Saturday Flashback: Guenta K. – Das Boot 2008

“It’s stuck in my head, and I think it sounds like a CBBC theme tune.”

Tom: Here’s an odd one for you. This is a 2008 cover of U96’s 1991 hit Das Boot – which was itself a reworking of the theme from the 1981 German submarine movie. I bring this to you for two reasons: one, because it’s stuck in my head, and two, because I think it sounds startlingly like the theme tune from CBBC’s Incredible Games and I want to know that I’m not crazy.

Tim: Oooookay…

Tim: Don’t worry, you’re not crazy – they do sound quite similar. Dance remixes of movie themes are tricky things, and I sometimes get a bit nervous before listening to them. When they’re done right, and convey the same tone as the original piece, they can be brilliant (see Tiësto’s Pirates, DJ Sakin’s Braveheart, Airbase’s The Rock).

Tom: You’re right about all those except Tiesto’s Pirates, where all he’s done is create an entirely new song and then jam a messed-up version of He’s A Pirate in there somewhere. The great thing about all those tracks, though, is that if you don’t like one particular mix – the vocals in Sakin’s Braveheart really annoy me, for example – there’ll be another one along in a minute.

Tim: On the other hand (which is, unfortunately, a much larger hand), they can be absolutely horrendous. One example is DJ Stef’s version of Titanic, where the guy shouting ‘Freeze’ as a vocal really doesn’t help.

Tom: You know, it used to be that aspiring dance producers (or, in other words, “teenage kids on their parents’ computer with a pirated copy of FruityLoops”) had to go out of their house with a CD, attract the attention of a DJ, prove they were half-decent, and steadily work their way up the ranks. Now all they have to do is pick a vaguely popular song, remix it badly, quickly jam a video together, lob it up onto YouTube where it’ll be played in low-bitrate mono to most users, and presto: half a million listeners.

Damn kids. Get off my lawn.

Tim: Das Boot 2008, I think, belongs nicely in the first group, although I don’t get the counting to ten bit. U96’s had ‘one, two, three, techno’, which made a vague sort of sense (I’d have preferred ‘eins, zwei, drei’ but that’s just me), whereas this just counts to ten and then… nothing. Come to think of it, it’s a bloody odd cover – aside from the same source material, they’re quite different. The U96 version is much darker, even though that’s a weird way to describe a dance tune, what with all the clanking noises*, and it has far more vocal. If Guenta K. hadn’t used the small amount of vocal that he did, it would just be another redoing of the theme music, focusing almost exclusively on just the bit of the theme that people know with just enough background variation to keep it interesting, and it would probably be better for it.

* I am well aware that this is an appalling word to use to describe it, but I honestly can’t really think of a better one, and I think it describes it well enough for you to know what I mean.

Ace of Base – All For You

The good thing about this blog is that we can be all judgmental.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T9JXLBI_KQ

Tim: Following your Vengaboys comeback song, you may be tempted to listen to the single that marks Ace of Base’s return. If so, here it is.

Tom: That is a textbook Ace of Base song, isn’t it? I was expecting a ‘Don’t Turn Around’ somewhere in there.

I think the problem I had with the Vengaboys comeback is the same as the one I have now with this Ace of Base comeback. And the Aqua one, now I think of it. They’re all album tracks. If they’ve been away for this long, they’ve had years and years to come up with something absolutely brilliant. Instead, it just sounds like they’ve taken something from the rejects bin of their last album.

Tim: Now you mention it, that seems to be the same with most comebacks. Aside from Take That (who I think were the first of recent times, and whose success is probably largely to blame for the recent spate), I don’t think I can think of an artist/group that has actually done well.

A lot of them probably think that all their old fans are out there, and that once news gets around they’re coming back the fans will lap up everything they can throw at them. They can therefore put out a vaguely good single with a promise that an album will forthcoming and assume it’ll be fine. The problem is, of course, that it isn’t, and if a vaguely good single doesn’t sell because the fans feel cheated there’s no way an album will.

You might get a few gigs out of it, or a full tour if you’re lucky, but no more.

