I won’t lie, I almost didn’t write today’s music piece – not out of some sort of respect for the events unfolding in London today, as the twelve people that ever see this piece of writing will hardly consider it in some way an attempt to upstage them, but rather because I completely forgot to write it over the weekend. That’s right, it’s the first ever (I think) on-the-day New Music Monday piece.
Some people might question the choices I make for these New Music Monday pieces, and it really is very usually driven by my mood on the day coupled with my memory of who I’ve already done a new music piece for. Take this for example – I am increasingly hit by a sense of loneliness and of being ignored, despite (or because of) living in a two bedroom flat with my son and our cat. I feel very disconnected from people of late, and thus the whole idea of talking to myself is something I am familiar with, on both a literal and metaphorical sense. Not only that, but I also did a review of Carly’s last single, Beach House, so for the sake of continuity, it makes sense to do this song too. Right?
My first thoughts are that it’s a fairly upbeat song, though I can’t quite tell whether it’s a song about a positive emotional state, or a negative emotional state. She asks, for example, whether the person she is singing to – hopefully not the guy from the Call Me Maybe video still – is thinking of her when they’re with someone else; whether they talk to her when they’re talking to themselves; whether they’re reaching for her when they’re making love to someone else… and yes, that’s the order and where possible, wording of the lines from the song. I have to assume that in this circumstance, she’s asking if she is a distraction from someone else’s already established relationship which isn’t normally the sort of thing you’d want to be, I should think. I’d hate to think that the chunky monkey that I am is, in any way, a distraction from someone else’s romantic entanglements (though let’s be real, we all know y’all think I’m gorgeous, who wouldn’t want a slice of this rather large pie?)
I feel compelled to point out, now, that that was a fat joke, not a joke about the size of my appendage. Any way, having listened further and investigated the lyrics in their written form, it is clear to me now that the song is about a pair that have broken up and moved on, after a relationship that was doomed to fail – the first verse reveals it all, in fact, with the words;
We coulda been something beautiful,
But you made it impossible to stay,
which make it very clear to me that she was interested in the relationship, but walked away from it because of something the other person (or people, I suppose, it is 2022) did – verse two suggests an element of emotional manipulation, but I don’t want to read too much into it, I’ve only got an hour til this needs to be up and the coffee still hasn’t kicked in yet. I very much look like a chubby, topless version of that picture of Coraline’s dad that has been transformed into a meme. Fun fact, having never actually watched Coraline, I’ve only just now learned that that’s where the still comes from.
I’ve said a lot of words with very little of meaning to them in this review, so let’s get down to brass tacks and get on with this blasted thing. The song is, as I say, upbeat in sound, leading me to the final conclusion that she misses the ex in question but knows that the relationship would be doomed if they struck it back up, something that in turns makes me think this is more of a sort of taunting song aimed at the ex in question – you made me leave you, do you regret that with every fibre of your being yet? It takes on an almost playfully vindictive tone when you look at it like that and in many ways, I feel like we need more songs like that. I think there’s a resurgence of that sort of sound going on, for sure, with songs like abcdefu being popular on release, but I don’t think it’s ever achieved the level of normalisation that I think it probably should do.
Musically, the song isn’t all that special, unfortunately. There’s a decidedly 80’s segue just before the bridge which feels out of place with the rest of the music to me, but none of it does anything specifically praise-worthy. There’s a bass-drop that leads me to think that this is aimed at the sorts of people that go clubbing – it would certainly be easy enough to dance club-style (which for me is ‘stand away from people with an overpriced drink’) to this track. For the first time ever, I find myself criticising the trick where they cut the music and then bring it back in – it is woefully overused during the chorus of this song and given how I’ve praised that particular technique so highly of late, it makes me think that maybe someone out there with some influence does actually read these things. I know they don’t, I’m not deluded, but if I got a quid every time something I praised was subsequently overused, I’d have two quid, which isn’t a lot, but it’s strange that it’s happened twice.
At the end of the day, I’m not overly excited by the prospect of listening to his song any longer, so I’m going to call it a day on this and let you make you own mind up when you inevitably end up listening to it. It’s not great, it’s barely even good, in my opinion, but you know, if you think I’m wrong, you’re more than welcome to tell me so.
4/10
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