Little Mix feat. Stormzy – Power

“The album version does not feature Stormzy.”

Tom: The album version does not feature Stormzy. That’s because when the album came out Stormzy — while he was well established in his genre — hadn’t hit the mainstream yet. What better way to liven up a fourth single?

Tim: I can think of a number of ways, to be honest, but sure, let’s go with it.

Tom: Incidentally, I just realised that’s a cameo from their mums in the video (and in the thumbnail), and that’s just lovely.

Tom: Putting “Girl Power” on the side of that van in the start of the video can only be a deliberate Spice Girls reference.

Tim: And a good one – “yes, you’ve done this, now we’re here to keep it going”.

Tom: I know we’re normally extremely skeptical of guest-rap-middle-eights, but this is good. That’s partly because it kills off one of those godawful “motorbike-motorbike-bike-bike-bike” bits, and partly because, yes, Stormzy is that good.

Tim: For the most part, yes, and I had less trouble with it than I normally would. “All them dirty secrets that we share, I’ll clear the browsers” stuck out a bit, mind, though it was soon redeemed by “as long as I’m alive, then I’ll be sponsorin’ your pride / you know there’s power in a couple, let me compliment your vibe” – I like that a lot.

Tom: One of Little Mix’s strengths are their incredible voices, so it’s always a little disappointing when they’re hidden behind layers of vocoders — or when one of them tries to do a Nicki Minaj, as here. But leaving aside those points: this is a hell of a track. Fourth singles from fourth albums aren’t meant to be this good.

Tim: No, and to be honest I’m surprised I enjoyed it as much as I did – when the first post-chorus breakdown came along I was a bit “aargh, no, DON’T LIKE THIS”, but somehow the second didn’t seem so bad. A grower, but a quick grower.

Tom: It’s fair to say that Little Mix are this generation’s Spice Girls: but the Spice Girls only managed three albums.

Saturday Flashback: Nicole – Ein bißchen Frieden

“Does it do anything for you?”

Tim: We discussed Love Shine A Light a few weeks back, and I discovered that, with an average of 9.46 points per country, it’s the third most successful Eurovision song ever. (Well, ish – pre-1975’s tricky to work out, but we’ll leave that for now). First is Brotherhood of Man’s “Save Your Kisses For Me”, slightly understandably; second is this, utterly mystifyingly.

Tim: That song does absolutely nothing for me, and yet not only did it do remarkably, it went on to be number one in every country it was released in. That includes the UK – and no other Eurovision winner’s done that here since. I haven’t a clue why, so does it do anything for you?

Tom: It doesn’t do anything for me, but I’ll tell you why it’s successful: it sounds like a lot of other songs. There’s nothing surprising about this at all: but the chord progression, the melody, even the switching-into-the-harmony bits: they’re all familiar.

Tim: Maybe, but they’re a very dull familiar.

Tom: Except in 1982, I’m not sure they would be as familiar. Not to an audience that didn’t have any music they wanted, on tap, right now. Back when you had to buy actual singles, or wait for one song on the radio. It’s using every trick in the book on a public that probably wasn’t used to them. It sounds… nice.

Tim: I’ll leave you with something I can get behind: a cover of it performed at Eurovision 1996 by, of all people, Rednex. Yep, them off Cotton-Eyed Joe:

Sia feat. Labrinth – To Be Human

“Love comes with pain, deal with it.”

Tim: With Wonder Woman, Warner Bros. finally created something a lot of people had forgotten was possible: a happy, enjoyable and flipping brilliant DC film. As for the soundtrack that goes with it, I had high expectations as her theme was one of the occasional good things about Batman v Superman. But the proper song that goes with it?

Tim: Well, happy certainly wouldn’t be the perfect word to describe this, portraying as it seems to the idea that love comes with pain, deal with it.

Tom: From your introduction, I was expecting to go in and dislike this… but it’s good. I’m not sold on all of it; that middle eight sounds like it’s come from an old musical, and it’s just confusing. But that chorus — and the transition into it — are beautiful. Not happy, though.

Tim: On the other hand, I’d say enjoyable fits the bill, for a lot of it: Sia’s as on point with the vocals as you’d expect…

Tom: Although it did take me a little while to work out what she was singing. Her initial vocals seem to be a bit… maybe slurred is the wrong word, but certainly unclear, more so than I’d expect from her. Labrinth very much playing second fiddle, but that’s fine: no-one’s going to beat Sia, and he’s providing a damn good harmony.

