From forth the decaying arrow-riddled corpses of Nick Lachey and Joey Fatone, there issues a melodious fungus. Like a cordycepic effusion of something we didn’t know we needed, the second coming of the boy bands is now, in 2013, fully upon us.
But now they’ve released a new song that appears destined to become their biggest hit yet. It’s called “Kiss You” and it’s an imploring of a young woman to stop worrying about the potential emotional and venereal repercussions of a one night stand.
First let’s look at the things about this song that are catchy:
-Wait, did I just hear an organ line at the beginning of a contemporary pop song? Well aaaalright! The inclusion of the organ is (tragically) anachronistic and startling and immediately piques the listener’s attention.
-The tempo is such that the song can be “rocked along to” at two different speeds, and indeed the songs splits in to half time for the chorus. This keeps the chorus and verses clearly delineated.
-The prechorus of “and if yoooooou, you want me tooooooo” is just classic “oh you don’t wanna sing along? that’s fine, you suuuuure though?” stuff.
-That chorus, with its “tou-ou-ouch… ru-uh-ush”, is infectious as all hell. Also, as with certain other songs we’ve discussed in this column, there’s the suggestion that a large group of voices is singing in unison during the chorus, inviting the listener to sing along.
Now let’s look at the things about this song that are decidedly not good:
-The lyrics. Why, oh why, can’t pop music have non-terrible lyrics (“if you don’t wanna take it slow, and you just wanna take me home, lemme hear ya say yeah-ayi-yeah-ayi-yeah-uh”). These guys make Train sound like poet-laureate material…
-The inability to differentiate between the voices of various group members. Back in MY day our boy bands had a dangerous one, a cute and innocent one, one that couldn’t sing but was ridiculously handsome, and the gay one. In this case you’ve got the Irish one, and the four English ones who sounds just like the Irish one.
-The song is called “Kiss You”. Why didn’t you just name it “Love You” or “Kissing” or “You Kiss My Face, Girl”, or something not dumb and banal.
I’m having a really hard time trying to figure out how I feel about this song. I’m pretty sure it’s awful, but it just won’t allow my dismissal that easily. Final results pending butttt…..
One Direction – “Kiss You”
Verdict: Quite Catchy, Maybe kind of a little bit awesome….
Making a good pop song is not easy these days. Well, I mean, it’s very easy for certain people…. So much of popular music flirts with the saccharine, what’s important is the delicate balance of the personal and the universal, the catchy and the complex; you’ve got to make everybody feel you.
It’s also important, when making a great hit, that people genuinely love the song. There’s a difference between an artist like, say, Neon Trees, and an artist like Adele. The former makes music that is self-consciously trying to speak to everyone, the latter speaks to everyone because of the personal nature of her music.
This year was fairly short on great chart hits, but there were certainly a few, let’s run down the top 5 and an honorable mention:
Honorable Mention: Taylor Swift – “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” and “I Knew You Were Trouble”
If you’re looking for proof positive that the critical spheres of “pop” and “indie” are melting down into the same pot, look no further than Taylor Swift. The “indie Taylor Swift circle jerk”, as I heard it eloquently described this year, was puzzling, refreshing, and polarizing. Pitchfork and Stereogum were on board, many others were not. When Stereogum head Tom Breihan was asked what separated Swift from any other pop Diva in the current spotlight, he answered simply; “craft”. Taylor Swift has all the right people around her to help churn out hits, but at the end of the day it’s Swift herself who writes and arranges these songs. When asked in a recent Spin interview about whether she took inspiration for the drop in “I Knew You Were Trouble” from listening to other dubstep, her response was telling: “Not really…. What ended up happening was, I wrote this melody for this chorus on the piano, and I brought it to Max Martin and Shellback, and I said, ‘At the end of the chorus I just want this to go crazy. I want it to be really chaotic; I want the bass line to do this, like [makes loud GUH GUH GUH sound].'”
Whichever camp you’re in when it comes to Swift, a vast majority of music-buying Americans think she’s pretty great. Through four albums she’s been slowly shedding the country trappings she wore at the start. On Red you really couldn’t even call her a country artist anymore. The peppy bump of “We Are Never…” was a missile aimed straight at the hot 100, and though the drop in “I Knew You Were Trouble” has been a talking point, all of these songs more than anything else sound like, well, Taylor Swift.
