Seeb x Zak Abel – Sad in Scandinavia

“This time, I’d like to actually compliment the writer.”

Tom: Often, around these parts, I grumble about trite lyrics or cringe-inducing rhyme schemes. Well, this time, I’d like to actually compliment the writer.

Tim: Huh, blimey – the lyrics must be good.

Tom: I was originally going to complain that the lyrics were “clunky”, but they’re absolutely not: splitting slant rhymes across different clauses like that is really clever. It’s just that rather than paying attention to the song, I started noticing the rhyme scheme: and that feels rather like watching a movie and thinking “wow, those graphics are really good”. The best lyrics are not the ones you notice, but the ones that have the desired effect.

Tim: Yeah, you’re not wrong, and it is inventive. To be honest, I think that very when most people listen for rhyming in lyrics, it’s just a case of “ah, yeah, these syllables are the same” – if they happen to split up a sentence, or even a word, so be it.

Tom: Anyway, I got so caught up in analysing the rhymes that I forgot to pay attention to the rest of the music. What do you reckon?

Tim: I think it’s good – perfectly decent dance track. I WANT TO GO DANCING TOM.

Dotter – Backfire

“A song that puts me very much in mind of Sia.”

Tom: The one with the disco ball dress, right?

Tim: Follow-up to her Melodifestivalen almost-winner, a song that puts me very much in mind of Sia.

Tim: I’m not sure there’s any one track in particular this reminds me of (or at least nothing popped out when I skimmed through a list of Sia’s singles) but stylistically this is very much a track I can imagine her putting out, and last time I checked that’s a fair old compliment.

Tom: It is! And it’s not just that the vocal quality’s very similar: the produciton is in the same style, too. I’m not massively convinced that it’s a chart-topper: this feels more like a Sia album track, but as you said, that’s still quite an endorsement.

Tim: A very strong voice, great production values, and all in all surely not that long before she’s noticed outside of Sweden, perhaps? If there’s any justice.

Tom: One big track is all it’ll take, I reckon.

Saturday Flashback: Alphaville – Forever Young (Special Dance Mix)

“Big drum beat! More trumpets! Intermittent vocal bits going going ‘ah, ah, ah, ah’!”

Tim: Here’s a fun thing I found while looking up versions of this song when we chatted about the Boy In Space version: the B-side of the original release, which somehow I’d never heard before.

Tom: I didn’t even know this existed! Okay, then. How did they remix this back in 1984?

Tom: Well, that sounds a bit like Pet Shop Boys only ten years earlier, doesn’t it? There’s no actual remix producer credited, so presumably this was the same team as the main single, just moving things about and banging on a couple of extra tracks.

Tim: Big drum beat! More trumpets! Intermittent vocal bits going going ‘ah, ah, ah, ah’!

Tom: I am surprised this sounds as good as it does.

Tim: Most important for us, though, an answer to your observation about it not being a song you’d expect to become so popular, what with lyrics about fading horses and suchlike. It’s not until I heard this, with the vocal bits and the excessive trumpeting, that I realised quite how much it’s based on Pachelbel’s Canon, and suddenly I can’t unhear it.

I’d love to know what it is about that piece of music, what quality it has, that makes it quite so pervasive in pop – you’ve got obvious ones like All Together Now, Go West and C U When U Get There, but then you dig further and it’s in Let It Be, Don’t Look Back In Anger, Sk8er Boi. There’s With Or Without You, Basket Case and hell, even Welcome To The Black Parade. I’ve no idea how many of those were deliberate – it’s entirely entirely possible they were subconsciously inspired or even complete coincidences (though Pete Waterman’s on record saying I Should Be So Lucky is partly based on it), but it’s interesting how one eight note theme can become the basis of so many hit singles.

Tom: If you haven’t seen Rob Paravonian’s piece on this, I suspect you should.

Tim: I hadn’t seen it, no, so thanks for that. And whether or not this is the reason they become big I’ve no idea – ups the chances a bit, I’d guess – but either way, I love music for stuff like this.

Peg Parnevik – Regret It

“That’s great, no?”

Tim: I’m fairly sure we all do things we know we might regret later – I recently worked out how much I spent on LEGO during the lockdown, and I’d really like to forget, but apparently that’s not something my mind can do on demand. Anyway, Peg’s decided to write a song on the theme.

Tom: Only, I presume, without the LEGO.

Tim: And that’s great, no?

Tom: Much as I’d like to reply with a chirpy “no!”… I’ve got to agree. And I’m all for less-conventional messages like this in music.

Tim: Strong unambiguous lyrics, chorus sounds great, with the singing/chanting/vaguely shouting blend that can so often work really well, as it does here, and there’s great production work going on in the background.

Tom: It feels very much in the style of “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”, only with the exact opposite message. And just like that Taylor Swift song, it has an unnecessary talking bit.

Tim: Sure, I could do without the tag line at the end, and the fact that that single negative point does come right at the end and is therefore the one thing we immediately remember is very very unfortunate, but other than that, I think this is great.

Alex Järvi – Lost Boy

“I know there’s a fashion right now for the old VHS filter, but come on mate, know when to stop.”

