Klara & Jag – Poetic

“I did not expect ‘Mr Hemingway’ to be a reference in a pop song, let alone a Swedish one.”

Tim: We’ve all been there – sitting in a bar where a guy breaks away from his mates and comes over to you, spouting some deep nonsense and thinking it makes him sound clever and romantic but actually he just sound like a bit of a knob. Alright, maybe not all of us, but that’s who Kara & Jag are singing about.

Tom: I did not expect “Mr Hemingway” to be a reference in a pop song, let alone a Swedish one. But, sure, that works.

Tim: Very first things first: in my mind, this song has a great introduction. That single guitar line, with just that liiiittle bit of extra something underneath, was somehow enough to get me hooked, and then when that extra high part and brief vocal bit came in, we’re suddenly not far off yesterday, in the sense that this is just a great pop song. It’s structured perfectly, the melody and energy are all there, and it leaves absolutely nothing wanting.

Tom: I know we’ve established over the years that I’m significantly less easily impressed than you: but calling two songs in a row flawless? Come on. They’re good, they’re competent… but I “nothing wrong” doesn’t necessarily imply “everything right”. It’s okay! It’s reasonable! It’s pleasant! It’s just not spectacular.

Tim: Fair, I guess. The thing is, the formula we have can help you get a long way, but it all comes down to the variables – melody, backing, vocals and so on. And right here I think it has all those necessary parts sounding good together, and for me at least that all makes for one very good track.

Ina Wroldsen x Alok – Favela

“I’ve been struggling to work out exactly what it is about this song I like.”

Tim: A Swedish singer and writer and a Brazilian producer coming together to make a song where Ina can “shout about the incredible women of Brazil”, and it’s time to get TROPICAL. For context, ‘favela’ roughly translates as ‘slum’.

Tom: I am not convinced this is tropical, Tim.

Tim: Well, okay, let’s go with just summery. Thing is, ever since I first heard this a few days ago, I’ve been struggling to work out exactly what it is about this song I like beyond the fact that it’s just a good pop song. And then it struck me: it’s just that is really is a great pop song, in the most literal definition of it.

Tom: Wait, really? I’ll grant you the middle eight and chorus are decent, but…

Tim: Fair, your taste may vary with the sound, but structurally it’s pure textbook. A first verse with room to grow, check. A strong chorus to give us an idea of where everything’s going, tick. Post-chorus with a lovely melody, yep. Second verse with extra percussion underneath, present. Middle eight that gives us enough (but not too much) variety, there. Final chorus with a whole bit of extra everything, and I’ve run out of synonyms, but that doesn’t matter because all that’s left is a closing vocal all on its own to make it nice and meaningful. The song doesn’t put a single foot out of line anywhere, and in my view it’s excellent for it.

Tom: It’s just a pity that — lyrically, if not quite stylistically — it’s basically Clean Bandit’s Rockabye.

Tim: Oh. Oh yes, there is that.

Saturday Flashback: G.R.L. – Ugly Heart

“Good Pop Choruses! And a good middle eight! And good verses!”

Tim: It’s not European (well, one of them’s British), and it’s definitely not Europop, but I heard it for the first time in ages a week or so ago and I’ve listened multiple times a day ever since, so here you go.

Tim: At least I’m fairly sure it was this I heard, and not the Little Mix cover version, but either way it’s a brilliant track.

Tom: Good Pop Choruses! This is what we’ve been talking about this week! And a good middle eight! And good verses! My two rules hold true: I can sing the chorus by the end of the first listen, and I want to hear it again right afterwards. This right here? This is a good pop chorus.

Tim: Technically the band is still going, sort of – the disbanded in June 2015, reformed in August 2016 and have since put out a whole two tracks. They’re touring next year, though, so that’ll be interesting to see what they can cobble together. Anyway, until then we have this. What a song.

Nicklas Sahl – Planets

“From the moment the second chorus begins the song never really dips at all.”

