Tom: DJ Fresh, purveyor of top-quality dance CHOONS. Dizzee Rascal, one of the most energetic live performers I’ve ever seen. Surely this can’t be anything other than spectacularly good?
Tom: Okay, that’s not the best start, but I’m sure it’ll pick up… huh. That’s… well. That’s two very different songs jammed together. One’s an 80s-inspired synth singalong, and the other’s a bassline-fuelled Dizzee rap track. And it keeps switching between the two.
Tim: Yes, it does, doesn’t it?
Tom: And I like it.
Tim: Ah, a difference of opinion.
Tom: Here’s the thing: I can’t explain why I like it. Maybe it’s just because these two are clearly so damned good; even when it seems a bit disjointed, the various parts are still so energetic and danceable that they just work anyway.
Tim: You think? Yes, they’re energetic and danceable, but whenever Mr Rascal’s doing his stuff, I’m thinking, “Hurry up, bring back the other bit,” but when they do bring back the other bit I think that Dizzee needs to come back or it’ll get annoying. And then he does come back, and I want him to go away again. Oh, I DON’T KNOW.
Tim: Youngblood: a newish Swedish boyband, who had a flop debut single last year, announced themselves vaguely successfully to the world at Melodifestivalen, and are following up with this.
Tim: Right. First off, let’s get the inevitable out of the way: this song is ridiculous.
Tom: “Fell in love, face first?” No. You can fall in water face first. Or, if you’re Biff from Back to the Future, you can fall in manure face first. You can’t fall in love face first.
Tim: That’s what you’re going for first? Because musically, it’s standard boyband fare, so not particularly interesting, but lyrics-wise, it’s a whole other ball game. We have a Swedish band singing about how they know London so well, but desperately want a girl from New York. It makes no sense, and to be honest it wouldn’t remotely surprise me if this is a song that got rejected by One Direction’s management.
Tom: That’d explain the London references: switch it to a British band and it all makes sense. In fact: that’s pretty much the only explanation, sure?
Tim: Probably, yes, but it’s it’s not like it’s just the lyrics. There’s also the video, which opens with them encouraging a group of girls who’ve doubtless never heard of them before to sing along to their last song, and then mostly appears to have been shot with Instagram filters for no good reason whatsoever.
Tom: Ever since I’ve moved to London, videos like this annoy me. It’s the kind of thing that, as a Londoner, I’m going to have to grumpily navigate around as I make my way through the city.
Tim: Huh, see I quite like things like that. Like when I’m watching Fringe and I see a part of Vancouver I recognise, I’m a bit “Ooh, I know that.” Though admittedly it’s getting a bit dull now it’s London.
Anyway, stupid and ridiculous as this song is: I love it.
Tom: What?
Tim: I think it’s great. I can’t write that without laughing at myself for thinking it, but as far as I’m concerned it’s fantastic. And you won’t convince me otherwise.
Tom: It’s a fine line between “formulaic but good” and “utter pap”, and this falls squarely on the wrong side of that line.
Out go the drums and synthy stuff, in come the pianos and tinkly stuff.
Tim: ELEVEN YEARS AGO: iiO released their track ‘Rapture‘ which was massive pretty much everywhere that had nightclubs. Or, more accurately, music in general.
A FEW YEARS BACK: Nadia Ali, who did the singing, split from producer Markus Moser.
ABOUT EIGHTEEN MONTHS AGO: she re-recorded the song, got it remixed by everyone’s favourite Swedish bloke called Tim, Avicii, and then re-released it.
IN FEBRUARY: it suddenly started getting radio airplay here, apropos of nothing in particular.
NOW: it’s June and therefore SUMMER(ish), so we’ll listen to it.
Tom: My word, that’s either excellent genes, excellent makeup, or she was ten years old when she sang the original of this. Not that it matters, of course, but, well, yes.
Tim: So, out go the drums and synthy stuff, in come the pianos and tinkly stuff. And then fairly different drums and synthy stuff, because they’re like a legal obligation or something. And to be honest, I’m not sure about this. I first looked it up because Dev, Satan’s gift to Radio 1, talked about it on the radio a while back.
Tom: I do wonder why you listen to Radio 1 if all you’re going to do is come up with witty insults about it. …wait, never mind.