Tim: The emotion’s layered on up to eleven – though having said that, my favourite moment of it, the bit that sent shivers through me, has no singing at all. It’s there towards the end, just as the final chorus comes to a close and the instrumental climbs back up again. I love that, and it made me realise how good the underlying instrumental is on the rest of the track. That’s the real thing that makes this sound so good. And it does sound so good.

Betsy – Little White Lies

“A voice to rival Annie Lennox”

Tim: Betsy’s British, she’s been around a year or so, and she’s got this lovely track as her new one.

Tom: That is a good piano introduction. I like a good piano introduction. And the rest of the track’s pretty good, too: good enough that I properly sat up and smiled when that first chorus kicked in.

Tim: I say lovely, it’s not the happiest message ever, but it’s a damn good track. She’s got a voice to rival Annie Lennox, the song has a great melody that’s infectious in a very good way, and the video has a good number of good dogs in the video – all signs of a great track.

Tom: I’m not sure about that last criterion, but yes: there’s a depth to those vocals that only a few singers can manage. And what a chorus! That’s such a good chorus that I just used an exclamation mark.

Tim: Less objectively than that: it’s also a track that I immediately wanted to hear again once it finished, and is one I keep enjoying. And that’s really the litmus test as far as I’m concerned. GOOD DOGS.

Autograf feat. Lils – You Might Be

“It starts medium, goes through a medium first verse, then hits a medium chorus.”

Tim: For some reason this video has an intro twenty seconds longer than the one in the actual song; basically, don’t let that put you off.

Tom: Well, that is certainly a video. And… hmm. Well, it’s certainly a four-minute music track. I’m not sure what else I can say about it.

Tim: Funny, this one, just in terms of volume and energy. It starts medium, goes through a medium first verse, then hits a medium chorus. Second verse, chorus, middle eight, final chorus – the level’s the same all the way through, pretty much, with no progression anywhere. And yet, while I’d normally hold that against the song for boring me, I have a lot of time for this.

Tom: You know what sells it for me? The pre-chorus, the quiet bit. The rest, I could take and leave, but the vocals there are beautiful, the melody’s interesting, and the sudden silence out of, as you say, all the medium bits… well, that actually got my attention.

Tim: It doesn’t go anywhere novel, or do anything particularly interesting, but it’s got a good melody, good vocals, good production, and often that’s all you need.

Bronnie – High School Sucks

“Hold on. Something’s odd here.”

Tim: A few weeks back, you wrote of female rock soloists that “they’ll always get compared to either Avril Lavigne or Paramore, and it’s difficult for the sound to stand on its own”. Have a listen, and then take a guess where Bronnie, who has recently re-released this track, is from.

Tom: I disliked this based purely on the title, because it sounds like the sort of pandering-too-hard song that gets put into… I don’t know, maybe a knock-off not-Disney-channel teen movie? I’m going to guess she’s Swedish, and this is basically a localised attempt to do High School Musical.

Tim: Wrong – she’s from the Wirral, in north-west England, and I was amazed when I discovered that via her Twitter.

Tom: I also despise the Wirral. And… has she put a fake “Vevo” label on her own thumbnail? Hold on. Something’s odd here. I think she’s unsigned.

Tim: I believe so, yes, and the Wirral’s not that bad, is it? Neither’s this track, though, which is probably what we should be focussing on.

Tom: In which case, I feel a bit guilty being so bolshy about this, because for someone who’s doing pretty much all their own production, this sounds good. The vocals are a bit buried in the mix, and the video’s slightly amateur in how it’s filmed, but they’ve covered it well.

Tim: Couldn’t agree with you more about the vocals, and it seems neither could she – the re-released version is also a re-mastered version, which fixes that.

Tom: Without a huge budget behind it all, I’d expect a lot worse.

Tim: The main thing is what it sounds like, though, because I don’t know the reasoning behind a British person talking about semesters, sounding very, very American, but I can’t imagine it’s accidental. And it’s a shame, as it’s hard enough to stand out in a genre like this, but directly emulating the biggest artist? That surprises me.

Tom: On the other hand, we are talking about it.

Tim: Because it’s a great track – it wouldn’t shock me too much if Avril Lavigne had released this – but I’d love to hear it sounding more natural. Who knows what we could have had? Possibly a whole brand new sound.

Liam Payne feat. Quavo – Strip That Down

“Have they saved the best until last?”

Tom: Is that all of them? I’ve lost track.

Tim: It is, and so the natural question is: have they saved the best until last?