Tim: Continuing our recent theme of “potentially off-putting verses redeemed by good choruses”, this from a Swedish artist we’ve not featured before, and we missed the lead single from his debut EP. Here’s the follow up title track, though.

Tim: Admittedly, the verse isn’t anywhere nearly as potentially off-putting–

Tom: Speak for yourself, those dark bits put me right off.

Tim: –and the chorus isn’t quite as good as the previous tracks, but that “it’s your planet I run to” does sound lovely and, as is so often the case, from the moment the second chorus begins the song never really dips at all.

Tom: I’ll grant you that, yes, that final line of the chorus does sound lovely — as does the instrumentation around it. But, again, there’s just not enough in the rest of the song to make that work for me.

Tim: I do find it a tad distracting that his voice is in parts a dead ringer for Måns Zelmerlöw’s — compare the “here I go, like an astronaut” with the opening of Heroes — but never mind, as it’s a very enjoyable track.

Sigrid – Sucker Punch

“This! Right!”

Tim: Sigrid says this is her favourite track she’s ever released, and, well, it’s not hard to see why.

Tom: This! Right! You know when you were talking about Great Pop Choruses yesterday? This is the sort of thing I was looking for.

Tim: In an ideal world, of course, we’d lose fourteen seconds of repetition off the end, and this would win Melodifestivalen and storm its way to winning Eurovision six months from now, but this isn’t an ideal world. Admittedly that thought came from me growing a bit tired of said repetition and noticing that it wouldn’t take much to cut this down the three minutes, but still.

Tom: Full marks to the video director, as well — that day-to-night transition’s been done before, but rarely so well. The final sequence, animation and all, is just brilliantly made.

Tim: It really is. The song as a whole isn’t unlike yesterday’s, actually: starts out giving me a slight “oh, this is disappointing”, but then the chorus comes along and blows me right away, because damn, once again that’s a bloody brilliant pop chorus.

Tom: It is, and it’s for the same reason as ever: we’ve heard all these elements before, particularly that chord progression in the chorus, but there’s the right combination of both novelty and familiarity.

Tim: Maybe I’m not so keen on the a cappella part of it, and yeah, we could lose a bit off the end, and also in the video I’d rather the spark fountains went off in time with the music. But that chorus makes up for all of those niggles.

Darin – Identitetslös

“Are we listening to the same chorus?”

Tim: New one off Darin, who seems to be struggling with a crisis of confidence – who is he, where does he belong? He is, in fact, a man without identity, or at least that’s what these lyrics would have us believe.

Tim: And oh my good LORD that’s a great chorus. We’ve not featured Darin much recently because his tracks have all been a bit damp or guitary or non-notable.

Tom: Yeah, to be fair, in that first paragraph I wasn’t sure whether you were talking about the song or about Darin himself.

Tim: Hmm, either could have worked I suppose, and really I was a tad worried with the opening verse that this would be much of the same. That chorus, though, comes straight off his Lovekiller album from way back when we started this site – in fact, stylistically it reminds me somewhat of Melodifestivalen 2010 finalist You’re Out Of My Life (and there’s a stunner of key change in there, btw).

Tom: Are we listening to the same chorus? This is just a bit dull. What on earth do you like about it?

Tim: The vocal sits nicely with the message in the lyrics, with the melancholy coming across nicely in the pre-chorus, and then we’ve got a nice loud chorus with drums and synth patches, strings rolling throughout and extra vocals howling along in the background. Sure, it’s bit slow, but that fits with the tone and basically, Darin is back to producing Great Pop Choruses. I am very much all in for that.

Tom: Nope. Not with you. It’s sitting in a horrible middle ground: it’s not fun, it’s not deep and emotional, it’s just… you know, I genuinely think it’s dull enough that I can’t think of a decent adjective to end that sentence with.

Tim: Oh. Well, I couldn’t disagree more, so I’ll end this with FABULOUS.