Tim: Since you left me, I’ve got nothing, I’m empty, blah blah blah, Alex would like to elaborate.

Tom: Sure, let’s apply lo-fi VHS effects to portrait mobile phone footage, where you can literally see the phone in the mirror. That makes sense.

Tim: Oh, there’s more to it than that – that’s just a plain weird video. Like, is the point of it to show that he’s so distraught he’s learnt how to use all the garbage effects in Windows Movie Maker and waste time hunting down crap GIFs and bits of old anime series? And if it’s not him doing that himself because he’s so broken, has he (or, I guess, Universal) paid someone to do that? Really? Because I know there’s a fashion right now for the old VHS filter, but come on mate, know when to stop.

Tom: I got irritated enough by those effects that I moved it to a background tab, at which point the song… didn’t seem to have much left to interest me.

Tim: Oh, see I think it’s quite a nice song – and I’m almost surprising myself saying that, because the genre is decidedly Not Me, but the song works.

Tom: Really? What stands out for you?

Tim: The chorus in particular has got a really good melody to it, and his vocal definitely conveys the message in the lyrics – and the production at the end, when everything’s coming together in the final chorus, just sounds great. Top work.

Frida Öhrn – Fading Like A Flower

“Fewer guitars, more synths, as we’d expect”

Tim: April 1991, Roxette went top 10 in a whole load of countries (though only number 12 in the UK, shame on us) with Fading Like A Flower; 29 years later, here’s Frida.

Tim: Fewer guitars, more synths, as we’d expect, though I’ve no issue with either of those things.

Tom: Yep: it’s a cover that changes enough to provide a new take, but keeps enough of the original to be familiar. It’s not bad at all.

Tim: What I do have issues with, though, are two things, at least compared to the original: number one, she got rid of the key change, and although I’m well aware that a key change wouldn’t suit this version at all, actively getting rid of one should be an imprisonable offence.

Tom: Harsh, but not unfair.

Tim: Second is the genre change: by and large a good thing, because this does sound great, but it does mean that every time the chorus comes around I get a brief flash of Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now, which for some reason the original doesn’t give me – maybe because the vocal’s not as prominent in the mix there?

Tom: Ha! I got a flash of Alice Cooper’s Poison and Faith Hill’s This Kiss, so, yes, let’s just agree this sounds like a lot of other tracks.

Tim: Aside from both of those things, though: I like this a lot. It is, in fact, a great example of how well making a song sound ‘up to date’ can be done: there’s plenty of the original still in there to keep the spirit of it going, and just enough modern sounding stuff (such as that vocal sample bit at 2:32, which I love) that it sounds like a current track. Job well done, I think.

Astrid S – Dance Dance Dance

“That sounds too harsh but not entirely unfair.”

Tom: It’s been more than a year since we last talked about an Astrid S solo track: I really liked Emotion, whereas you described it as “good noise”. So the question is: is that down to the singer and the style, or the song?

Tom: Well, that just sort of bounced off me and left no impression whatsoever, so I guess it was the song.

Tim: That sounds too harsh but not hugely unfair. I don’t know – I like the chorus, and after hearing it a couple of times the chorus is really embedded in my head, and that’s not a bad thing, with this chorus – nice melody and message to have stuck there.

Tom: On a relisten, there are some things to like here — the new melody that appears in the closing twenty seconds is lovely, and… hmm. That’s, again, all I’ve got.

Tim: Oh, shame.

Tom: I always feel bad being harsh about a song like this, because there’s nothing actually wrong here. The vocals are excellent. The production’s good. I just think it’s a bit forgettable.

Tim: Well, maybe you should just dance dance dance.

Magnus Carlsson – My Freedom

“Fancy hearing the official 2020 Stockholm Pride song?”

Tim: Fancy hearing the official 2020 Stockholm Pride song?

Tom: The way this format works, I don’t think I have a choice.

Tim: Oh, and isn’t that just great?

Tom: Yes, although that’s mostly because a load of compositional clichés on top of each other. There’s even a double-clap every sixteen beats in some parts! I don’t think that’s a bad thing here, mind — for this, you want a big shouty singalong song without surprises. They even put fake crowd-noise claps in when they’re coming back from the middle eight.

Tim: The fire alarm went off in my building at three o’clock this morning and I was stuck outside for an hour so I was all grumpy until I heard this, but BLIMEY am I now feeling good, because I’m fairly sure this has the potential to be a proper anthem in years to come. Thumping Eurodance beat, YES. Lyrics about knowing who he is, loving who he wants, YES. Callbacks to multiple song of his in the second verse, WHY NOT. Pleasing key change, ABSOLUTELY.

Tom: It arrives, it does the job well, and it leaves. Couldn’t reasonably ask for more.

Tim: And to be honest, I think that’s all I want from a song like this. Oh, except for an even bigger beat on it, which WHAT DO YOU KNOW is available via a SoundFactory remix on your local streaming service. Marvellous.

Saturday Flashback: Blazin’ Squad – Teenage Life

“I said ‘huh’ at least three times during that. That’s… huh.”