Tim: I never heard Dev play it, and now I’ve listened to it – it’s less of a remix and more a completely different track.
Tom: For those of us who listen to a lot of mashups – in other words, me – that’s not a problem. Let’s not forget Tiesto’s ‘He’s A Pirate‘, which is pretty much the record-setter for how little of an original you can include to still qualify as a remix. I rather like it.
Tim: Oh, I don’t think it’s bad. It’s just that, well, the vocals are there, sure, although I’ve got to say I don’t recognise the second verse she sings. Underneath them, though, is standard ‘hurry up and finish so we can get to the epic breakdown’ piano stuff, and after that, well, like I say, a completely different track.
Like I said, I don’t dislike it – I’d probably really enjoy it if I’d not heard the original, or if it had some other vocals on it. It’s just not remotely was I was expecting, or, I suppose, hoping it would be, and that puts me off it.
Tom: It works for me. And after all, it could’ve been worse. It could’ve been dubstep.
England has a long history of good football songs.
Tom: England has a long history of good football songs.
Tim: Go on then. Display your encyclopaedic knowledge.
Tom: Three Lions is the canonical one, although I’d say it’s beaten out by Vindaloo: the latter can be chanted better, didn’t come back for two extra cash-in attempts, and has a much better video – one which, most importantly, features Ed Tudor-Pole waltzing through it for no good reason. That’s before we even mention All Together Now (re-released in 2004), Back Home (1970 and sung by the team themselves, but still counts), or Carnaval de Paris. Yep, Dario G is English.
Tim: Great. So we’ve got another good one coming coming up?
Tom: Well, not quite. You know what England has a much longer history of? Dodgy football songs.
Tim: Oh.
Tom: To wit:
Tom: Chris Kamara is well known to football fans for being the comedy one out of the Sky Sports commentators. (That clip will explain the “missed red cards” references throughout the video.) Actually, let’s be fair. he does have a good set of pipes on him. And there have been much worse charity singles, and much worse football songs, than this.
Tim: True; there have been many better ones as well, as you just demonstrated. It’s…oh, it’s not terrible, I suppose, although the turning ‘England’ into ‘Engaland’ always gets me for some reason.
Tom: Wait, “gets you” in a good way or a bad way?
Tim: Oh, a bad way. A very very bad way.
Tom: It’s trying to be a bit 70s pub-rock, and it’s not doing badly. It’s a bit low-budget, but it’s competently produced, and while it won’t be going on my playlist I’ve got to give it the benefit of the doubt.
Tim: What? No you don’t. Not at all. If we can slag off the Children in Need single, we can certainly review this one honestly. Face it: it’s a bit crap. Not awful, especially as most football tunes go, but still beyond doubt.
Tom: What it’s missing is something that can be sung from the terraces. I don’t reckon that “na, na na na na na” is going to cut it: it’s difficult to come up with something catchy enough in the first place. Still: it’s a long way from being Gazza rapping.
Tim: Well, it would take a special kind of person who negatively reviews that, so I won’t be him. But I will say: oh, bloody hell.
Tom: First of all, let’s get the ridiculous bits out of the way: yes, it has Gary Barlow travelling the world like some kind of beardy musical messiah on a walkabout. Yes, it has a conductor in a bow tie. And yes, it’s almost certainly inspired by the wonderful, world-wide cover of Stand By Me that did the rounds.
Tim: Ridiculous-wise, those things don’t even compare to it. What about the opening?
Tom: Yes, there are more ridiculous things here. It starts with Prince Charles listening to it. And Prince Charles is inherently ridiculous. Full marks to Prince Harry, mind, for amiably handling his occasional tambourine taps with a knowing grin.
Tim: Well, there is that.
Tom: Actually, hang on: there’s more ridiculous things. They rhymed “sing it clearer” and “everyone will hear ya”. Not “you”. “Ya”. Plus, it’s partly written by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Plus, plus, plus, there isn’t even a damned key change, and if ever a song needed one…
Tim: Yes – it really does go on, doesn’t it? Especially the marching band bit at the end, which sounds horribly disjointed from the rest of it.
Tom: The thing is, it’s not a bad piece of music. It’s just a bit ridiculous.