5. Gotye ft. Kimbra – “Somebody that I Used to Know”
Try to imagine an alternate universe where you have never heard this song, try. OK now imagine you hear this song for the first time, what do you think of it? Do you think it’s nuanced in its simplicity; the sparse knock of the xylophones and the almost mumbled verses; the sudden inclusion of a female voice you didn’t really see coming; the desperation in the aching harmonies, what do you think? Pretty good song? In this alternate universe the only difference is that this wasn’t a hit, that you didn’t hear it 45 times in a three week span. But its status as a hit also speaks to the power of virality. The Walk off the Earth cover is pretty brilliant, but now even that is overplayed. Why? Because we’re so damn hungry for a genuinely great crossover record we gorged ourselves when we got the smell of one. The term “crossover hit” has become anachronistic: back in the 90s it seemed nearly every couple months a random great song would come along that sounded very different from everything else on the radio. “Pumped up Kicks” was that song in 2011. “Somebody that I Used to Know” is that song in 2012. I wonder what 2013 will bring… I’m guessing it’ll involve harps and possibly a theramin.
4. TIE Karmin – “Brokenhearted” and Jessie J “Domino”
I figured I’d feature both these songs in this spot since they’re essentially the exact same song. I can’t really decide which one I like more, but I lean towards “Domino” if only for the fact that there is an ABOMINABLE “rap verse” at the end of “Brokenhearted” (it’s extremely puzzling that they even included the verse, it could have so easily been omitted, sorry I’m dwelling on this so much I just hate it). Then again, “Domino” opens with the line “I’m feelin’ sexy and freeeeeee”… I dunno, it’s a wash.
3. Ke$ha – “Die Young”
Before you even say anything: yes, I know that this song sounds exactly like every other Ke$ha song. Yes, I know that it’s about drinking too much and taking your youth by the balls and forcing yourself to get cray and all that jazz, but it’s also the moment Ke$ha becomes immortal. The Ke$ha aesthetic is all over the place these days (particularly in Europe) but nobody can outshine the original. The beat that drops at the end of the hook rides in like a force of nature. There’s something about Ke$ha and I can’t put my finger on it; I think it’s that, under all the shine and flash (she covers her naked body in baby oil and rolls around in a kiddie pool full of glitter before every show), there’s actually a person, and that fascinates me. I want desperately to know what she’s really like; something tells me she stops gyrating when she’s alone…
2. Usher – “Climax”
Usher and Diplo wrote “Climax” in about an hour and worked on it for about two months. That meticulous production and execution is evident; “Climax” is the sleekest and sexiest song of the year. The song isn’t about sex though, per se. Diplo had the idea for a song: “about a moment I had with a girl where I felt like I could die with her and be content, but I didn’t and life moved on, and that point in my life was over. It was a sad feeling but it was beautiful.” The song’s quiet storm rides along an intermittent beat that is constantly shifting but never feels disjointed. Not surprisingly though, it’s Usher’s inimitable falsetto that carries “Climax” into the pantheon of classic slow jams.
1. Ellie Goulding – “Lights”
“Lights” or, “The Little Song That Could”. This track was original featured as a bonus track on Goulding’s 2010 debut album. It was finally released as a digital single in January of 2012 and it took several months for it to catch on, but when it did it was suddenly everywhere, peaking at #2 on the hot 100 and spending a remarkable fifty three weeks and counting on the chart, where it still sits at #45. The song is a blinking dangerous world where something as trivial as a fear of the dark is blown in to a statement about love and control “You show the lights that stop me turn to stone, you shine it when I’m alone”. This year Goulding and boyfriend Skrillex broke it off. Skrillex seems like a decent guy, but the only things most people know about Ellie Goulding is that she was dating Skrillex and that she wrote this song. Hopefully she can follow up in 2013 with something as immersive, haunting and catchy as “Lights”. The future looks bright (sorry…).
This was also the year when (gulp) Americanized whomp-dubstep made its way into the mainstream. From dubstep breakdowns on the top 40 to Taylor Swift’s polarizing use of the drop on her new hit “I Knew You Were Trouble”, “brostep”, for better or worse, seems to have metastasized in 2012.
If you’ve been reading this site for any period of time you know I hold great pop songs in high regard. Of those there were a few this year. There were also some real stinkers that inexplicably dominated the airwaves. And so, without further ado, I give you the top five best and worst chart songs of 2012. I’m a “bad news first” kind of guy, so let’s start of with the worst of the year:
The Worst:
5. Calvin Harris ft. Neyo – “Let’s Go”
I want desperately to know what we’re going to do at the end of this song. Neyo definitely wants us to do something (pop some bottles? holler maybe? get on the floor perhaps?) but it’s never made clear what it is (seriously, read the lyrics). This makes this a catchy psych-up song for any occasion. It also makes it an amalgam of every club track of the last five years, and a piece of irredeemable garbage.