Tom: Let’s not forget: Take That’s second comeback, this time with a certain Mr. Williams, is on the cards. Admittedly “Greatest Day” was pretty damn good – if they can pull it off twice that it basically means that Gary Barlow is the greatest songwriter of modern times, which is not really something I’m comfortable with saying.

Tim: This Ace of Base one is like so many – no real effort. It’s not particularly bad – catchy enough, with a decent hook – but there’s just nothing to get excited about. The chorus always feels like a not very good post-bridge chorus, and isn’t enough to make me want more. To have a better chance of success, artists should write a whole album (or even just an EP) and then choose the good songs off it to release, because they’d then have a good idea of what the overall quality of the work would be, and we’d have a proper idea of what we could expect.

That’s not particularly realistic, of course, given the much increased time and effort it would involve, but it might help. I don’t know – the good thing about a blog like this is that we can be all judgmental without having to pretend we know anything about the music business at all.

Inna – Amazing

A lovely summery bit of dance music.

Tim: Here’s a lovely summery bit of dance music for you from a Romanian. More than a little reminiscent of ATB, but in a good way.

Tom: You’re right, that’s a perfectly competent bit dance track. Nothing wrong with that. It’s also a fine example of the theory that if you want to film a cheap video very quickly and your vocal talent is female and attractive, put her in a bikini on a beach and you’re sorted.

Tim: Don’t forget the nicely ripped guys for the singer to, um, interact with. Or, in the case of Sunblock, a car they can get all soapy with.

But why does everyone who’s against the sky in the video – the guys with the ice cream at 1:52, the people embracing at 2:19 – have white halos around their heads? Maybe it’s because I’ve just finished reading Scott Pilgrim, but I think there’s something sinister going on there.

Tim: Hmm. I’m going to say that the halos are there because it’s actually a musical version of Sixth Sense, and the big twist, to be revealed in her next video, is that the guy who saved her life and gave her mouth to mouth is also dead. Anyway, as is traditional with such dance songs, the lyrics mean absolutely nothing whatsoever, although I think the line ‘It’s just the meaning of being alone’ does give extra credence to my theory, especially since her singing it coincides with the first appearance of the life-saving corpse.

Alexandra Burke feat. Laza Morgan – Start Without You

The first mainstream song about female masturbation since “I Touch Myself”.

Tim: So Alexandra Burke’s bringing out her new single in two and a half weeks, and the video’s so ridiculously gay it’s quite likely this song’ll be the new Torchwood theme.

Tim: The music starts off entirely cack, with a trademark Alexandra moment of self-doubt having everybody else’s name shouted out first*, but then the chorus lands and you feel you should be in Hawaii surrounded by coconuts and pineapples, and it’s rather catchy. The rest of the song improves as a whole, and I think it’s a good’un.

But dear lord, the video… It’s just…I really don’t know. I have absolutely no clue what logical thought process could possibly have led to this as an idea for a music video. It’s not bad, yet nor is it good, and it sure as hell isn’t average. On your standard scale of quality, it seems to defy placement.

* This is the one thing that really annoyed me about Bad Boys, which was otherwise a ruddy marvellous effort. That cock Flo Rida had only a few rapping lines and wasn’t the lead artist, yet it started by him yelling ‘FLO RIDA! Alexandra…’ Nob. And I know RedOne’s good and all that (*cough* Darin *cough*), but since when did the producer ever get a shout out?

Tom: Haha. This is terrible. I mean, there’s nothing particularly bad about it musically, but it sounds like someone took the backing of Agadoo, jazzed it up a bit, and then got Ranking Roger to do a bit of Jamaican sort-of-rap at the start like in mostly-forgotten mid-90s Pato Banton hit Bubblin’ Hot.

Also, as soon as you realise the lyrics are one giant sexual metaphor, the whole song makes sense:

“Oh, here I go, drip droppin’ way down low
You’re ’bout to miss
Winding to this
Don’t make me start without you”

Er, anyone under 12 probably shouldn’t read that last paragraph. Not that they’ll understand it anyway. Actually, let me rephrase: don’t let your parents read that last paragraph, it’ll just be awkward.

