Glorious Inc – Dance Or Die

“I think this really works.”

Tim: Normally when I give you a track, I have a good idea of where you’ll stand with it. This one? Not a clue.

Dance or Die by Glorious Inc

Tim: I think this really works, and according to iTunes Sweden agrees, but what do YOU think?

Tom: I can’t categorise it, but I definitely like it. Well, most of it; it switches itself up so much! I’m embarrassed to say that I think I rather like the dubstep-y bit.

Tim: HA! Knew we’d get you accepting it eventually.

This really does move about everywhere. Ooh, a piano based dance track? Nope. Standard electro-house stuff? Sort of. Bit of dubstep in there? Sure, why not. It sort of reminds me of a DJ at a club I went to recently who seamlessly(ish) mixed Nero into the Spice Girls followed that with LMFAO, then went with Gina G, chucked in some Tinie Tempah and then moved on to Whigfield.

Tom: DJs who can actually pull that off are in pretty short supply. I reckon whoever produced this track might be one of them.

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.

Mina Vänner – Ingen Som

Teenagers being jerks.

Tim: The following contains adult themes, and images which some viewers may find offensive.

Tom: Ooh, good.

Tom: Hold on, those aren’t the good kind of adult themes! That’s just teenagers being jerks.

Tim: Well I suppose so – and what with all the vandalism, theft, alcohol, drugs, nudity, the video is actually considerably more interesting than the music itself.

Tom: And a jacket with “Murder, She Wrote” on the back. Finnish hipsters, or just something his mother handed down to him?

Tim: Not that the music’s bad, though it does get somewhat repetitive. To be honest, this is one of the songs where I really wish I could speak, or at least understand, what they’re on about, because I’m fairly sure it would make it more enjoyable.

Tom: I’m not sure it would; the processing on the voice gives it a kind of nasal whine that reminds me of someone with dodgy adenoids.

Tim: Well, maybe he does have dodgy adenoids. Maybe the song’s all about that, and that far from the whine being irritating, it’s the whole purpose of the song. Though I’ll admit that’s unlikely.

And yes, I can translate the lyrics and all that (though they don’t seem to be online for this), but it’s not quite the same. I do know the title translates to ‘Nobody’ or something similar, but that could be ‘Nobody understands us’ or ‘Nobody can stop us doing what we want to do’ or maybe even ‘Nobody wants to help me sort out my adenoids’.

Tom: Well, I wish someone would stop them.

Tim: Is it just me, or does ‘adenoids’ just sound a bit weird after a while?

Ellen Xylander – One Day We’ll Make It Home

Pleasant. Just, nice.

Tim: Norway, meet country music. Country music, this is Norway.

Tom: They’ve clearly got a budget for this, as they’ve actually shipped her out to California to film at Kirk’s Rock.

Tim: I really like this. Pleasant, just…nice. While ‘nice’ is a bit of a dull word, it does sum up this song. It’s just, well, nice.

Tom: Ooh, now I’d go further than that. It’s really very good – but I also reckon that’s because the first part of that chorus takes some serious inspiration from classic tearjerker 80s power ballad Up Where We Belong.

Tim: Hmm. Although I do have one niggle, best summed up by my thoughts of the last sixty seconds or so: “Ooh, back to the chorus. It’s nice….though, it’s repeating a bit….hang on, there’s a minute left, we can’t start the ending now, surely, not with only six words…can we?…OOH! VARIATION!…oh…well that must have been a whole ten seconds, and we’re back…OK, there are SIX WORDS. SIX WORDS.”

Tom: Can’t hear you. Too busy swaying back and forth with a lighter in the air.

Tim: Summation: I don’t mind a rinse and repeat every now and again, but I would like a few more lyrics please.

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.

Wrethov – One Love One Goal

“Drei Löwen auf dem Hemd, und noch Jules Rimet strahlend, ja?”

Tim: Proving that football isn’t just for blokes, the Women’s World Cup has apparently arrived, and the Swedish have got a theme song. Sung by a bloke, which somewhat spoils it, but never mind.