4. TIE The Wanted – “Glad You Came” and One Direction – “What Makes You Beautiful”
2012 was also the year of the Boy Band resurgence, one led primarily by The Wanted and One Direction. This song is about trying to get a girl drunk enough so she’ll agree to sleep with you, but not so drunk that it’s, you know, déclassé… or illegal…
Just remember girl, the only thing that makes you beautiful is the fact that you don’t know you’re beautiful. Nothing else about you is beautiful.
3. Neon Trees – “Everybody Talks”
My distaste for Neon Trees comes mostly from the fact they are awful; just right on the surface. I don’t feel the need to explain or defend my position further than that. They’re just like the Captain & Tennille, except way more terrible. This song is about people talking about other people behind their backs, or maybe it’s about being addicted to somebody’s love, or maybe it’s about goddamn badminton who cares, get it the hell out of here.
2. Rihanna – “Where Have You Been”
The success of this song is baffling to me primarily because it has no hook. The entire song is like one big prechorus; you think each successive section is leading into a knock-down, drag-out chorus, but the hook never comes. Fortunately this song sounds enough like about five other Rihanna songs that everybody probably just assumed it DID have a hook, and it inexplicably went to #5 on the hot 100.
1. Train – “Drive By”
Train can be credited with the unprecedented accomplishment of having the same song chart twice in the same year. Yeah, well, the two chart entries have different titles and lyrics, but that’s about as far as the differences go. “Drive By” was interesting for it’s ability to tell the story of love lost and found while referencing a horrific crime that rips families apart and has taken dozens of lives. To know that you don’t plan on rolling past your girlfriend’s house in tha hoopty and shooting her to death is a comfort. But it’s still a dumb metaphor, and this is still the worst song of the year.
Somewhere Julian Casablancas weeps. Ke$ha’s third proper album Warrior drops 12/4. We’ve heard the first single “Die Young” in all it’s “very-Ke$ha” glory, but the album also contains the uncanny Strokes send up “Only Wanna Dance With You”. Let’s try to figure out if this song is catchy, good or both.
Let’s start with the things that make this song catchy:
-From the outset the rhythmic strumming evokes the Strokes, one of the catchiest bands of the 20-aughts (the prechorus is basically identical to that of “Last Night”)
-The rhythm of the vocal delivery follows the strumming pattern, creating a gloriously overemphasized bop.
-That CHORUS. I played this song for a couple friends last night and one of them intimated that pop songsmiths turn out songs like this quickly and easily. I disagreed. The “only wanna dance with yaaaaoooou” is so much catchier that “only wanna dance with you” (this is a difficult thing for me to express in writing, but I mean the fact that she goes up a half step higher than she needs to for the “with yaaa” so she can come back down for the “ouuuuuu”).
-Rhyming “toniiight” with “alriiiight” has always and will always be catchy as hell.
-At one point Ke$ha says “Come to my place let’s kick it all night/and hardcore makeout til it gets light…. ALRIGHT?” Yes, yes Ke$ha that would be fine.
Now let’s look at the things about this song that are not good:
-It’s verrrry repetitive rhythmically. This means that even though the chords change in the prechorus and chorus, the song doesn’t feel very dynamic
-Ke$ha’s lyrics (as much as I happen to love them) are pretty objectively terrible (“I’m so over it with love, every guy just super sucks”)
-….
I like to picture Ke$ha’s creative process involving a giant warehouse with a large AstroTurf batting cage setup. Every 3 hours Ke$ha’s production team coaxes her from a side room — from which she emerges tentatively and bleary-eyed, like a baby penguin — luring her in to the batting cage with a bottle of Jack Daniels. Ke$ha burps and holds her hands palm-up at her sides impatiently. “OK Ke$h,” short for Ke$ha, “on this track you’re going to sing about how you went to a show to have a mellow night but then you saw this dude and you just couldn’t help yourself…”
Ke$ha ponders this wordlessly for a few seconds, then nods, picking up a giant neon pink inflatable baseball bat. Max Martin stands five feet in front of her and ever-so-gently lobs a beach ball underhand. During its flight Ke$ha itches her crotch and then steadies the bat on her shoulder, almost teetering over backwards in the process. But suddenly as the beach ball reaches her she stares narrowly ahead and laces it 65 feet across the warehouse.