Tim: So, this week I finally completed that game everyone’s talking about, Netflix, and decided I’d actually watch that Daz Sampson documentary that got put on YouTube a couple of months back. There’s quite a bit of interesting stuff in there – not least the revelation that actually, he didn’t originally intend to perform this song himself.

Tom: I said “huh” at least three times during that. That’s… huh.

Tim: Isn’t it just? The lyrics are pretty different, presumably redone to make them more Eurovision friendly, but otherwise it’s almost identical.

Tom: You say “almost identical” and, okay, from a production perspective it’s close. But context is so, so important. There are two really important changes that transform this from “cringeworthy Eurovision performance” to “semi-competent Blazin’ Squad track”.

Tim: You think? What changes it for you?

Tom: First: the children’s-choir vocals don’t have to be performed live. It’s very clearly a sample: the style and production really emphasise that. Hip-hop can absolutely use cheesy children’s-choir samples, and use them really well given the right production. It’s a catchy sample, too. But at Eurovision, that sample had to be recreated live by just five adults, which means the listener interprets the context of it very, very differently.

And then second: yes, the lyrics are very different. And they’re being performed by teenagers — only just, Kenzie would have been 19, but they’re close enough to school-age that there’s at least some credibility there. Daz Sampson was in his early thirties then, and looked and sounded like he was in his early thirties. You can’t just drop him in and expect the song to work the same.

Tim: All fair, BUT, if I were to position a pro-Sampson argument (though I’ve really no idea why I’d want to): the issue with that reasoning is you’re judging it purely as a music track, and no, of course Daz can’t get away with this out as a standard single. But Eurovision’s different, and on occasion almost more like theatre – Latvia sent actual pirates two years later.

Tom: They weren’t, like, actual pirates, but I get what you mean.

Tim: Sure, the age could have been a problem – you’re right that Daz was definitely too old, but the ones pretending to be schoolgirls at the very least looked like they could have been the right age. Now, I’ll be first to admit that treating it like theatre isn’t a winning formula by any means – the pirates couldn’t even cannonball their way out of the semis – but it doesn’t mean it can’t work.

Tom: I’m not saying this would have been a hit for Blazin’ Squad, I’m not saying it would have been taken remotely seriously. I don’t think it’s all that good a track. But crucially, at no point did I even cringe slightly.

Tim: Okay, I guess that’s all fair enough – and I agree with you that it would have worked better for them as a song, but they would have been a terrible choice for Eurovision, just on a practical note if nothing else. They had so many members that barely half of them would have been allowed on stage, and that’s only if some of them were up for dressing as schoolgirls. The BBC, apparently, were also keen to have him rather than them, and as he put it, by that point Blazin’ Squad were “on the slide”. Only one option, then.

Tom: And that decision’s what killed the song even as a single. That’s not a slight on Daz Sampson (although the BBC press release describing him at the “UK’s most unique MC” feels like a bit of a dig) — it’s just that this track cannot be carried by anyone over 20.

Tim: The documentary’s quite revealing about that period – not enough for any normal person to spend forty minutes watching it, mind, but there are some interesting titbits in there. One example: the reason Daz came bounding out from behind the blackboard so excitedly. Not because of the choreography but because he’d only that second remembered the lyrics that he’d forgotten due to nerves, and that his contingency plan was to do his bit from Kung Fu Fighting instead. (I’ve checked, it really wouldn’t have fitted.)

Tom: I’ll say this much: that would have been memorable. Actually, fair play, it’s been fourteen years since this and we still remember it, and we’re talking about it. There is something to be said for making an impression.

Tim: Another one: following the performance, which had gone better than any rehearsal, they thought it might have done quite well – not a winner, clearly: “I knew we weren’t gonna win Eurovision 2006, I knew from the moment we got there” – but maybe top half. There then follows slightly heartbreaking footage of him and the girls watching country after country fail to give them points for over an hour, gradually confirming that nope, really not.

Tom: It was an incredibly high standard at that Eurovision. The novelty votes went to Lordi (who won), the schlager-loving votes went to Carola (fifth), and the plucky-but-charming underdog votes went to LT United (sixth).

Tim: Ah, well, maybe another time, if only he’d got anot–OH HANG ON but actually then he didn’t even get past the jury into the televised final so never mind. SORRY DAZ.

Bob Sinclar feat. OMI – I’m On My Way

“I know exactly what this is going to sound like”

Tom: I saw that pair of artists, and thought “I know exactly what this is going to sound like”.

Tom: And, yes, the style’s roughly what I expected: Sinclar’s tropical style and OMI’s vocals. I’d file this under ‘generic forgettable summer track’ if it wasn’t for one thing: what on earth were they thinking with those brass stabs in the instrumental part of chorus?

Tim: Really? I have no problem whatsoever with those as at all. It’s an instrument, it fits in – generally helps it along the lines of a “hey Disney, if you’re thinking about doing a new version of Simba’s Pride, want to consider us?”

Tom: I’m not enough of a music producer to say with authority what’s happening there, but it sounds like a sample of a muted trumpet, just with a very slow attack? Whatever it is, my ears find it genuinely unpleasant to listen to.

Tim: Huh, fair enough. Maybe they’re not ready for a Disney soundtrack after all.