Tim: I hadn’t actually looked at the lyrics, and I’m a little disturbed. Not by them, but by you and your choice of lyrics to display the metaphor. You could have had

Body like a weapon that’ll make you go boom
Get like a drum I’ll make you go…boom

or, even more so,

You’re the only one and I’m all on my back
The only one I want on my back

— but no. You chose drip droppin’ way down low. Seriously, man, what’s the matter with you?

Tom: Because all the others are generic, all the others sound like the vague comments made in every other song. There’s no other explanation for that particular verse though – I even checked Urban Dictionary, and the only definition it gave was a visit from Aunt Flo, which frankly turns the song down an entirely different route.

Once you start looking, there’s even more evidence: her hand gesture at 1:51, for example. The only conclusion I can draw is this: Alexandra Burke’s “Start Without You” is the first truly mainstream song about female masturbation since “I Touch Myself”.

Tim: Also from the lyrics comes a massive annoyance that I hadn’t previously noticed, although it’s not just in this song because I’ve had it for quite some time: when the sod did ‘I’m going to’ become ‘Imma’? It’s the most ridiculous contraction since, well, ever. In fact, it’s not even a contraction when you compare it to ‘I’ll’. Utter crap. I blame Kanye West.

Tom: I’m sorry, are you from the past? First, the Black Eyed Peas released a single called ‘Imma Be‘ in May last year – although the cover of that was a picture of a bee, so well done there. Imma is now so common that even I use it on occasion, and (like everyone else on the internet) I’m a middle-class white guy. I tend to use ‘immana’ more, but it’s steadily creeping in.

Tim: I know it’s been around for a while, but it’s one thing that really really gets me, because I just don’t see how it makes sense. Although I did feel incredibly old when writing it, so I’ll accept you have a point.

Tom: One final comment: is Laza Morgan the guy off Mysterious Girl? Because the opening sounds remarkably similar now I think about it.

Tim: Wikipedia tells me the Mysterious Girl guy was called Bubbler Ranx, so no, although we still have the sublime Ant & Seb to link Alexandra and that song.

Tim Berg – Seek Bromance

Here’s a nice Swedish dance choon for you.

Tim: Here’s a nice Swedish dance tune for you, by a new bloke called Tim Berg. Well, mostly. He did the backing music, which – as an instrumental track called Bromance – has been all over Scandinavian clubs and dance radio the past few months. It is rather good indeed on its own.

It’s also been up on YouTube for people to play around with. One such person is Axwell (off Swedish House Mafia and Axwell & Bob Sinclar’s What a Wonderful World), who took it and bunged the vocals of the otherwise largely unremarkable Love U Seek on top of it. That bootleg got very popular, and so, with a bit of rights fiddling and re-recording, has been chosen as the proper UK release, now called Seek Bromance (clever, isn’t it?).

Tom: Bromance is a lovely track, but I can’t help but feel it’s rather close to plagiarising the lead melody from the absolutely gorgeous Still Alive, from Mirror’s Edge – the second best piece of video game music ever (after the coincidentally-named Still Alive from Portal). Hell, even the synth patch used in Bromance sounds similar.

It’s still a great bit of music though. I think it’s better without the vocals, but I understand that you pretty much need them for a commercial UK release. I can see myself listening to the original of Bromance quite a lot.

Tim: Do you know, I agree with absolutely everything you just wrote, and I enjoyed the slight campness of the music descriptions. I hadn’t heard Still Alive, so thank you for introducing me to it. I’ve a feeling most people will think the same about the vocal (especially DJs), so what’ll likely happen is that Seek Bromance will only really be heard on the radio and before old-school CD-buying people skip to track 2, while the original will keep being played in the clubs. A good thing, I believe.

McFly – Party Girl

It’s the British Millennial generation’s version of Bob Dylan going electric.

Tom: Oh blimey. McFly have suddenly gone all Taio Cruz on us. I really disliked this on first listen, but now it’s growing on me. And that video’s a bit more grown-up than the image they used to project. Are they really making a full movie? That’s either Growing the Beard or Jumping the Shark and I’m really not sure which.

What we basically have here is the British Millennial generation’s version of Bob Dylan going electric. I reckon this is a carefully calculated single release: the rest of the album will be more traditional stuff for the long-term fans, but this is meant to attract the kids who’ve gotten used to Lady Gaga and 3OH!3 in the last couple of years.

