Years & Years – Shine

“Oh, this is VERY good isn’t it yes it is”

Tim: Hoping to demonstrate they won’t be one-hit wonders, the BBC’s Sound of 2015 are following up King with this, a lovely number.

Tom: It’s not a Take That cover. That’s a shame.

Tim: Verses: very pleasant, though admittedly not the the most exciting we’ve heard. Everything else about this, though: bloody marvellous.

Tom: So here’s an odd thing: I absent-mindedly only had one headphone in when I started listening to this, and I wasn’t impressed. Then I put the other one in, and blimey: the stereo effect in the verses suddenly really stuck out, in a way that few tracks do these days. An odd thing to notice, I know, but it’s a sign of it not being massively wall-compressed, and that there’s someone with decent creativity mastering it.

Tim: Huh – I’ve not listened to it with headphones, but that’s good to know. Also good is that chorus, as when I hit I was suddenly thinking, “oh, this is VERY good isn’t it yes it is”, because it is. That middle eight as well? Lovely, both the vocal part and the instrumental bit. Then, coming at the end, it goes properly all in and there’s really nothing I can complain about at all.

Tom: Yep, it’s pretty good, this. Not sure it’s be on my regular playlist, but that’s just personal taste rather than any particular complaint — for once, I can absolutely see why you like this one, and I agree that it’s a good track even if it’s not for me.

Tim: Basically, I’m now even happier than I was that I’ll be seeing them live in about ten days time, while you lot’ll all be watching a slightly dull Eurovision.

Petra Marklund – Det Som Händer i Göteborg (Stannar i Göteborg)

“Fairly sure that’s Las Vegas, but okay.”

Tim: Petra, you may recall, is what September restyled herself as a few years back when she wanted to go all dull and ballady.

Tom: I didn’t actually recall that, which says something about how successful that restyling was.

Tim: Well, we never actually featured any of the stuff on here because, well, dull and ballady. Now, though we’re back to be a bit more dancey, with “What Happens in Gothenburg (Stays in Gothenburg)”.

Tom: Fairly sure that’s Las Vegas, but okay, let’s hear it.

Tim: And there you go. It is, if you will, a toned-down September track for the 2015-era; much as Can’t Get Over was incredibly enjoyable back in 2008 (and as much as I may still listen to it now occasionally), such is the fickleness of the music industry that it really wouldn’t cut it much now, but this very much does and it sounds pretty good for it.

Tom: Really? It doesn’t do much for me — what do you like about it?

Tim: Decently rowdy chorus, a lovely pre-chorus and verses that do a great job of getting from the former to the latter.

Tom: Ah, then we differ in opinion on the chorus — what you hear as “rowdy” I hear as noise. I suspect that’s personal taste rather than anything to do with the production itself, though.

Tim: Quite probably. When you add in the perfectly serviceable ooh-oohs in the middle eight, I like this – it’s the first from her second album as Petra Marklund, and I’m looking forward to hearing the rest of that.

Dolly Style – Cherry Gum

“It’s bad.”

Tim: Reviewing Hello Hi, we wondered if this lot had a future after Melodifestivalen; well, Polly didn’t as she immediately quit, but Molly and Holly are still going strong, with another (as yet unnamed) member taking Polly’s place.

Tom: Probably still called Polly: I suspect whoever put the group together designed it so the actual singers were interchangeable.

Tim: Cynic.

Tim: And…and I have no idea what to make of that.

Tom: I do: it’s bad. It’s rare for me to flat-out say a track like this is bad, but it’s somehow managed to turn their Euro-J-Pop thing into a morass of plodding dullness. Don’t get me wrong, it’s absolutely possible to do Eurodance tracks like this and make it decent — Almighty Records proves that the style works, and the old 90s releases from Dancemania show the tracks can be decent even if they’re not remixes. But this…

Tim: Not a fan, then. But still, “You will hear me when I come, when I pop my cherry gum, I will never stop pop.” What does all that mean please?

Tom: It’s either cheap innuendo or just half-assed lyrics. Or both.

Tim: I’d have a punt on that last, I think. Musically, it’s pretty much as previously, though to a slightly lesser extent – the verses could just about be contained within a standard song, but that chorus is – well, about cherry gum popping. Is this what it’ll be from now on? Part silliness, part cheap innuendo? Well, that’ll clearly never last.