Somewhere Julian Casablancas weeps. Ke$ha’s third proper album Warrior drops 12/4. We’ve heard the first single “Die Young” in all it’s “very-Ke$ha” glory, but the album also contains the uncanny Strokes send up “Only Wanna Dance With You”. Let’s try to figure out if this song is catchy, good or both.
Let’s start with the things that make this song catchy:
-From the outset the rhythmic strumming evokes the Strokes, one of the catchiest bands of the 20-aughts (the prechorus is basically identical to that of “Last Night”)
-The rhythm of the vocal delivery follows the strumming pattern, creating a gloriously overemphasized bop.
-That CHORUS. I played this song for a couple friends last night and one of them intimated that pop songsmiths turn out songs like this quickly and easily. I disagreed. The “only wanna dance with yaaaaoooou” is so much catchier that “only wanna dance with you” (this is a difficult thing for me to express in writing, but I mean the fact that she goes up a half step higher than she needs to for the “with yaaa” so she can come back down for the “ouuuuuu”).
-Rhyming “toniiight” with “alriiiight” has always and will always be catchy as hell.
-At one point Ke$ha says “Come to my place let’s kick it all night/and hardcore makeout til it gets light…. ALRIGHT?” Yes, yes Ke$ha that would be fine.
Now let’s look at the things about this song that are not good:
-It’s verrrry repetitive rhythmically. This means that even though the chords change in the prechorus and chorus, the song doesn’t feel very dynamic
-Ke$ha’s lyrics (as much as I happen to love them) are pretty objectively terrible (“I’m so over it with love, every guy just super sucks”)
-….
I like to picture Ke$ha’s creative process involving a giant warehouse with a large AstroTurf batting cage setup. Every 3 hours Ke$ha’s production team coaxes her from a side room — from which she emerges tentatively and bleary-eyed, like a baby penguin — luring her in to the batting cage with a bottle of Jack Daniels. Ke$ha burps and holds her hands palm-up at her sides impatiently. “OK Ke$h,” short for Ke$ha, “on this track you’re going to sing about how you went to a show to have a mellow night but then you saw this dude and you just couldn’t help yourself…”
Ke$ha ponders this wordlessly for a few seconds, then nods, picking up a giant neon pink inflatable baseball bat. Max Martin stands five feet in front of her and ever-so-gently lobs a beach ball underhand. During its flight Ke$ha itches her crotch and then steadies the bat on her shoulder, almost teetering over backwards in the process. But suddenly as the beach ball reaches her she stares narrowly ahead and laces it 65 feet across the warehouse.
Alright, here’s how the game works: we’re gonna drink every time Bruno Mars shamelessly lifts an element out of another artists’ song. Hope you brought a 30-rack. Mars, who’s had a good amount of success on the charts has returned with his newest tune “Locked Out of Heaven”. Let’s take a look at whether this track is catchy, good, or both.
We’ll start out with what makes this tune catchy…
-To say this song sounds like the Police’s “Message in a Bottle” is equivalent to saying that “Greensleeves” sounds like “What Child is This”. “Message in a Bottle” is a famously catchy song about isolation, and that’s kind of what “Locked Out of Heaven” is about too. That and sweaty sex.
-The “for to lo-oo-wo-oo-wo-ooong” at the end of the chorus makes me wanna sing along while triumphantly clutching my chest hair.
-The line “your sex takes me to paradise”, how has nobody thought to write that lyric before?!
But is it Good?
-It appears we’ve reached a place in popular music where there’s no such thing as theft. Drawing on influence is one thing, but it’s hard to imagine this song existing if it weren’t for the Police. There’s nothing wrong with borrowing, but where does it stop? I’d love to write new lyrics for and slightly alter the melodies of some of my favorite songs. But I don’t, because I’m not this guy, or this guy.
-There’s a number of different melodic lines that run through this song, but none of them really work together, this makes the transition from verse to chorus kind of jarring. And the inclusion of a 1-bar “pre chorus” doesn’t help, at all.
This song is already catching fire and could follow the success of other Mars tracks like “Grenade” and “Just the Way You Are”. As it climbs the charts we raise a Keystone Light and prepare to get schnockered.
For this edition of “Catchy, Good or Both?” we’ll be looking at a not-so-recent phenomenon that has come back into vogue within popular music in the last few years: yelling “HEY!”