Tim: Hahahahah yeah no.

Tom: Ah, Tesco Value Zayn: months later and not as good.

Tim: “I used to be used to be in 1D/now I’m out free” sums it up, really, in every way.

Tom: For a few seconds, when he’s in the gold jacket in the ludicrous bedroom doing a Meaningful Look at the camera, I was convinced that this was actually a parody.

Tim: Hmm, this could actually work well as a Lonely Island style track. But no. Oh, no.

Tom: The “yeah yeah yeah” sounds like a knock-off Ed Sheeran. The autotuned rap middle eight is unnecessary.

Tim: You say unnecessary, I say just plain offensive. And why has he named himself after a packet of crisps?

Tom: The world that comes to mind for this whole track is…

Tim: Irritating? Pointless?

Tom: Unconvincing.

Saturday Flashback: Air Supply – Making Love Out Of Nothing At All

“I’m going to ask: who does it sound like?”

Tom: This has been going round my head lately, Tim, but I’m sending it to you for another reason. Rather than asking you to guess what it sounds like, I’m going to ask: who does it sound like?

Tom: Not in the voice, but in the style: the instruments, the melody, those backing singers. Any of it sound familiar?

Tim: My main thought would be Bonnie Tyler – the chorus line at 2:30 gets me right into Total Eclipse of the Heart, for starters – though to be honest it’d fit with with any number of power ballads from an ’80s club night – the piano in particular strikes a Meat Loaf line.

Tom: I was hoping you’d say that. Bonnie Tyler and Meat Loaf are exactly right, because this was written by the legendary Jim Steinman, best known for “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and Meat Loaf’s “Bat out of Hell” album, among a lot of other things. (In fact, Total Eclipse kept this song from the US Number 1 spot.)

Tim: Well then that would make sense. And that’s a hell of a CV – I see he also turned up on Take That’s Never Forget and Boyzone’s No Matter What.

Tom: No Matter What: lyrics by Steinman, music by Lloyd Webber. Seriously.

Tim: Wait, what? How – how on Earth did I not know that?

Tom: I despise that song, incidentally, but what I love about the Air Supply track is that, despite it not being a song that gets as much recognition as Total Eclipse or any Meat Loaf track, it’s still clearly the same formula, and it’s still a really, really good song.

Lila feat. Rat City – Tell You

“Have they sampled a duck call?”

Tim: Back in January we featured the very good Don’t Let Go by this exact same pairing; here’s a follow up.

Tim: Bits are better, and yet other bits are much worse, which is a dreadful shame.

Tom: “Ice and fire / higher, higher, higher.” That is… not a great opening lyric. And those aren’t great vocal distortion effects either, at any point during the song.

Tim: Well I’m not so bothered by the lyrics, because otherwise the verse and chorus are great – the melody just clicks, and the voice and production are exactly what I want. Post chorus, though, is sadly exactly what I don’t want, because oh, it’s just horrible.

Tom: Have they sampled a duck call? That’s just unpleasant.

Tim: It’s really, really not nice, and it ruins – utterly ruins – the rest of the song. We frequently complain about guest rappers turning up and vomiting all over the middle eight of otherwise good songs, but at least those can be skipped over, or leave quickly. Here, though, that sounds is part of the song, integrated deep, and yet it sounds horrible. DO NOT LIKE.

Linda Sundblad – Bridges

“Nice surprise, wasn’t it?”

Tim: A request to anybody who starts reading below straight after pressing play: please don’t. Let it play out.

Tim: Nice surprise, wasn’t it? I was close to switching off after a while, when it became clear that there wasn’t a huge amount going on in the chorus.

Tom: Oh, you say that, but I really do like that chorus melody. It feels like a builder to me, and… well, yes, it was. I’m surprised the chorus didn’t keep you interested.

Tim: Soon afterwards, though, I realised what a stupid decision switching off would have been, because man, I do love a gospel choir. And when those trumpets come in? Oh, sublime.

Tom: It’s a textbook Big Inspirational Song, and it’s done very very well indeed. Although I could have sworn that was a string section, not trumpets, they’re so buried in the mix. Good, though.

Tim: A shame, then, that it ended when it did – ‘verse/chorus/chorus/middle eight type thing’ is a very odd structure indeed, particularly when the middle eight type thing is so quiet and coming off such a big second chorus. Close it with a final chorus, ideally with a soaring vocal from her over the choir, and this’d be a sweet 💯. As it is…it’s close. Very close.