Saturday Reject: Tor & Bettan – All Over The World

“Hit that out of the park and into orbit around the moon.”

Tim: Quick warning for you, Tom: you may want to have some Xanax on hand for after the middle eight. Every normal person, though, will FIND. THIS. GLORIOUS.

Tom: Good heavens, that’s a powerful introduction.

Tim: It got to the Gold Final of Norway’s contest this year, and oh, it’s just one of the feel-goodest songs we’ve heard in a long, long time.

Tom: So obviously I’m going to disagree here. Sure, an attempt at a feel-good song in a long, long time. But it’s like a teacher trying to be cool, or a Christian rock band trying to get a group of bored schoolchildren interested in Jesus. Yes, they’re hitting what should theoretically be the right notes, but the result just hits a wall of cynicism, along with a vague wondering whether Norway have accidentally dug out an entry from thirty years ago.

Tim: Mate, you’re just messed up. For the first couple of minutes I was wondering why the lighting and staging were so calm for a song of this nature, as right from the first chorus it’s very much a THIS IS AWESOME number. Come the final section, though, WOW, didn’t they just hit that out of the park and into orbit around the moon. And that camera shot facing out to the audience? Just now, that’s overtaken the Måns Zelmerlöw shot as my favourite of the year, purely for what it’s hiding.

Tom: Yep, I absolutely can’t fault the staging and technical direction on it: it’s just a shame about everything else.

Tim: ‘Shame’? Bloody hell. You may hate the number of kids there (and wonder how they were planning on doing that at Eurovision with its age limit of 16 and performer limit of six), but damn, you surely can’t deny that’s a bloody wonderful way to close this track.

Infernal – Love Is All (Summer 2015 Edition)

“A big donk underneath and a massive breakdown in the middle.”

Tim: ‘From Paris to Berlin’ hitmakers Infernal have ditched their Paw & Lina title and are now heading off on tour around Denmark; to celebrate that, a few tracks a getting beefed up a bit. Like this 2010 one – here’s the original for comparison.

Tim: So, synth line is out and piano’s in, and also added is a big donk underneath and a massive breakdown in the middle.

Tom: That basically sums up the last five years of music, right there.

Tim: An improvement? Eehhhh…not so much as far as I’m concerned, unfortunately, as it just sounds a bit harsh on my ears.

Tom: I never did understand why “Paris to Berlin” was such a hit, and I’d put this in the same ballpark — at least it’s trying to do something different, but that breakdown in the middle just isn’t pleasant to listen to.

Tim: Yes, the original might sound ever so slightly dated but surely not enough that it warrants a redo already. I don’t know, it’s still pretty good, but I think I’ll stick with the original for now.

Darin – Ta Mig Tillbaka

“A decent amount of general yearning.”

Tim: Alternatively, Take Me Back, so you’ll no doubt be expecting a fairly calm ballad from this, with a decent amount of general yearning.

Tom: That’s a shipping forecast right there.

Tim: And what do you know, that’s exactly what you’ve got. Pleasant track, this, though I’ve no idea what the video’s about, aside from possibly just trying to show that everything was better in Paris and forests and the days of yore, which may or may not be true, depending on what your view of plague and bloody revolution is.

Tom: And that’s just when they ran out of croissants last week.

Tim: Hardly a soundtrack to bloody revolution, though, so I might be interpreting that a bit wrong. In any case, very listenable ballad, and one which becomes very much more listenable when it comes back for the final couple of choruses.

Tom: I’m less convinced: only those last couple of choruses stand out for me. There’s enough going on in them. Otherwise, I just seemed to tune out a bit. Why not start with that, then turn it up a touch more for the final choruses?*

* Chorii?

Tim: Yes, it could perhaps have done with that extra substance throughout, but I’ll take it.

The Main Level – My Girl

“Let’s be frank: this really needn’t be a four minute song.”

Tim: Boyband pop and Batman in the video; I’m not sure there’s anything else you need, really.

Tim: Although you probably don’t need as much of it as there is. Let’s be frank: this really needn’t be a four minute song.

Tom: It sounds like someone’s taken the middle eight from “I Love You, Always Forever” and spun it out into a whole chorus — and then put some verses around it. ‘Cos that chorus is lovely, but you’re right: the rest is a bit Generic Boy Band.