This newly minted hit by the Lumineers was the genesis for this article because it has stretched this guttural tendency to a domineering new place. This song is based around yelling, well, “HEY” and “HO” over and over. But this ain’t no fun time Naughty-by-Nature singalong, it’s a folk song. This infectious monosyllable is not new, let’s take a look back at some recent examples before we come to a decision on whether “HEY!” is catchy, good or both.
This song by overzealous band-namers Of Monsters and Men, a new Icelandic outfit, uses the shouted “HEY!” in a way that is either novel and catchy, or terrible and derivative, depending on whether this is your first time listening to music.
Having spent a few years languishing in a limbo of compromised artistic ideals and not thinking to shout “HEY!” during a song, Edward Sharpe finally scored his breakthrough with this undeniably catchy slice of jangle pop.
2 years before Edward Sharpe made “HEY!” a part of current musical vernacular, Arcade Fire released this track, a standout on the under-appreciated Neon Bibleand was also featured on their first EP.
So, is “HEY!” catchy?
–Any time a particular phrase or passage is sung by a large group of voices there’s a suggestion of inclusion, encouraging you to sing along.
-The “HEY!”s in all of these songs punctuate a rhythmic and melodic phrase simultaneously. Way to put your money where your “HEY!”s are, bands.
-“HEY!” is an utterance very easy to pronounce for the majority of human beings.
-The “HEY!”s in these songs all convey an inarticulate emotion. It’s probably the reason they are all sung by multiple voices; they can mean something different for each listener.
But is it good?
-The last of the above points has a backlash. “HEY!” what?
-In each of these songs “HEY!” is, arguably, central to the hook; central to drawing in the listener. Hedging the success of a song on something so simple is risky, and what was newly re-novel can come quickly become re-played-out.
These songs are all quite catchy, but for different reasons. It’s difficult to know if “HEY!” will stick around for a while or just dissapear for another 40 years.
This is my first piece for HMSM, so I thought I’d try my hand at one of their recurring columns, “Catchy, Good, or Both?” Previously, Kevin has used this column to address “Call Me Maybe” and “Somebody That I Used To Know”, and I thought I’d take this opportunity to examine the internet’s latest viral sensation, “Letter to Emily White at NPR All Songs Considered,” by David Lowery. It’s not a song, per se, more of a tirade against an unassuming 20-year-old intern; but it was written by a great musician (Lowery used to play in Cracker* and Camper Van Beethoven), and it’s gone viral in a manner not unlike Carly Rae or Gotye – drawing half a million page views in the first two days alone, and inspiring countless responses by everyone from Steve Albini to Travis Morrison to Bob Lefsetz (all of which are great, BTW).
So let’s break it down: is it catchy, good or both?
Catchy? Without a doubt.
-Lowery now works as a Music Business professor at the University of Georgia, so he clearly knows the ins and outs of the industry. He backs up his argument with hard statistics about declining record sale revenues and dwindling numbers of professional musicians.
-He breaks down who is actually making money off music (spoiler alert: not the artists) with snappy analogies, in which he refers to a hypothetical un-policed neighborhood where shoplifters run amok as the ‘Net, because apparently it’s still 1996.
-His personal anecdotes about the deaths of Vic Chestnutt and Mark Linkous are genuinely heartbreaking and put a personal touch on the whole debate.
-He finishes strong, calculating exactly how much Emily “owes” the music industry for all the free music she’s acquired – which happens to be about the combined price of a laptop, a smart phone and an iPod – and links to some charities where that money could go.
-We’re still talking about this article two weeks later, which is like 15 years in Internet Time. It’s provoked a healthy debate among smart people on the internet about how to ethically consume music, which is a long overdue conversation (the link provided is just one of many).
Good? Sort of.
-Lowery isn’t wrong about any of this. It sucks that musicians don’t make more money. But you know what else sucked? Paying $16.99 for a CD sucked, especially a CD with one and a half good songs and nine tracks of filler that you only listen to once. The first track (I refuse to call it a song) I ever downloaded from Napster, at the tender age of 15, was Dynamite Hack’s ham-fistedly ironic cover of “Boyz in the Hood,” and I think that’s telling. I really can’t express how grateful I am that I didn’t have to spend nearly twenty dollars of hard-earned allowance money on something that was kinda funny for three minutes and then awful forever.
