“Elements for a great track are there, but somehow it’s just not right.”
Tim: Presenting, for your enjoyment, the least Train song that Train have ever released.
Tom: I… don’t know if that’s a good thing?
Tim: Well, have a listen and find out.
Tom: That’s a great introduction. Seriously, I was actually disappointed when the first verse dropped everything back to normal.
Tim: You say normal, but really nothing sounds like Train in this. Instrumentation, way out. Shouting in the chorus, nope. The backing woo-oos, what? And even, somehow, the vocal sounds unusual, although they might just be in comparison with the backing.
Tom: Yep: when I listen it’s clearly the same singer, but the recognisable edge to the voice seems to go.
Tim: Maybe there’s a bit at the start of the middle eight that’s familiar, but otherwise it could be a whole other band. I suppose it’s just a shame, then, that it’s not a particularly great song, or at least for me.
Tom: I mean, that’s Train through and through: the song doesn’t really mean anything, there’s no depth to the lyrics, but there’s nothing particularly wrong with it either.
Tim: Somehow I struggle to get a hand on it, nothing quite grabs me like I want it to. Elements for a great track are there, but somehow it’s just not right.
Tom: Exemplified, I think, by that middle eight: there’s a lovely melody lurking underneath that shouting. On their own either element might work, but together it’s just confusing. A bit like that video, really: generic stock footage that doesn’t remotely match the video. How strange.
Tim: Hmm, I wasn’t going to be that harsh on it – it was the melody in the chorus that caught my ear and make me think “ah…”
Tom: Well, yeah, but that’s because it’s ripped off. And before you go “well, that’s just an obscure track they’re taking”, it’s not.
Tim: It really isn’t – a simplified version was one of the first tunes I got taught when I was unsuccessfully put through piano lessons as kid, and I suspect that’s true for many other people as well. But as for the lyrics, they have at least added the slight twist that the reason he wants the song to be played is that it gets his woman turned on and wanting to do the dirty.
Tom: Here’s the thing: Heart and Soul is a great song. There’s a reason it’s survived so long. And it only really has that chorus: if they’d just added some decent verses, and produced it this well, this’d be a fantastic track. As it is? It just feels lazy.
“This is designed to be in every Christmas commercial.”
Tim: Lest you think it’s just female pop soloists who do Christmas albums, Drops of Jupiter hitmakers Train have got one out this year as well, called Christmas in Tahoe. It’s “exclusively on Amazon Music” which is a bit wanky, let’s be honest.
Tom: But enormously lucrative for them, no doubt. Train are a strange band, aren’t they? Consistently successful, enormous licensing deals for commercials and “exclusives”, a lot of people clearly like them, and yet I’ve never met anyone who’s ever said “you know, I really like Train”.
Tim: Hmm, I’d never thought about them that way before. Anyway, this track’s from 2010 and therefore is on the YouTube.
Tom: Well, that’s absolutely generic, just like almost every other cash-in “let’s write a Christmas song” single. Or, indeed, most Train singles.
Tim: Pretty much, I guess. And that’s one bouncer that’s not coming to work tomorrow, so THANKS SANTA for that increase in unemployment over Christmas time, but for everybody else in that video, GLORY BE because they all get to see Train for free. Except for the people who’ve already paid, and will probably end up feeling a bit ticked off, but let’s not think about that, let’s instead WAKE UP THE HAPPINESS.
Tom: This is designed to be in every Christmas commercial. And it’ll probably work.
Tim: Could well be, because oh, what a happy track this is. Lyrics about kids wanting the world to be happy, and grandma to be happy, oh and also can I have lifelong happiness with a girl please I’ll just sneak that in on the end there THANKS. Music’s basically standard Train fare with added sleigh bells and glockenspiely percussion, which to be honest I reckon is exactly what a Train festive track should be. Basically, three out of four great Christmas tracks and we’re only five days into December, so I think we’ll be alright.
Tom: And, as ever with my harsher rating scheme, I’m still in “bah humbug” mode. Every year there’s one that gets me, Tim — it’s been Hurts, it’s been Kelly Clarkson — let’s just hope that one makes it through my Scrooge-like armour before Christmas Day.
Tim: This song comes on our work playlist a couple of times each day, and every time I think the same two words to describe it: sickeningly chirpy.
Tom: You’d better not savage this song. I know damn well I like it.
Tim: I mean, listen to it.
Tom: I do. It’s lovely.
Tim: That awful ukulele throughout (with this video confirming what I’ve previously said: GROWN MEN SHOULDN’T HOLD THEM).
