Zara Larsson – Europlop!

Dua Lipa – IDGAF

“Radio 1 managed to put together a really good girlband.”

Tim: Dua Lipa, from the same group of musicians as Ariana Grande as ‘people who sound like typefaces’. This has been doing the rounds for a few weeks now but is still great, and you can probably guess but there’s a rude word in the chorus.

Tom: And it’s the seventh single from the album! Seventh! Do singles even mean anything more?

Tim: That’s the proper version, at least. But here’s the thing: I think the radio edit sounds better.

Tom: Interesting. Why’s that?

Tim: Well, have a listen. It’s not online as standard, but you can see what happened when Radio 1 managed to put together a really good girlband, made up of Dua Lipa, Charli XCX, Zara Larsson, MØ and Alma (who I’d never heard of but is apparently off Finnish Idol and does actually have some pretty good tracks).

Tim: Now obviously there are some slight differences in the styling with the female backing vocals, but I do prefer that chorus. Not just because it sounds less gratuitously unpleasant, and more playable in a public space, but more because of the implications: she gives so little of a that she can’t even be bothered to finish the sentence.

Tom: I disagree there — it just seems unresolved to me. I accept there’s no other easy way to do a radio edit of the song, but there’s just too much of a gap there.

Tim: I don’t mind that it doesn’t resolve, because I don’t think it harms the song at all. And the rest of the song? Shouty, brash and enjoyable. I like it.

Clean Bandit feat. Zara Larsson – Symphony

“I’m not convinced.”

Tim: I’ll be honest with you, Tom: I’ve not been much of a fan of Zara’s music since (and I’m aware of how hipster wankerish this’ll make me sound) she got big. That’s mostly because there was a slight genre shift, little more heavy, almost drum & bass-y; Clean Bandit, on the other hand, is typically very much not that.

Tom: True, but I’ll be honest, I’ve not been a fan of Clean Bandit. Rockabye left me entirely cold — despite managing to be number one for a spectacularly long time.

Tim: Fair enough. But the question is: what would that combination, along with a track called Symphony, do for me?

Tim: Quite a bit, it seems.

Tom: Synchronising the orchestral video with the definitely not orchestral audio is a clever touch — although I do now want to hear what it sounded like in that concert hall. I’m not convinced by the track itself, though: like a lot of Clean Bandit’s stuff, it’s well put together but doesn’t contain anything that makes me… well, anything that makes me like it.

Tim: I disagree – he’s pulling Zara in a bit, and so we’ve got some melody, we’ve got some instruments, all of the bits that have been missing from recent tracks, and all of which combine with her lovely vocal to make everything I want in a Zara Larsson track, from before she got corrupted by the evil American music scene.

Tom: Harsh.

Tim: True. Artists change, I know that, and I know I need to accept it. But sometimes, I really really wish they wouldn’t, you know?

David Guetta feat. Zara Larsson – This One’s For You

“Not Three Lions.”

Tim: FOOTBALL! Yes, I know, but we have Eurovision and they must have their revenge. This year is Euro 2016, and here’s the official song.

Tim: Oh. That’s a bit of a let down, really. Well, the post-chorus is.

Tom: I think I’ve said this before, Tim: but the trouble with all football songs is that, ultimately, they’re not Three Lions. They’re not something you’re going to get every fan, from more than one nation, singing. Arguably, the closest to that was 1998’s Carnaval de Paris, but that was riffing on an existing chant, so it doesn’t really count: and Vindaloo, of course, worked for England but nowhere else.

Tim: Right, but of course it’s not Three Lions. Because Three Lions wasn’t just a football song. It was Britpop at the very peak of its popularity, it had two of the biggest comedians of the time at its helm, and most importantly it was built less on football another more on a genuine swelling of national pride and belief that England could actually win the competition.

So don’t compare football songs to that, because that situation is unlikely to ever come round again – Frank Skinner even said he regretted re-releasing it in 1998 for that reason. Compare football songs instead to, say, the official Euro 96 song, Simply Red’s notably underwhelming We’re In This Together, or perhaps the official World Cup 98 song, Ricky’s Martin’s The Cup of Life, which actually was a worldwide hit.

Anyway, enough history, back to the present. The vast majority of this song is great, and certainly a whole lot better than Simply Red – good beat, good lyrics, good melody, all round no complaints. That combined total of 36 seconds, though, is entirely and utterly awful.

Tom: Not going to disagree with you. I mean, the rest is mediocre; no-one’d buy it and no-one’d be doing a Big Singalong to it even if that 36 seconds wasn’t there, but… what the hell is that?

Tim: I know unforgivable is a hefty word to chuck around, especially in the direction of basically the world’s biggest DJ, but I just can’t really get past it, however good the rest might be. It completely kicks me out of the song. Sure, by the end of it there’s been enough of the good stuff to more or less push it out of the mind, but I really don’t want to hear it again. Which sucks – like I said, the rest of it’s great, and I would love a cut down version of this.

Tom: Alas, I guess it’s not to be, so I’ll just hope Coke get involved like they did in the 2010 World Cup.

Zara Larsson – Lush Life

“Like the producer was idly playing a videogame at the same time.”

Tim: The track’s been out elsewhere since last June, but it’s only now, following her success with MNEK on Never Forget You, that it’s getting a push over here.

Tim: I’m going to be honest: right now, not much of a fan of this. On the other hand, I couldn’t stand the MNEK collaboration until a few months after first hearing it, for many of the same reasons as I don’t much like this, so maybe this’ll grow on me as well. There are, after all, a number of good things about this track – vocal’s as on point as ever, and there are moments of pleasant melodic singing where that comes through.