Tim: Brace yourself, because if I heard this on the radio my initial instinct would be to throw the radio out of the window. It is, on first hearing, roughly as far out of our comfort zone as we could go short of ending up in Miss Trunchbull’s chokey.
Tom: Have you seen Matilda the Musical recently, by any chance?
Tim: It’s BRILLIANT. They make CHALK WRITE ON A BLACKBOARD.
Tom: Doesn’t all chalk do that? Oh, wait. On its own. Right.
Tom: Blimey, I’d have hated this last year. Dubstep – and all the associated electro genres that it’s dragged with it, ‘cos this sure as hell isn’t pure dubstep – has got its way into my head.
Tim: It first appeared as an interval act in a Melodifestivalen heat earlier this year, and was the point at which I realised I needed the loo. But on hearing this again three months later, my musical tastes have been mushed around enough that I actually like it. I know I said last week that I was bored of SUMMER ANTHEM CHOONS, but this is (currently) so far away from generic that I think it’s great.
Tom: I wouldn’t have counted it as an anthem until it goes to traditional four-on-the-floor at 1:45 – at which point I reckon I could dance to it.
Tim: Underneath the dubstep, every now and again you can hear echoes of the original Electric by Leila K from 1995 that this is a vague cover of (made slightly obvious by the somewhat misleading shout of ‘Leila K in the house’), and, well, that sounded quite ahead of its time back then, much as this sounds today. To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of next year’s club tunes sounded like this. That’s not a bad thing, mind – as long as they’re not almost exactly like this.
Tom: I’ve got to admit, though: I don’t really like the track. I love the backing and the style, but the vocals and melody do nothing for me. Which is a shame, because there’s a great song in there waiting to come out.
Tim: Well, give it twelve months. By the way, I don’t suppose you can tell me which early-00s dance tune the backing not-drum bit that occasionally occurs, including 3:18-3:21, reminds me of, can you? It’s annoying me.
Tim: Tom, if you’d be so good as to reach behind you and sound the SCHLAGERTASTIC SIREN, we can begin.
Tom: WOOP WOOP! That’s the sound of… oh. The police, apparently. I think I’ve lost my siren.
Tom: Oh god, that’s more syrupy than a maple sap convention. (Sorry about that: sound the APPALLING ANALOGY SIREN, please.)
Tim: WOOP WOOP! That’s the sound of the APPALLING ANALOGY SIREN – I look after my toys. But it is syrupy, isn’t it, and beautifully so.
It’s all in there from the intro – the annoyingly upbeat singing, the gentle ‘start tapping your feet NOW’ tune behind it. Admittedly the verse isn’t all that, but the chorus is something you’ll either loathe or, if you’re sensible (and if you’re reading this you probably are), not be able to help swaying to, desperately trying to keep your hands by your side rather than waving them in the air like a commuting nutjob.
Tom: I was all ready to loathe it, and then I realised that my foot was automatically tapping along. DAMN YOU LEWIN.
Tim: And then there’s the obligatory you-know-what.
Tom: Voldemort? Oh, key change, got it.
Tim: It’s not as spectacular as it might be.
Tom: Neither was Voldemort. He gets the wind machines and pyrotechnics, but does he have backup dancers? No. He’d never win Eurovision, that’s for sure.
Tim: Well, the closest thing he’d have would be backup dementors, and they’d really kill the mood. But if we could move back to reality for a second, I’d have liked some sort of musical explosion in the background for said key change, even though that would sound totally out place, but we can’t have everything. But you know the best thing? This doesn’t sound out of date. Schlager’s a style of music that by all rights should be dancing around on a zimmerframe by now, but it’s been put together so well that it would fit in fine on any 2012 dancefloor. Top marks.
Tim: The winner. Of Melodifestivalen, and of Eurovision itself. Deserved?
Tom: Yes.
Tim: Oh yes.
Tom: And I think anyone who knew the tracks in advance could have called it. It’s the only one in there which sounds like it deserves to be at the top of every chart in Europe.
Tom: The UK had Love Shine A Light back in the nineties, and – of course – Lena’s Satellite did the same for most of Europe if not the UK. This is the trouble with the British entries: we keep sending somewhat-silly entries, and we keep getting knocked down.