Tim: Well, apparently they have ‘innovative plans‘ that look all intense, so I wouldn’t count on it being a one-off, especially considering that the next single is actually written with Taio Cruz. That said, I don’t think it’s such a bad thing. If growing up involves making a film with Harry doing the dirty with a vampire, then I say bring it on. It’s only 30 minutes long, rather than a full film, and good or bad I think it’ll be worth watching.

Personally I think their best track was Do Ya (which had the zombie video a couple of years back), and I prefer that style, but this is more up to date and you can tell that they haven’t done it just to be modern, but because they like the stuff. They haven’t sold out or changed dramatically – I like this one, as much as I liked some of their older output – just adapted, and done that fairly well. The main thing is that this passes the biggest test of all, in that you can tell it’s McFly. A different McFly, sure, but still McFly.

Tom: I can’t believe I’m about to have this argument, but: there is no way in hell that Do Ya is McFly’s best single. That’s blatantly Star Girl – and 5 Colours In Her Hair wasn’t exactly shabby either. What song did they choose to duet with the Jonas Brothers on? Not Do Ya, that’s for sure.

Tim: Oh, I’m not saying the others are bad. Star Girl is good, but only really because of the woo-oooh-ooh-ooh. Yes, that’s great, and it’s brilliant to listen to because you can join in and get excited with it (especially if you’re duetting at Wembley in front of a ginormous crowd), but the rest of it just seems to be filler just leading up to the bit that everyone likes to sings along to. 5 Colours, Obviously and All About You were all decent enough as well, but there’s something about Do Ya that I really like. It starts big and never really calms down until the end.

It also has a bit that reminds me of Wizzard’s I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day.

Tom: You know, at this point I’m just going to nod and agree, because I think arguing my point any further would destroy whatever shreds of credibility I have left. Also, let’s be honest, the reason it sounds like McFly is mainly because of whatever Tom’s accent is. (Seriously, I can’t work out what it is, and I’ve got a bloody linguistics degree.)

Tim: The first two notes get me excited because I think I’m about to hear Bad Romance.

Tom: It is very close, isn’t it? It’s like Chipmunk’s Look for Me – everyone goes ‘ooh, it’s I Gotta Feeling‘, and then the woah-woahs start.

Tim: One other thing about McFly is that any time I hear someone say ‘it’s all about you’ I really really want someone to invent something where you can just push a button and a relevant bit of music would start playing and interrupt the conversation.

Tom: You and me both, Tim. You and me both.

Cee-Lo Green – Fuck You

It’s the kind of thing you want to shake a tambourine along to.

Tom: I wasn’t sure whether we could run this on Europlop. Firstly, because I think we’re trying to be vaguely family-friendly, and secondly because it’s neo-soul and completely the wrong type of music for this blog.

But I don’t care. Why? Because it’s genius. I can’t over-sell this. Cee-Lo Green, the singer from Gnarls Barkley, has a song simply entitled “Fuck You”. It’s catchy, it’s happy, it’s the kind of thing you want to shake a tambourine along to. You thought Lily Allen’s “Fuck You” was cheery? You ain’t heard nothin’ yet. And the backing singers! I love profane backing singers.

The release date is October 4th, and the full video – not that this dynamic type one isn’t awesome – is out soon.

Tim: Like it a lot, with special appreciation for the Xbox/Atari comparison and ‘I really hate your ass right now‘. On the scale of Fuck Yous…

Tom: I’m not going to draw a graph of that.

Tim: … it beats Eamon by quite a lot, and Lily Allen by quite a bit, but doesn’t quite match Frankee (due to her incredible vehemence in the chorus and the brilliant lines ‘your sex was whack‘ and ‘I didn’t catch your crabs‘).

Tom: Frankee might have had the novelty lines, but there’s no way a cheap cash-in record – and one that was blatantly a marketing ploy – beats Cee-Lo Goddamn Green.

Yes, that is his middle name.

Saturday Flashback: Eric Saade – Manboy

You know what else no-one’s doing? Raccoons.

Tim: This really, really, really should have been Sweden’s entry to Eurovision 2010.