Tom: I’ll normally slate something with distracting, odd, bleepy-bloopy synths the background — particularly when they sound like the producer was idly playing a videogame at the same time. But for some reason, these really work for me, and I can’t explain why. Less sure about the odd squelchy, scratchy sound just left of centre, though.

Tim: The occasional post-chorus that appears is particularly catchy, although I think that might be because the rhythm’s the same as Ms. Jackson.

Tom: That’s why I know it! Yes, you’re right.

Tim: But in any case, it’s always nice to celebrate foreign success in British music, so hooray! And apparently she’s got a new single coming out in the next few days, though that’s as a feat. with Tinie Tempah, so I think it’s best if we just try to ignore that.

Zara Larsson – Weak Heart

“Excellent use of a big two-step drumbeat”

Tim: There seems to be a fashion at the moment for numeric album titles – One Direction’s FOUR, Take That’s III, Taylor Swift’s 1989, but before all those, back in October Zara released her first full album, simply entitled 1. This here’s the fourth track from it, and rather enjoyable at that.

Tim: Ever since dubstep made it mainstream, I’ve very much enjoyed a big two-step drumbeat to emphasise parts of tracks, and this makes excellent use of it.

Tom: Agreed. That’s been around for a long time, but it’s only gone mainstream lately. I remember us complaining about dubstep when it first went big, but now that the world’s gotten used to all of that — yes, it works extremely well. Bonus points for that twinkly piano bit near the end too.

Tim: PAY ATTENTION TO THE CHORUS, it says, because it’s important. You MUST be told about Zara’s weak heart, because you need to act upon it. Probably.

Tom: Really?

Tim: Actually you don’t, Zara just wants you to hear her being annoyed, but still, it’s a great way to demand interest in a song while it’s being played, and after it’s been played it encourages contemplation and thoughts of “well, that was a powerful track, I should hear it again”. And you what? I think I will.

Tom: Like yesterday’s, it’s a bit too slow and downbeat for me: I like my emotional ballads BIG and my dance tracks DANCEY, and this falls uncomfortably between the two. But that’s my taste, and not a reflection on the track itself: I can see why you’ll play it again.

Zara Larsson – Rooftop

“She rhymed ‘crazy’ with ‘crazy’.”

Tom: Our regular correspondent, CB, sends this in with the note that it’s got “somewhat cringeworthy lyrics”. CB’s not wrong.

Tim: Oh, SO WRONG – those lyrics are perfect.

Tom: She rhymed “crazy” with “crazy”. Fairly sure these lyrics were actually written by a ten-year-old.

Tim: EXACTLY. Glad we brought this up, because remember Carry You Home? Lyrics included “I’ve been through the days when bright love turns into hate” and “You lose the way and you hit the wall, I’ll be the one to carry you home”, and I’ve got to say, as I meant to say then: bullshit. THOSE are the cringeworthy lyrics, because she’s 16. SIXTEEN. She has not been through those days, and she is not remotely in a position to carry someone emotionally when they’ve been through shit. She is ENTIRELY in a position, though, to dream up a perfect future life based on getting off with one guy at a party.

Tom: I should really dislike this song — not just for the lyrics, for the fact it outstays its welcome, and that it basically epitomises my regular complaints about ‘monotony’. But I can’t, and it’s because of the production. The synth lines in the background are brilliant, the melody works well, and it manages — and this is a hell of a compliment — to sound almost like it’s off Beyoncé’s new album.

Tim: Hmm. I’d say a Jessie J album, and it would sit in the same position in my iTunes library – just about made its way there off a Now compilation, and probably skipped over whenever it came up.

Tom: Apart from those lyrics. If they’d used a different lyricist, this could have been a brilliant track. As it is: well, I’ll hope for an instrumental.

Tim: And I’d take an a capella version. Shall we split it?

Zara Larsson – Carry You Home

“Nearly two minutes is a heck of a long time for what is, essentially, an introduction.”

Tom: CB writes in with this, and simply adds “Amazing”.

Tim: I don’t think I’d disagree too much with that.

Tom: Now, I’m a sucker for an Americana music video, as I’ve mentioned before — but the build on this, both in terms of music and picture, was slow enough and repetitive enough that it started to lose me. Nearly two minutes is a heck of a long time for what is, essentially, an introduction.

Tim: I don’t know, I was thinking that coming up to a minute in, but when the pre-chorus hit I was reassured it was building enough and that it’d likely be worth waiting for. Turns out: I was right.

Tom: So I wouldn’t go so far as ‘amazing’. There are moments in here where it promises to be amazing — that return from the chorus, for a start — but at four minutes it just overstays its welcome. Production’s great, her voice is great… but the old saying “don’t bore us, get to the chorus” is still true.

Tim: Hmm…yes, alright. I would appreciate a bit more, say jumping in halfway through the verse. From that point on, though, I’m very happy with this indeed.

Zara Larsson – Bad Boys

It is, to say the least, “stripped down”.

Tom: Our regular reader Roger sends this in. It’s a live performance, but let me assure you — having checked the other performances — this is how it’s supposed to sound.

Tom: It is, to say the least, “stripped down”.

Tim: Yeah – you could say that.

Tom: Perhaps the single version has a bit… well, a bit more to it? Because the last minute or so of this track would make a great intro, but that’s about all I can say.

Tim: Hmm. You’re right – when it starts to build up a bit it gets a bit good, but that’s really a long way away from being the sort of big summer tune you might expect to be performed there.

Tom: There’s a cracking track in there, but it just seems incomplete right now. For a “world premiere performance”, I’d expect more.

Tim: Credit where it’s due, though: the dancing was fully present, and all the more for there not being much to dance to.

Tom: A bit of history that I’ve just found: she’s 15, and her first shot at fame was when she was 10 and on Sweden’s Got Talent. It took a while for her to become a pop star: but she’s certainly made it now.