Tim: A song for you today in which it continues to be confirmed that, for all their monthly line-up changes and cynical merchandisability origins, Dolly Style are actually a really good girlband.
Tom: Good production, if saddled with songs that are… well, let’s say inconsistent.
Tim: WHAT. A. CHORUS. Not that the rest of it’s bad, by any means – within a few seconds of it starting we’ve established the genre and that they know what they’re doing, and all we have to do is wait for the good stuff to come along, and oh boy, we are not disappointed.
Tom: Careful with “we”, there. I’ll grant you it’s a good chorus melody, but a lot of the production behind it sounds like someone’s just plugged a vague “early 2000s” synth and percussion pack into their computer, and kept it on the default settings. It might well be a style choice, but it doesn’t sound like a deliberate one.
To be fair: there are some occasional strings in there that do lift it up a bit. But as for that verse…
Tim: The verse is, sure, standard stuff – nothing special, but the second half comes along and it dutifully ramps up a little bit – then it goes a bit quiet for the pre-chorus, all yes, yes, yes, box ticking stuff. And then the chorus happens And the melody, the vocal power, the lyrics, the shoutalongability, again those lyrics I’M TOO FREAKING PERFECT FOR YOU.
Tom: Yep, that’s not bad at all. For a band that was originally set up to be a full-on bubblegum pop act, this is… much more credible than I’d have ever thought.
Tim: After that, we’re back to the start, and of course we have the exact same verse structure, then a decent middle eight, and then, oh, would you believe it, there’s a closing chorus with some added howling over the top of it. Of course there is, it’s formula. And sometimes, formula is absolutely FRKN PERFECT.
Tom: No key change though, is there?
Tim: Out of character as it may be for me to say this: sometimes they’re not needed.