Tag: Kygo

Kygo feat. The Night Game – Kids in Love

“One heck of a post-chorus.”

Tim: A week or so Kygo quietly stuck a new album online, eight tracks each featuring a somewhat well known artist, much as Avicii did a couple of months back (though curiously enough, his Just Jesso feature which you described as “letting a toddler play with the volume control” didn’t make the cut). Here’s the title track, which also happens to be one of the best, as I see it.

Tom: Oh, that is good. That’s sounds a bit like… maybe like The Who? That’s not a comparison I expected to make.

Tim: It’s not remotely standard Kygo stuff – for that, you could do worse than check out the also very good Stranger Things, with OneRepublic – but it does have some very good piano dance work, with one heck of a post-chorus.

Tom: Objectively, there’s very little going on here: everything’s a bit repetitive. But compare it to yesterday’s mess: this here is an example of how to make a Big Track. Even that post-chorus stands out, like you said.

Tim: Not sure I’ve heard one before that is in itself a build and subsequent drop, but it sure enough works here. The vocal line is nice and emphatic, giving it everything the lyrics and backing music demand, and when those secondary vocals come along at the end that’s just a nice layer of icing on top of the already very tasty cake. Nice that he’s back on form.

Kygo feat. Just Jesso – Stargazing

“That’s just letting a toddler play with the volume control!”

Tim: Tom, there’s a reason that yesterday we were reduced to featuring a bland track from an even blander movie: there doesn’t seem to be much music around worth writing about at the moment. Still, I’ve just found this from Kygo, and he’ll save us, surely.

Tim: Or, maybe not. That’s not what I want from a Kygo track. Is it, really, what anyone wants from a Kygo track?

Tom: That’s not chopping up vocals! That’s just letting a toddler play with the volume control! Blimey, the attacks and decays on that almost physically hurt. It’s like he’s trying to work out how much he can get away with before people go “no, mate, that’s just bollocks”.

Tim: I mean it maybe gets slightly going when the second chorus comes around, but COME ON this is not what got me going down to Sainsbury’s to buy a crateload of mangoes a while back.

Tom: I hope that was a metaphor.

Tim: It’s just SO SLOW: four minutes twenty, and all we’ve got is two verses and two choruses? Where’s the big final closing one? Where’s the inventive middle eight where you could have a bit of fun? Where, basically, is anything worth listening to?

Tom: Probably in the bits where the volume was down.

Kygo & Ellie Goulding – First Time

“Hi, Ellie, I’ve always wanted to work with you…”

Tom: Kygo continues his tour of female pop vocalists – and this time, one with a distinctive voice.

Tom: Somehow, Ellie Goulding singing “ten dollars was a fat stack” in her English accent sounds very wrong. I mean, none of those lyrics are great, but I feel like they gave the wrong track to the wrong singer there.

Tim: Yeah, that stuck out for me as well – almost as if someone else was lined up, they dropped out, and then Kygo went “Hi, Ellie, I’ve always wanted to work with you…”

Tom: I guess this is Kygo doing a more chilled-out sound — there are still his trademarks, like that jingle-bell-like sound that marks the start of the second verse, and a middle eight using resampled vocals from elsewhere in the song. But other than those, this sounds… well, a bit generic, really. I guess chillout dance just isn’t for me.

Tim: The first time I heard this last week I didn’t think much of it; hearing it now, though, I like it quite a bit more. It’s not a classic, and it sure as hell isn’t an It Ain’t Me (that song just keeps growing on me, even now), but it’s a good track. I’ll take it.

Kygo & Selena Gomez – It Ain’t Me

“It’s just a shame about Kygo’s bit.”

Tim: For me, Selena Gomez fits in with a number of artists like Dua Lipa, Fifth Harmony and The 1975: artists that are around a lot, mainstays of the Radio 1 playlist, and that I know I’ll probably like if I started consciously exploring them, but never actually do. Fortunately, this one has Kygo on it as well, so I picked it out and listened to it.

Tom: I did much the same a few days ago, Tim, and then decided it was a bit too dull to send you. Listening to this again, I disagree with my original opinion, because there’s a lot going on.

Tim: There is indeed really quite a lot to dissect here: from the opening light guitar and gentle vocal, through to the more aggressive piano and chanting, the instrumental breakdown where it gets a bit messy and then the combination of parts (b) and (c) to form part (d), before going right back to the start.

Tom: Right, and here’s the thing that I’m realising on a second listen: the messy instrumental bits are the dull bits. The Selena Gomez bits are beautiful — and I know that chord progression under “when you’re drunk and all alone” is a cliché, but it’s one that still has an affect on me. It’s just a shame about Kygo’s bit.

