Tim and Tom's Europop Blog
“Obscure Swedish 2002 eurodance!”
Tom: Obscure Swedish 2002 eurodance!
Tim: Hooray!
Tom: No, really, that’s all I’ve got, I just stumbled across it and it’s been stuck in my head for a couple of days now.
Tim: Nothing wrong with that, it’s a pretty good track. And incidentally, I’ve just looked at their Wikipedia page, and found the most outstanding sentence: “In June 2011, one of the Karlstad transit buses was named after the group.” And what greater an honour can there be than that?
“Three months late. Or nine months early.”
Tim: This track is exactly what you’d expect it to be, given the title.
Tom: That’s a weird setup for a video: film as if it’s behind-the-scenes, but have the artist sing the lyrics anyway. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before. Mind you, I don’t think it works, either. But yes: it’s exactly what I’d expect it to be.
Tim: That is, a summer floorfiller three months late. Or nine months early, which I can’t help thinking might have been a better option: I know nobody’s really looking for a dance tune in the middle of February, but I can’t help feeling I might get a bit more from it if it was Bring On The Summer, full of hopes and dreams about how wonderful everything will be, rather than a somewhat morose style of lyric, which doesn’t really fit with the tone of the song.
Tom: Very much standard, and I’m not using that as a compliment. That hook just isn’t good enough to bear that much repeating.
Tim: In terms of the tone of the song, though: perfectly good enough. Standard, if you will. Just, yeah, out of its time, and I’m not entirely sure it works. Though actually, with our summer apparently lasting until October I don’t know what they’re moaning about.
“Flood damage? I’ve got my SUMMER DANCE ON.”
Tim: Before you get your hopes up, this is not a danced-up version of the Lion King classic. Because that would have a Tonight on the end. Though it does have a Tonight in the lyrics. Oh, just have a listen.
Tom: That’s… well, it’s competent. It’s certainly not Elton, though.
Tim: Well, no. What it is instead is a (possibly three months too early) summer party banger that is absolutely and entirely what I feel like hearing right now, though I’m not sure I knew it. Rain? Flood damage? Transport chaos? Pah. I’ve got my SUMMER DANCE ON, and I’m forgetting about that, putting this on loud and having fun instead, dreaming of being up all night and in the Mediterranean. PARTY.
Tom: It certainly has that sort of association, but it’s a mid-set “keep the dance floor churning” track to me, something to be mixed into a big set, rather than a standout track on its own. There’s nothing wrong with it, but there’s nothing outstanding about it either — even that key change seemed a little prosaic, and that’s a bold thing to say about a key change.
Tim: Incidentally, if you did get your hopes up at the start and do want a danced-up version of the Lion King classic, you could do far worse than to hear this version by Harajuku. And please, do that. It’s wonderful. Or wonderfully awful. I don’t know which.
Tom: Ooh, bonus points for using Elton’s original lyrics, but Almighty Records’ version – it’s on Spotify – was obviously much better. In fact, just put that whole album on instead.
A decent, feet off the floor, hands in the air dance tune.
Tim: Last week we had what could have been a great dance track; today, we have what is actually a great dance track.
Tom: It also sets a new record for how many syllables ‘tom-o-o-o-ah-ah-ro-o-o-ow’ can be pronounced as.
Tim: It has energy the Cielle track didn’t, it has no pacing issues, it sounds properly upbeat – this is a decent, feet off the floor, hands in the air dance tune. And I like it a lot.
Tom: It’s a bit quiet in the verses for a proper CHOON, but not enough to actually stop dancing. And you’re right: unlike Cielle, even the quiet bits still sound… well, fun, for want of a better word.
Tim: A bit of a shame that the main hook melody sounds like an Avicii rip-off, though since that was itself a sampling no-one can really complain, which is good, because I don’t want to.
Tom: It does say something about Avicii that just “a piano melody in the back of a dance tune” is enough to remind people of him. That’s a hell of a thing to have taken as your trademark.
Tim: It really is, and yet somehow he does. And that makes me want to DANCE, and with a beat like this and a voice like this I will have no problems doing so.