Tim: It’s decent enough, though with admittedly somewhat uninspired lyrics, but I really don’t find it interesting enough to hold my self – by the end of the second chorus I was expecting it to be wrapping up soon, and then I realised there was a full minute and a half to go. My feeling at that point kind of said it all – less of an “oh, no” or an “oh, yay!” and more of an “oh, alright then”.

It’s basically fine, and I’m not really sure there’s a better word to describe it.

Darude feat. AI AM – Beautiful Alien

“I question whether that’s a ‘new’ tune.”

Tim: Yes, Darude, of Sandstorm and Feel The Beat megafame, back with a new tune. He had a few more recent hits in his native Finland back around 2007, but now this is getting a multinational push, presumably hoping for the same level of success.

Tom: I question whether that’s a “new” tune.

Tim: First for me, a wondering: for someone whose two biggest hits have had either no vocal at all or just a single line, the amount of vocals seems a bit weird. There’s next to no focus at all on the dance bit, despite the multiple builds up to an a cappella “beautiful alien” that almost yearns to be followed by a good thirty seconds or so of massive dance stuff.

Tom: I suppose that’s a side effect of Avicii and his farm-house style: you’re expected to have Big Vocals now.

Tim: Admittedly it’s nowhere short on big beats, but the vocal focus seems surprising. Second, a complaint of sorts: all the Darude-sounding stuff that we enjoyed fifteen years ago is there, but nearly almost entirely recycled. The part beneath the intro is identical to Sandstorm, as the the underlying part that surrounds the two minute mark.

Tom: Yep, agreed: this is the same thing Sash tried with Encore Une Fois: add a new vocal, keep some of the instrumentation, see if people will buy it. It’ll probably do about as well.

Tim: I suppose the argument might be that he wants to keep a similar sound but bring it up to date, which is technically correct, but ideally it’d be by combining two, rather than having half identical and half largely unlike the previous, almost more or a mashup of two tracks than a whole new one. I don’t know, I quite like it; it’s just not remotely what I wanted a Darude comeback track to be.

Helena Paparizou – Angel

“It’s just…oh, you could do so much better.”

Tim: One of our favourite artists of the past year is back with the English version of the lead track off her next album; I’ll think you’ll find it worth your time.

Tom: Oh, that surprised me when it kicked in.

Tim: Interesting, this – heck of a chorus, but to be honest not a lot else, or at least that’s what I’m left thinking after hearing it a couple of times. The verses are obviously there, sure, but seem very much there just to get from one chorus to the next, and I’m not sure whether I like that at all.

Tom: Agreed. Genius struck while composing the chorus — and that middle-eight as well, that heartbeat is just brilliant — but the verses just aren’t there. Fortunately, they don’t stick around for too long.

Tim: It’s almost a let down, really – this has the exact same writers behind it as Survivor, and that was really just in a different league. I might be being too negative, though, as I think I’m holding her to higher standards than I would others; after all, that is very much a Good Chorus, it’s just…oh, you could do so much better.

Tom: It’s three-quarters of the way there. The verses are the other quarter.

Saturday Reject: Anne Gadegaard – Suitcase

“It’s not just about the hook.”

Tim: Back to Denmark now, and the song that came a close second (first with the viewers), and has since convincingly won the YouTube views race. A gentle number for you, with pleasantly literal staging.

Tom: Brave choice with the extreme close-up there, but it paid off.

Tim: It’s staging like this (the suitcase, not the close-up, that is), and Belarus’s in 2010, that make me think of the missed opportunities that were had by Greece in 2013 when they could have lobbed bottles of Ouzo into the audience, or Latvia last year when they could have baked an actual cake on stage (though given the time available, probably just stuck some Mr Kipling pies in a microwave). But I digress. This song.

Tom: It’s good. Very good. Maybe too many repeats of ‘sui-ui-ui-ui-uitcase’, but I can’t complain about that. It’s rare that even the verse in a song is good enough that I stop writing and listen to it properly. All of this song is good: it’s not just about the hook.

Tim: Peaceful, calming and inoffensive, and I suppose kind of fitting for the “follow your dreams and stop arsing about at home” theme, though it wouldn’t hurt to give it a bit more oomph to hammer that in. Happy lyrics, happy music, cheerful all round. Nice work.

God, I love that Belarus moment.