Tim: You’re not wrong there, and in fact to be honest, I do question the wisdom of putting them all in the same song – I think there’s a reason they only go back to the first bit once. My favourite area’s unquestionably the second, with it being easily singable and energetic, so I’m a tad disappointed it got relegated to minor pre-chorus status; on the other hand, I won’t hold that too much against it, because like I said – the rest is good as well.

Tom: And a song that’s entirely about “you know all those things about love? sod ’em” is a song with a message I can get behind. I just want to hear it before Kygo got his hands on it.

Kygo – Raging

“It’s a bit of a change in synth pad, I’ll give him that.”

Tom: First track from the new album. Given that everyone’s copied his old trick, he needs a new one.

Tom: That is… hmm. Well, it’s a bit of a change in synth pad, I’ll give him that, although it now sounds like… hmm. A slightly downbeat version of something Robert Miles would have put out in the mid-90s? Or maybe Robert Miles meets Aviici, with way too much compression on the track? I’m not sure.

Tim: I don’t know, I really like it. Tropical house arguably had a limited shelf-life, coming as it did from Kygo’s computer rather than any gradual dance club movement like basically every other dance genre has done. Harsh as it may sound, it’s almost the Internet meme of music genres – came from nowhere, a few other people mixed it around a bit, but after a while it’s time to move on. Kyo knows that, and he’s moving on, to this.

Tom: I sound like I’m being massively negative about it: it’s a decent track, and a good direction to go in after there was nothing left in that old pineapple-scented synth. It’s not as much of an immediate attention-grabber, but it’s not bad.

Tim: No – I think it’s a fine way to close off his debut album.

Kygo feat. Maty Noyes – Stayed

“And that is…well, that’s Kygo, really.”

Tim: New one off Kygo, who you may or may not have noticed is still enjoying considerable amounts of success.

Tom: Which is impressive. I thought tropical house would be over by now, but no: he’s codified a genre and continues to make it work. Well done him. Who’s Maty Noyes?

Tim: New guest vocalist, who previously has worked with The Weeknd.

Tim: And that is…well, that’s Kygo, really. Well, Kygo with a very pretty lyric video, at any rate.

Tom: Yep. Similar instrumentation, perhaps a bit more chilled-out but still roughly the same. Kicked in exactly how I wanted it to, exactly when I wanted it to. It’s from the textbook, yes, but it’s a textbook that Kygo wrote.

Tim: It’s already hit top 5 in Norway and Sweden and is now getting a push elsewhere in the world; to be honest, though, I’m not as much of a fan of it as I have been previously. I’m not sure why – maybe I just want something a bit new, rather than the same synthy chorus and female vocals. It’s perfectly listenable – just sounds like more of an album track, really.

Tom: Agreed. Still, regression towards the mean and all that: he was bound to have a duff track eventually. And if his duff album track is this good, well…

Tim: Though I would quite like to hear a Kygo album, so can we have one soon, please?

A-ha – Take On Me (Kygo Mix)

“It’s got new stuff that sounds modern and Kygo-like! It’s got the brilliant chorus!”

Tom: A bit of a strange one here: Kygo appears to just have gone out remixed a classic track in his own style. And I wouldn’t normally cover this, except: it’s really good.

Tom: Listen to that!

Tim: Blimey – that’s pretty much an entirely new song.

Tom: It’s got new stuff that sounds modern and Kygo-like! It’s got the brilliant chorus!

Tim: Yeah, though that’s about all it shares with the rest. I’m not sure when you go from being a remix to a new track with samples, but this’d be on the boundary.

Tom: It’s really, really… nice. Nice is the word I’d go for.

Tim: Nice is an excellent word to describe this.

Kygo feat. Parson James – Stole The Show

“You wait for the drop, and you wait some more, and then…”

Tim: You wait for the drop, and you wait some more, and then…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gk_hf_AtA0

Tim: Not really what you were expecting, was it?

Tom: Good heavens, no. But it’s absolutely brilliant.

Tim: Most would go for a big drumbeat, Avicii would put some hefty country stuff down, but the Norwegian Kygo here seems rather keen on the old woodwind, and to be honest that’s a novelty I have no problems with at all.

Tom: It really does work well: I’m not sure I’d dance to it, but it’s a track that I can see on a lot of driving and working playlists. The word that comes to mind, for some reason, is “smooth”, and I think it’s down to the vocals.

Tim: Right – the verses, which would typically have us going OH JUST PLEASE GET ON WITH IT, I really like as they are, because Parson here sings with a rather lovely voice, which, combined with the pleasant enough backing underneath stops it being too boring. All in all: nice track, pleasingly surprising.