Tom: Now, let’s be honest: no matter what, this can’t compare to the definitive World Cup song, Three Lions. That song’s got so deep into the footballing world that even the German fans sing it. (I was in the same train carriage as a group of them once.)

Tim: Drei Löwen auf dem Hemd, und noch Jules Rimet strahlend, ja?

Tom: Oh, you totally ran that through Google Translate.

Tim: Anyway, with expectations duly lowered – let’s have a listen to this.

Tim: I really like this. I wasn’t sure to start with about the staccato style of music (get me being all technical), but it gives it a whole ‘yeah, let’s get out and do this thing and win it’ that presumably it’s meant to have.

Tom: Now, personally I can’t hear the crowd chanting “One! Love! One Love One Goal”, but they’ve had a bloody good effort at making a song that’s part-football-chant. I can’t see it taking off, but full marks for effort.

Tim: BETTER ENDING: a key change for just the very last ‘goal’, and extend it a bit, instead of just going back to the usual one.

Oh, and remember Melanie C, the second-most-successful soloist out of the Spice Girls? Turns out she’s done the actual official song.

Tom: That’s… nothing to do with football at all.

Miss Inga feat. Dominika & La Camilla: Don’t Try To Steal My Limelight

Oh my.

Tim: This I predict, will somewhat polarise opinion, and I’m fairly sure I can guess where the majority would side.

Tim: But screw the majority, because I love this. I will happily confess that part of it may just be all the neon lights in the video (which is, let’s be honest, one of the gayest we’ve ever seen, and we’ve seen a lot of Le Kid so that’s saying something).

Tom: Oh my. It’s registering at 15.7 VP* according to my calculations.

*”Villagepeople”. It’s the SI unit for how camp a music video is.

Tim: Anyway, I like the beat, the chorus melody – I think the first line reminds me of something else but I don’t care – and this song’s just good fun, really.

Tom: It doesn’t half go on a bit though. Not sure quite why I’m so irritated by the track, but I am.

Tim: Oh. Well, one thing that’s definitely a bit weird: I think the vague idea of the song is that Dominika and La Dawn French —

Tom: Ooh, handbags.

Tom: Oh, come on, you’re saying you don’t see it?

Anyway, they’re saying they’re better than Miss Inga, and that sort of comes across in the video but you don’t really hear it in the lyrics unless you’re listening properly because the music takes all the attention. Except for the line ‘Miss Inga, you’re not a very good singer’, which stands out so blatantly you’d think he (yes, he) hates himself.

That dog looks slightly uncomfortable, though.

Tom: Well, wouldn’t you be?

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.

Jenni Vartiainen – Eikö Kukaan Voi Meitä Pelastaa?

“Ain’t that just a chorus and a half?”

Tim: Or, alternatively, Can’t Anyone Save us? (ish).

Tom: I think that beat’s the same one as the ‘demo’ on the old Casio keyboard I had when I was five.

Tim: Give it a sec before letting the standard snarkiness kick in, please.

It’s from the same best-selling-of-2010-in-Finland album as En haluu kuolla thingy (she likes the long titles, it seems), and my word ain’t that just a chorus and a half?

Tom: Bloody hell. Talk about a complete change. From Casiocore to full orchestral Broadway production.

Tim: It reminds me – quite a bit, what with the big piano stuff they’ve got going on under everything else – of Didrik Solli-Tangen’s My Heart Is Yours and, much as with that one, I love it. Google seems to fall down a bit when translating Finnish, but this song’s really just about the music, I think, and wow is that some proper music.

Tom: It really is. So… many… instruments!

Tim: I don’t know if it’s a shame the verses aren’t the same level – part of me wishes they were, just because, but part of me likes that the choruses are so big, and that wouldn’t really be appreciated. Besides, it’s not like either of them, especially the second one with the extra beat, is particularly empty.

Tom: There’s no way you could make the verses as big as that chorus. I don’t think you can fit that much music into a song.

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.