Tim: Right, party poppers down, people, because it’s serious analysis time. We started this blog (two years ago yesterday, as it happens) primarily because we love Swedish/Scandinavian/proper pop music, and all the clichés that go with it like key changes and other things that make sure they never get played on the radio in Britain.
Tom: Good grief, has it been two years? That’s a lot of key changes, Tim. And a lot of other changes: you’re living in London, dubstep’s a mainstream thing now, Engelbert Humperdinck’s briefly returned to our vocabulary.
Tim: A good few changes. But musically, our message has always roughly been: Sweden does great cheesy pop. Yet somehow we’ve never realised that Sweden also seems to do great synthpop and electropop. We’ve had Queen of Hearts, Johan Agebjörn, Wild At Heart and, most notably, The Sound of Arrows. And then there’s this latest export, Urban Cone.
Tom: Urban Cone sounds like a terrible extreme sport. Or a terrible ice cream shop. Or some kind of terrible ice cream-based extreme sport.
Tim: Are you kidding? I cannot think of an ice cream-based extreme sport that wouldn’t be totally brilliant. Returning again to my favourite film and your favourite Nightmare Fuel: amazing.
Tim: The verses: admittedly, not fantastic, and that single note in the background could get tedious on repeated listens. But that’s all made up for in the chorus, which is, let’s face it, just plain great.
Tom: No arguments there. The lull before that final chorus is just wonderful.
Tim: You might complain that the “we’ll be kings and queens” message is similar to the issue with Pet Shop Boys’s use of “winner”, and to an extent you’d be right, but that doesn’t stop it having a great message, lovely uplifting vibe to it and a great melody to the chorus.
Tom: I think it was just the specific word “winner” that I had issues with there – which probably says more about the associations in my head than it does about the song in general. Kings and queens? No such problems. It’s a cracking chorus.
Tim: It is. All in all, it’s another great synthpop track from a country that excels at the genre.