Christopher – Europlop!

Christopher – Leap of Faith

“Agh, this is so frustrating.”

Tim: I’ll be honest with you, Tom – not long after I pressed play on this I got bored and picked up my phone, and didn’t realise until the end of it that I’d missed a pretty good track. Don’t do that.

Tom: I tried. I genuinely tried. And then halfway through the final chorus, I absent-mindedly opened a new tab and looked up something that had crossed my mind.

Tim: Agh, this is so frustrating. See, I’m sure this is a good track, with individual parts that all work fine: the chorus has a lovely melody to it, verses flow along well enough, it doesn’t really do anything wrong, and every moment I’m listening I’m thinking “yeah, I like this”.

Tom: There’s some really good vocal work, too, like that falsetto in the last line of the chorus. (How much of that is live performance, and how much is digital trickery? These days, I guess it doesn’t matter.)

Tim: Sure, maybe it could do with something bigger when it comes back after the middle eight, because the lyrics really deserve it, but overall it’s fine. Except, I seem fundamentally unable to pay attention to it. I press play, I listen for a bit, and then I go back to Twitter. I stop myself, go back to the music, think “yes, this is definitely good”, and thirty seconds later I’ve opened up a new tab and am browsing some other website.

Tom: It’s not just you. For once, we’re in complete agreement: it’s a good song. It just doesn’t hold the attention, which to me is inexplicable.

Tim: And that really, really annoys me – because I like this! I really do! But I just can’t get myself to actually pay attention to it.

Christopher – Ghost

“Successful musician, lovely hair, but just keeps getting abandoned.”

Tim: Poor, poor Christopher – successful musician, lovely hair, but just keeps getting abandoned. No option other than to write a song about it, really.

Tom: It’s worked for generations of misunderstood youth before him.

Tim: Mind you, the lyric “I know I said I need my own space” implies that actually he dumped her and now he’s playing the dickish ex who’s had a rethink but won’t accept she’s moved on, which is very annoying as otherwise it a good song.

Tom: Yep, there’s definitely a stalker-reading to this song. I’m going to choose to ignore it, though, because the rest of it’s pleasant enough, isn’t it? It’s an odd rhythm in that chorus, which feels a bit like he’s emPHAsising THE wrong sylLABles sometimes — but it seems to work for the track.

Tim: Nice and strummy with a decent beat and some vocal samples here and there to make it sound modern, and really if the lyrics weren’t so annoying I could really like this song. UGH, DAMMIT.

Topic x Vigiland x Christopher – Let Us Love

“Shall we see what today’s international cooperation brings us?”

Tim: A German producer, a Swedish musical duo, a Danish singer. Shall we see what today’s international cooperation brings us?

Tim: That’s a nice track, right?

Tom: “Nice” seems about right.

Tim: It does everything it needs to, has a nice tune, good vocals, decent beat to it, enjoyable while it’s playing, I wouldn’t stop dancing if it came on in a club, and I can even remember the chorus of it afterwards. So…why don’t I have anything to say about it?

Tom: Oh, Tim, welcome to how I feel about nearly all new pop music. It’s okay.

Tim: It’s nice, it’s good, it’s fine. It’s just…yeah, no problems.

Christopher – My Heart

“Warning: this is an exceptionally frustrating video.”

Tom: Bold choice to choose one of the most common first names in the world as your mononym, but sure.

Tim: Warning: this is an exceptionally frustrating video.

Tpm: I’m not sure it’s frustrating, just more ill-thought-out.

Tim: “Okay,” went my thought process, “we’ve got a reverse video, always a fun thing, particularly when they try to lip sync it, and we know he ends up dead, so what’s going to happen?” Except then it turns out that since you can’t exactly die from rolling down a sand dune it must have been just a metaphorical death, but hey, is that a wedding we’ve got coming up? That’ll be a decent climax. Except, no. He’s just waiting at the alter, gets given back the engagement ring and then think “welp, guess she’s ditched me, okay, bye everyone”. Like, what? Narratively that’s awful, because at least call her to find out what’s going on, mate, don’t just run away and metaphorically kill yourself. And for our sake as viewers, where’s the fun? Where’s the “hang on, I know that look in your eye, wait, you’re sleeping my the best man?!” moment? That’d be a showdown worth waiting for, not this nonsense.

In other news, that’s now three out of three tracks this week where I’ve not actually mentioned the music at all. Hmm.

Tom: Yeah, I was going to mention that. And for once, I think that’s a shame: it’s got a really nice chorus, the piano’s doing interesting things in the background, and he’s got a voice that’s more than capable of singing it.

Tim: All of that is true – it’s nice. It’s decent. Just, not as good as the video is annoying, I guess.

Christopher – Irony

“DIDN’T HAPPEN”

“Can you see the irony?” asks Christopher here in the chorus, or a variety of situations. More important to us, though, is has he done an Alanis Morissette?

Hmm, well, it works some of the time and the video’s good fun, so I’ll let him have it. It does sometimes annoy me with anecdotal lyrics like this, because so often I just want to yell “DIDN’T HAPPEN” at the screen – has he really decided he will never again let his mum see him in a T-shirt (and Selena, did you really have a dream you were sipping whisky neat?)- but again, I’ll give it a pass, mostly because I just really like this song. It’s got a lovely melody, the instrumentation’s a lovely mix of tinkly piano and beautiful strings, and best of all I can actually remember it after it’s finished. Lovely.

Christopher – Free Fall

“Too glitchy, too much faffing about”

Tim: Tom, I might as well be honest with you and our reader: there does seem to be something of a dearth of fully enjoyable music around at the moment, or at least enjoyable music where the artist has been kind enough to put on YouTube.

Tom: January is always a rough period, or so it seems, but this really does seem to be worse than usual.

Tim: With those expectations set, here’s a track that’s mostly alright.

Tom: Oh, great, deliberate digital glitching in a music video. As for the music…

Tim: Well, there’s quite a lot of good stuff in there, with a good melody and very good vocals.

Tom: Yes, I can’t fault those vocals. It’s just a shame they haven’t been put to something that’s a bit more memorable.

Tim: Yes, and there’s also quite a bit that stylistically I’m really not keen on – most of what follows the middle eight, for starters. But despite being largely built on that style, I like this song.

Tom: I dislike it for the same reason I dislike the music video: it’s too glitchy, too much faffing about, and not enough actual melody or… well, anything.

Tim: Cut it off at the end of the middle eight (which really does have some great vocal work in it) and I’d be very happy with this. As it is: it’ll keep me going.