Tom: It’s Womanizer by Britney Spears, isn’t it? When he started his vocals, I muttered “Superstar, where you from, how’s it going”. Decent choreography though, although he seems to forget where the audience is half way through.

Tim: Perhaps, but this is Melodifestivalen, Sweden’s (vastly superior) version of Your Country Needs You, so he just needs to remember where the camera is. Also, you need to wait ’til after the key change before you can properly judge the dancing.

Tom: Ah, he’s been to the George Sampson school of stage performance then. (Not Daz Sampson, thankfully.)

Tim: Apparently, ‘everybody does fire’ and it’s quite boring.

Tom: He’s got a point there. You know what else no-one’s doing? Raccoons. No-one ever unleashes a hundred ravenous raccoons to attack the singer on the key change.

Tim: True, although raccoons would probably poo everywhere. Just not practical.

Tom: Neither’s rigging up a power shower above the stage, but they manage that.

Tim: Ah, but he practically had to beg them to. (Really, he did.) He probably wouldn’t have been so enthusiastic about unleashing rabid animals to munch on him.

Tom: Not sure about these lyrics either. “You can call me manboy” sounds like an odd way of saying “I have learning difficulties”. Can I do that joke?

Tim: Yeah, why not.

Tom: Hmm.

Manboy, manboy,
You can call me manboy,
I don’t care, I’ll show you how to love.

I’m not an expert, but I’d guess most women would prefer ‘man’ over ‘boy’. There’s not a whole lot of ‘showing how to love’ when your entire experience of love is the Victoria’s Secret catalogue. Or, if you weren’t born in an 80s sitcom, the internet.

Tim: Well I think that’s it. He pretty much is only a boy (19), so he wants the man to shine though. And, after all, what better way is there to prove manliness than stand in the pouring rain?

Tom:Raccoons. Fighting raccoons.

a-ha – Butterfly, Butterfly

It seems, weirdly, almost noble.

Tom: a-ha are releasing their last ever single. This isn’t a comeback – it’s more that they’ve just been trundling on in Norway all these years, while not many people in the UK noticed. They’ve decided to call it a day now, and this is their slightly melancholy last hurrah. It’s called “Butterfly, Butterfly”, and while it’s not going to make anyone dance like an idiot, it does make a rather nice coda to their quarter-century in music.

Tim: Right from the start you can tell it’s going to be slightly downbeat, but it’s nice. There’s not many bands that say, ‘this is it,’ so it seems, weirdly, almost noble. Like, yes, we could keep releasing records, but it’s going to stop at some point, and we’re all getting old, so we may as well quit while we’re still going fairly strong, and thanks for everything.

Tom: I’d bet on a comeback tour in ten years’ time though.

Tim: Good lyrics, as well – they say goodbye, but not in such an obvious way that someone listening twenty years from now will immediately know this was their last single. Only criticism is that is does go on a bit at the end, though, as though they can’t quite bear to let it go.

Tom: Still, after 25 years, I think they’re allowed one more chorus.

Vengaboys – Rocket to Uranus

Oh hell no. There are so many things wrong with this.

Tom: Oh hell no. There are so many things wrong with this: Perez Hilton. The rip-off of “House of the Rising Sun”. Just the fact that the Vengaboys are attempting a comeback.

Tim: The first time I heard this, I thought, “Oh God, the Vengaboys are back, doing a rubbish song filled with cheap innuendo, where they want to say ‘Rock It to Your Anus’ but that would be too rude.” Then, however, I watch the video and I’m pleasantly surprised to discover I was wrong – it is actually a song about a real space mission! As their YouTube channel says, ‘it’s about personal freedom and interplanetary travel.’

I don’t think you can mention Perez (who, it seems, used to be the baby in the Teletubbies – who knew?) without also mentioning Pete Burns, who has an army of bikini-clad warriors trying to destroy a dance party but whose one weakness seems to be dance music – go figure.

It’s a slight shame that they resorted to really really tacky innuendo (a cock-shaped rocket? Seriously?) despite the fact that they managed fine without it 10 years ago, because it means a lot of their old fans now have a(nother) reason to distance themselves from it, but for me, this just about manages to fit in the guilty pleasure category.