I’ll give him that, although it now sounds like… hmm. A slightly downbeat version of something Robert Miles would have put out in the mid-90s? Or maybe Robert Miles meets Aviici, with way too much compression on the track? I’m not sure.

Tim: I don’t know, I really like it. Tropical house arguably had a limited shelf-life, coming as it did from Kygo’s computer rather than any gradual dance club movement like basically every other dance genre has done. Harsh as it may sound, it’s almost the Internet meme of music genres – came from nowhere, a few other people mixed it around a bit, but after a while it’s time to move on. Kyo knows that, and he’s moving on, to this.

Tom: I sound like I’m being massively negative about it: it’s a decent track, and a good direction to go in after there was nothing left in that old pineapple-scented synth. It’s not as much of an immediate attention-grabber, but it’s not bad.

Tim: No – I think it’s a fine way to close off his debut album.

Bebe Rexha feat. Nicki Minaj – No Broken Hearts

Tom: A name I haven’t seen before, but she’s got Nicki Minaj as a featured artist — and a decent songwriting career. Okay, I’m intrigued.

Tim: Ah, I see we’ve gone back to 2009.

Tom: Harsh, but not entirely unfair. That is an astonishingly good introduction, leading into an amazing hook. And note that they went straight into the hook — no first verse here. It’s a weird combination of upbeat lyrics and melody with downbeat tempo and percussion, and, for me at least, it really, really works.

Tim: Ehhhhh…I quite want to like this, because you’re right, that is a good hook. But the rest of it? It’s just terrible, mate. The verses are tedious, Nicki Minaj’s bit is, well, exactly what I expected, but most of all, that autotune – it sounds like something movie kidnappers use to disguise their voice, it’s been laid on so thick.

Tom: The verses: they’ll do well enough, and as for Nicki Minaj’s bit: well, that was never going to be a good match for either of our tastes, was it? But then we’re definitely not the target audience.

Tim: Understatement of the decade, there.

Tom: I can’t explain why I like this. It’s not even because of the near-nudity in the music video, I had it in a background tab. It’s just the hook: it’s that good.

Tim: As was yesterday’s chorus. But similarly, it’s nowhere near good enough to rescue the rest of it.

Victor Crone – Feelgood Day

“Those are bloody awful lyrics.”

Tim: Second single from Swedish Victor, and before you push play, I’ll ask you not to be immediately put off by the lyrics in the first verse.

Tom: Those are bloody awful lyrics.

Tim: Indeed: let’s face it, the issues are myriad. ‘Shades of grey are more than fifty’ makes it already outdated, the restricted zone metaphor doesn’t make much sense, and I’m fairly sure ‘You’re not answering your phone, right outside and I can hear you’ would be grounds for a restraining order. Add that to the inevitably irritating ukulele twanging, and you’re almost certain to end up with a song I’ll hate.

Tom: “Your life is a restricted zone.” I’d say that’s a translation issue, but I can’t even work out what that might have been translated from.

Tim: Yeah – it’s really quite bizarre. After all that, though, and just as I’m preparing to throw my iPad across the room, that chorus comes along.

Tom: And it could be so trite! The lyrics are sophomoric, the melody is predictable (and has something of the Bublé about it) but somehow the sheer major-key enthusiasm of it saves it.

Tim: It really does just sound so good. Nowhere near good enough to make up for those lyrics, verse instrumentation, the missing space in the title and entire lack of effort from the middle eight onwards, but that it still a chorus that brings along, yup, a ‘feelgood’ day. Nice lyric video as well, so, hmm, 27%.