Ask Embla – Cry Baby

Very much a Decent Track.

Tim: The second single from a duo composed of two fairly prolific songwriters – Ina Wroldsen is responsible for, amongst many others, pretty much every hit The Saturdays have had, while Arnthor Birgisson has written lots of other great stuff as well.

Tom: Which is just as well, given what happened the last time we had a duet singing “Cry Baby”.

Tim: Oh, you really didn’t need to link to that, you know.

But here, fortunately, a decent track, is pretty much a given. So can they do it justice vocally?

Tim: Hmmm, not so much, unfortunately.

Tom: That’s a shame, because as you said in the introduction: that is very much a Decent Track. Maybe not decent enough to set the charts on fire, but enough to make them smoulder a little. Sorry, that’s a terrible metaphor.

Tim: Not so bad – I like the idea of a smouldering chart, brimming over with greatness. This might, might make it, but there seems to be a fair dollop of autotune on there, and whilst it’s still a great track, I can’t help feeling it might have been better with other people singing. It’s understandable that they want to do a bit more – after all, the vast majority of music-buyers don’t give anywhere near as much credit to the writers as is deserved, and if you’re writing songs, singing them is a fairly logical next step. It’s just, like I said when we talked about Jedward, it’s two different skill sets, and there’s only so much that autotune can do to rectify it.

Tom: And there is a hell of a lot of autotune on there – not enough that it can be counted as a Cher-style stylistic tweak, but enough that it’s bloody noticeable.

Tim: Still a great track, though, so I really hope they’re not quitting their day job for this.