Tom: Okay, that’s fair. I’m going to describe that guy as “Discount Howie Mandel”.
Tim: The annoyingly saccharine lyrics – “I believe in you, like a beauty you’re Madonna”, “I want the world to see you with me”, and worst of all “my heart is bound to beat right out my untrimmed chest” WHY ARE YOU TELLING US THAT??
Tom: Huh. Yeah, that’s also fair. “A game show love connection” jumped out at me as well.
Tim: Oh, GOD, I’d not heard that. And there’s the video, which I wasn’t previously aware of but now passionately dislike, with the way he just dances around with no real idea in mind, reminiscent of Danny from The Script on Graham Norton.
Tom: Mmf. You’re starting to talk me around.
Tim: But the worst thing? The one single thing I hate about this song more than every other thing in it combined? It’s infectious.
Tom: Yep. There we go.
Tim: I hate it, but I can’t prevent myself from smiling, or tapping my feet.
Tom: Isn’t that middle eight just amazingly good, though?
Tim: Ugh. I’ve now listened to it a few times while writing this and NOW I’M HAPPY. I HATE THIS TRACK. I HATE TRAIN. THEY’RE UTTER BASTARDS. TOTAL, SICKENINGLY CHIRPY BASTARDS.
Tom: HEY SOUL SISTER, I DON’T WANNA MISS A SINGLE THING YOU DO.
How do you make a mariachi band sound good in a pop song?
Tom: A David Hasselhoff cameo in the video may sound promising—
Tim: Nope.
Tom: Yep, fair point. But don’t worry, because the mariachi band is so much better.
Tim: That was BRILLIANT.
Tom: Wasn’t it just? I mean, how do you make a mariachi band and Spanish guitar sound good in a pop song? And how can it be so damn catchy? Well, I’ve got an explanation: it’s been assembled from parts of many, many other songs.
Tim: Well…
Tom: The verse is a Latin version of “Phantom of the Opera”. The pre-chorus line is from the same musical – the patter bit of “Masquerade” (“The toast of all city, what a pity…”) The chorus is a bit of the Vandals’ “My Girlfriend’s Dead” crossed with another song that I can’t quite place now. The horn section is straight out of “I Will Survive”. They’ve all been changed, of course – there’s still some composing in there – but it does sound bolted-together.
Tim: Right, I’m in two minds, here. I agree with you about the Phantom link, which is almost as blatant as Alphabeat was with The Who, and quite how it could be there without being deliberate is beyond me. The “I Will Survive” link is pretty much there, and the song you can’t place is Girl All The Bad Guys Want.
Tom: Ha! I even saw Bowling for Soup once live – they’re a band that clearly enjoys themselves on stage – and I still didn’t place that.
Tim: However, I want to disagree about the Vandals link. Yes, it is exactly the same idea, but the logic makes me think of everything that annoys me about that Everything Is A Remix thing, where he reckons that just about every scene in every film has been stolen.
The thing is, for any given scene, there are only a limited number of ways to frame it; with seventy years of film-making previously, of course someone’s going to have done it before. That doesn’t make it copying, it makes it an inevitable coincidence, and it’s quite possibly the same here.
Sure, maybe they did think “That’s a cool theme for a song – we should do that and hope no-one notices,” and I won’t deny it’s a possibility, but maybe it’s just two songs out of almost a century of pop music that share a somewhat unusual theme. To be honest, I’d be astounded if there were only two.
Tom: Fair point – and it would have been my default theory if it wasn’t for all the other, er, homages throughout the track.
I still like it, though. I like it a lot.
Tim: Good, because I reckon it’s great. What’s particularly good is that he’s done that thing comedy songwriters have to do (which The Vandals didn’t do), which is rewrite the chorus each time so it’s still fun.
Tom: Which, considering it’s the same Train that did the definitely-not-comedy “Drops of Jupiter” ten years ago, is quite a good thing.
Tim: Yeah, and sure, he could have just stuck with the quicksand, the shark and the sunbed, which would have been perfectly acceptable, but instead he put a bit more in and added a lion, a mudslide and a hot tub. Would have been even better if he’d done it at the end as well, but it’s still a handsome list. It’s a good tune (original or otherwise), it’s got a whole lot of energy to it and it’s exactly what I want to hear (although I’d prefer it if the lyrics reflected the video with the car one – ‘got decapitated by a purple Scion’ would be so much better).
Tom: Incidentally, who fills a cement mixer full of quicksand?