Miss Li – Den wintertid nu kommer

“Very much more a winter song than a Christmas song”

Tim: Clocks have gone back, November’s almost here and it really is remarkably cold outside, so let’s have this. The title translates to, well, exactly what you can guess it does.

Tom: It is too early for Christmas songs, Tim, and this feels worryingly like a Christmas song. Albeit one with a bizarre theremin in the middle eight.

Tim: True, though I’d argue it’s very much more a winter song than a Christmas song – no sleigh bells, for starters. No lyrics I can provide either, I’m afraid, so I don’t know if this is actually about the changing seasons or some metaphor for falling out of love, or if she’s just a particularly obsessive Game of Thrones fan. I’ll go with the first, partly through Occam’s Razor but mostly just because the sound fits in with that very well – all misty and atmospheric and conjuring images of snow capped forests.

Tom: It’s a lovely song but — and this is where I get controversial — I don’t think it’s good pop. It sounds like a folk song, or even a nursery rhyme, done by a slightly experimental band.

Tim: I wouldn’t say that’s controversial at all — it’d certainly struggle for inclusion on most pop radio stations’ playlists, for starters. A haunting vocal, rolling across the hills, reassuring and chilling at the same time, aided of course by the instrumental – particularly that ‘bizarre theremin’. Experimental maybe, but also quite lovely.

Icona Pop – Rhythm In My Blood

“And that is Good.”

Tim: So Robyn’s new album is as dull as really, really dull ditchwater, but last Friday wasn’t all bad news. For starters, for the first time in YEARS Lady Gaga is at number one in both the singles and albums chart, and for seconds this one appeared.

Tim: And that is Good, because it takes the traditional Icona Pop shouty vocal sound, which is already very enjoyable, and throws in a fair amount of decent melody.

Tom: Oh, I didn’t expect to like that. It’s got a minimalist sound, the kind that I don’t usually like, but then I realised half way through that I was already humming along with the chorus.

Tim: We’ve musical vocals in the verses and a surprisingly earwormy hook in the chorus, which now I’ve heard this track three or four times I’m not sure I’ll ever lose. Nice one ladies, good to have you back.

Saturday Flashback: Robyn – Dancing On My Own

“Why couldn’t we have more of this?”

Tim: Okay, folks: so, when we reviewed Missing U, I remarked that if the upcoming album Honey was as good as that I’d be very happy. Released yesterday, the album is good, as long as you’re having trouble sleeping and are looking for something to help you nod off. So let’s have a listen to a decent Robyn track.

Tim: Because IT’S JUST SO GOOD. So much so that even a limp guitar cover version of it is somewhat listenable. Why couldn’t we have more of this? That would have been nice. Can we, maybe just have a remix album? At least?

CHVRCHES – Graffiti

“This is a really good track, light years ahead of yesterday’s.”

Tim: Weird thing of modern times, probably brought on by streaming: my assumption that now Love Is Dead has been released, there wouldn’t be any more singles that come from it. Pleasingly, I’m wrong, so here’s a new video.

Tim: Bit of a downer on the lyrics, but the video’s nice and fun, and obviously the sound is good.

Tom: You know how I was grumpy the other day about a dull song? I just realised how much higher I put the bar for a proven act like CHVRCHES. This is a really good track, light years ahead of Cherrie’s, but because I’m now expecting something as good as ‘Empty Threat’, I listen to this and think “yeah, it’s okay, I guess”.

Tim: Now that’s interesting, because I saw this and almost had the opposite idea: I’m fairly sure my attitude and enjoyment of this actually improved knowing it was them. Admittedly, I’ve heard the song many times previously, so it was already well woven into my brain, but still.

To be honest, now we’re approaching the end of October, I feel confident in saying that Love Is Dead is probably going to be my favourite album of the year (and yes, I’m taking into account Cher’s ABBA album). It’s just that good, and if you’ve not listened to it yet you’re only letting yourself down.

Tom: Yeah, it’s okay, I guess.