Tag: Amanda Fondell

Amanda Fondell – Keep The Love

“Out with the harsh antagonistic lyrics, and in with major-key dance beats”

Tim: The previous two Amanda Fondell tracks we’ve mentioned – Dumb and Bastard – were both fairly melancholy affairs. This? Oh, hell no.

Tim: It is, in fact, more or less a total U-turn.

Tom: And while it’s certainly more upbeat, I found that I was still fitting into the “generic Ellie Goulding-alike” bracket in my head: I’d expect it to the background for a teen drama and not really a decent musical choice.

Tim: Out with the melancholy music and the harsh antagonistic lyrics, and in with major-key dance beats and “keep the love coming”, and I for one think it’s a great choice. Not that her previous ones weren’t appreciable, they just weren’t entirely enjoyable. This, on the other hand, is entirely enjoyable, and precisely the sort of upbeat, cheerful, happy dance tune I want to listen to on a night out, or a loud night in, or in fact any time at all, really.

Tom: You’re just more enthusiastic than I am: it just keeps slipping away from me for some reason.

Tim: Oh, that disappoints me. My view: just, great.

Saturday Reject: Amanda Fondell – Dumb

It’s not hard to see why it came seventh.

Tim: This is good. Very good. But it’s not hard to see why it came seventh in its Melodifestivalen heat.

Tim: I spent at least the first ninety seconds, maybe even two minutes, of this trying to work out what was going on. Not that it’s particularly weird – it’s just so dark that it really just doesn’t seem right. The cracked mirrors, the spikes on her fingers, the expression on her face that’s a mix of deranged and psychopathic. The minor key, the underlying strings that come from a horror film soundtrack.

Tom: You know, I think I could really like this track if it wasn’t for that “dun-dun-dun-dun” in the chorus. That sticks out like a rusty upturned nail on a park bench. And perhaps that middle-eight, where she sounds a bit like a low-rent Bjork. The rest of the track’s cracking, though.

Tim: It’s not particularly surprising – this is, after all, the same singer who provided us with Bastard, wonderfully insulting but not remotely happy – but it sticks out emotionally so much that once you’ve zoned out to it and are able to appreciate it it’s pretty much finished. Technically that means it’s a good thing that it got knocked out, as it would probably bomb in Malmö, but it’s really a shame because it is a fantastic track that was just misplaced.

Agreed: that bell-filled final chorus is amazing, but it’d never take Eurovision.