Tom: It’s taken me three songs to realise that “Suite 16” is a pun on “Sweet 16”. I have no idea how I failed to notice this. I guess I never said it out loud.
Tim: Well, if it’s any consolation I didn’t get it the first time round. But first up here, an admission of error: on Wednesday I said that Who I Wanna Be was Suite 16’s second single; in fact, this one was, which came out about six months ago and completes the trio of boyband songs: we’ve had the pop-punk and we’ve got the melty ballad coming later, but now the summer pop banger.
Tim: And (along with a lot of the girls in that video, quite probably) that’s one they actually nailed!
Tom: It is, but bloody hell those are some very close camera shots. I physically recoiled from my screen at one point. The five of them all next to each other, staring at a retreating camera? That’s got some full-on Invasion of the Body Snatchers vibes about it. Anyway: what works about it for you?
Tim: You’ve got your summer whistling, your easily discerned lyrics about how great the girl their singing to is, and speaking of lyrics, “A little bit of me, a little bit of you, a little bit of awesome when we are two” is simultaneously a godawful cheesy line to repeat forever and a brilliant cheesy line to repeat forever.
Tom: There’s an incredible amount of autotune in that middle eight, mind, and I’m not convinced it’s entirely for stylistic reasons.
Tim: You could very well be right there; on the other hand, though, the backing is such that it’s easy to click or clap along to, that harmony at the close of the middle eight is from page one of the boyband manual (which now I’ve dreamt it up is a book I really want someone to write), and you can never go wrong with a pile of “na na na na” and “ah ah ah ah”. Conclusion: it’s a great track, so if we keep up the almost good/great/almost good pattern, we could actually be successful here. Nice work.
Tom: By the way, the Boyband Manual might not be real, but you should definitely track down The Manual, by the KLF, if you haven’t already.
Tim: Hmm, well I do currently have about eighteen inches of unread books on my shelf; might bump that up the list though.