Tag: State of Sound

State of Sound – Heaven

“This has already been done, and so much better.”

Tim: Remember how last week we said that tropical pop had more or less finished, and by extension that we were done with dodgy covers of classic songs? Yeah, well apparently that memo didn’t reach this lot.

Tom: It’s a cover! It’s actually a cover. And… I don’t know how I feel about that.

Tim: Well, quite. See, I still don’t really know what it is that makes me like or dislike tropical covers. Why I liked Africa, and why I really, really didn’t like Never Gonna Give You Up. This…this doesn’t actually get me going either way, and in fact I’m entirely neutral on it. It’s certainly an improvement on their previous, which rubbed us both up the wrong way, though.

Tom: The trouble here is that this has already been done, and so much better. The DJ Sammy version is the definitive one for me, over and above the original. This isn’t bringing anything new to the table: it’s just being compared to something better.

Tim: Is it necessary? No. Is it offensive? No. Is it, really, just designed to fit on your standard tropical sounding playlist, even though people have moved on? Probably.

State of Sound – Love Me Like That

Tim: I saw the act name and got all excited, because they’re Swedish and I momentarily thought they were State of Drama, a band responsible for an excellent Melodifestivalen track. They’re not them, though, which I realised just after the first note here.

Tim: It might not have been the music I was hoping for, but it’s perfectly listenable. At least, I though it was until 41 seconds into that video, at which point the chorus came along and brought with it the first proper use of that whiny uhhh-uhhh-uhh-uhhh synth sound (can’t think of any decent way to write it, but you’ll know the one I mean). And god, is it overused here.

Tom: Fake sax, I think? At least the strident part is. And weirdly, it didn’t bother me at all until the ending — at which point, I noticed it, and it’s now ruined the entire track for me: it went from my default of “meh” to a flat-out “no”. All because of that one synth.

Tim: When it crops up in the first verse, it’s not so bad, with it being new, brief and in the background. After the chorus hits, though, and it jumps to the foreground, it feels like it never stops – it’s more noticeable in the next verse, and every time it comes back I want to switch the track off entirely. A shame, as the rest is okay. But that noise is just that – noise, and not good noise.