Tim: I don’t know about silly entries – Blue last year took it seriously and did well, and everyone involved genuinely thought The Hump had a good chance this year. But you’re right that people think of it as silly, but maybe that’ll change a bit. Because people can comment on how Eurovision’s ridiculous, or a terrible collection of music, or that the best song never wins, but then we’ll say, “But what about Loreen? That went top 10 all across Europe, got a great deal of radio airplay and was big in clubs all summer long, and that’s a Eurovision graduate.”
Now, I’m perhaps exaggerating a bit, and possibly getting my hopes up too much. But this was at number 1 on iTunes in the UK within eighteen hours of being performed. This is a big tune, and possibly, and hopefully, this generation’s Waterloo.
Tom: I’m not going to go that far: Waterloo’s what I’d call a “wedding disco song”, and perhaps only one or two tracks every year graduate into that kind of utterly mainstream, known-by-everyone success. (Recently: I Gotta Feeling and Party Rock Anthem.) But is it going to be the summer’s European hit? Almost certainly. And it deserves to be.
Tom: From 7:30 tonight, head to europlop.co.uk/hangout for Tim, Tom and Matt’s live, alternative Eurovision commentary – including special guests and live reports from inside the Baku arena!
It deserves to do very well. Oh, wait. It didn’t. Never mind.
Tim: So, tonight’s the night, but we’ve just got time for one more reject. Let’s make it a bloody brilliant one, and one that it seems a bit unfair to put in a post with ‘Reject’ in the title – it did, in fact, get more phone votes than most previous Melodifestivalen winners did. Still, those are the rules, so here we go.
This year’s Melodifestivalen, a tad below the usual standard, started out as a two-horse race, really, and then, following a brilliant performance of Loreen’s Euphoria in her semi-final and technical issues in Danny’s semi-final performance, became closer to a one-point-five-horse race, ending with her getting 32% of the phone votes, this song getting 22% and the next one getting 8%. And here it is.
Tom: That’s possibly the best Eurovision intro I’ve heard all year. Admittedly that’s because it sounds like they copy-and-pasted it from the end of a Coldplay track, but still, full marks.
Tim: So many things to mention. Take the outfits. ‘Bloody hell, what is that weird thing he’s wearing?’ I thought, until about forty seconds in, when I thought, ‘BLOODY HELL, WHAT IS THAT BRILLIANT THING HE’S WEARING?’ I’m going clothes shopping tomorrow, and I’m not coming back until I’ve found one of those. (White or black, I’m not bothered.)
Tom: Electroluminescent wire, or EL wire for short. It’s brilliant stuff – been around for years, but it wasn’t until last year’s America’s Got Talent that it hit the mainstream.
Tim: Yeah, but when’s it going to hit Topshop, that’s what I want to know.
But then there’s also the breakdown. Normally, as we know, I’m not a dubstep fan, and a breakdown like this would put me right off the song. (If I’m honest, when I listen to the studio version it does put me off a little bit.) With this performance, my God is it fantastic. It’s perfect: people who think Eurovision’s cack will be impressed by the musical variety, and people who love Eurovision will ignore the music and focus on the pretty colours.
Tom: Not to mention he’s singing live while also managing a complicated dance routine. That’s trickier than it looks – and it looks tricky.
Tim: It does, and the dancing’s exceptionally good – take a look at the bit just after 1:40, because if I hadn’t been watching this live I’d swear blind there was a cut there.
There’s the lyrics as well – you don’t get long to get your song’s meaning across in Eurovision, what with it being a three-minute song only being heard once, and lyrics often go unnoticed. I don’t really think that’s a problem here, though, because it’s fairly simple and it’s being yelled at the audience enough it’ll probably be a crowd-pleaser.
Tom: It certainly pleased me.
Tim: As for the rest of it, the woo-oa-oah bits in the chorus remind me of Save The World, which is just as great, and overall there’s such a fantastic vibe to everything – music, dancers, ‘I’m feeling great, I’m feeling awesome…I think you’re amazing’ – that this song surely can’t really fail to please. Can it?
Tom: I hope not. It deserves to do very well. Oh, wait. It didn’t. Never mind.
Tim: More votes than almost all the previous winners. I think it’s done well enough, even if it didn’t win. Speaking of doing well, I’ve written quite a lot about this song, and entirely resisted the temptation to describe this as amazing. I’m proud of myself.