-His stories about Vic Chestnut and Mark Linkous, while undeniably tragic, are also a little obtuse to the point he’s making. It’s inexcusable that these men died because they didn’t have adequate health care, but this should be part of a much larger conversation than music piracy. Also, “I’m not trying to point fingers or place blame, but your generation killed these musicians by stealing their music” reminds me a little too much of those comments that begin “I’m not racist and/or sexist, but…”
-He definitely low-balls his estimate of what Emily owes for the free music she’s acquired – ten cents per song seems pretty reasonable. Still, any dollar sign you put on a piece of digital media is going to be very slippery, and it’s a number that’s going to be constantly evolving as our relationship with music evolves.
It’s hard to blame Lowery for his concern. Artists around his age seem to feel most threatened by the proliferation of music piracy. While a select few of the larger artists from around that time (Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails leap to mind) have adapted quite gracefully to recorded music now being essentially free, many others who were just getting a foothold in the ‘90s had the rug pulled out from them rather violently by Napster and the thousands of imitations that have popped up to replace it over time.
However, artists closer to Emily’s age, who have grown up with this “music is free” mentality, are approaching things differently. Many young artists have parlayed free or pay-what-you-want releases into greater success – Das Racist, Odd Future, and The Weeknd come to mind and they’re hardly the only examples. It is now free to obtain recorded music (discounting the cost of a laptop and an internet connection), but it’s also free to make and distribute recorded music (again, discounting the cost of a laptop and an internet connection). From where I’m sitting (at a laptop, on the internet), music is in a much better place now than it was twelve years ago.
The fact that Lowery ends his tirade by linking to several reputable charities shows that his heart is clearly in the right place. When he shakes his fist and tells us kids to get off his lawn, he’s just trying to make sure the grass stays green. He also doesn’t seem to realize that the lawn isn’t really his anymore.
This is Max Horwich’s first article for Happy Music, Sad Music. When he’s not writing (which is pretty much always, as this is the first article he’s written in five years), he makes music. You can get it for free on the internet.
*I can’t find a place to work this into my actual article, so I’m gonna use this footnote to point out the irony that Lowery once wrote a song about literally stealing the master tapes to Sticky Fingers from Virgin Records because they screwed over his band. It’s a really brilliant song, as were most of the songs Lowery wrote when he was still writing songs. You can watch a live performance of it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd-2Mj7mh3Q
Continuing the series “Catchy, Good, or Both” we move to Carly Rae Jepsen’s bowel movement smash hit “Call me Maybe”.
This is Carly Rae Jepsen (not to be confused with Corinne Bailey Rae, Rae Dawn Chong, or Judy Rae Jetson). She’s a 26-year-old (her age is very important to this analysis) Canadian singer-songwriter. She placed third (THIRD!) on the 2007 season of Canadian Idol (known then by its’ working title: Nobody) and she has since been trotting out releases. But nothing has charted higher than #32 on the Canadian charts until “Call me Maybe” (which has now hit number 1 in Canada, Australia, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, New Zealand and the UK. It currently sits at #4 in the US). So far we have a pretty good case for this song being catchy…
So, as we did last time, let’s start by looking at the things about this song that are catchy:
-First and foremost that chorus hook. In particular the melodic phrasing of “I just met you, and this is crazy.” Along with the synthy string stabs, very 1977-cum-1994.
-The layering of her vocals in the chorus. It sounds like 5 Carly Rae’s vying for my attention. Easy ladies, I can only take one of your numbers at a time!
-…
Now, let’s look at the things about this song that are decidedly not good:
-First off, giving a person your number isn’t really that crazy. In fact, it’s one of the least “crazy” ways you can possibly initiate a relationship with someone. As my boy Rembert Browne said in his brilliant dissection of the current top 10, “I just can’t believe Carly is 26. No one in their mid-20s should think that it’s crazy to have just met someone.” I think the lyric should be “Hey, I just met you / And this is craaaazy / But I’m on bath salts / Your FACE LOOKS TASTYYY!!!!!” (too soon?)
-Carly has been criticized for “younging down” her lyrics and image so as to appeal to a tween audience. This is a tactic that has been around, in various forms, for a long time (looking in your direction 90210). But if your entire purpose is to compromise your artistic aspirations in order to sell more records does it still count as selling out? I’m gonna go with yes.
-This song is insanely repetitive. That’s not always a bad thing. But if there are irritating aspects of a song they’re made all the more irritating when they’re repeated. Even in the “bridge” section it’s the exact same melody and there’s not a whole lot of shift in dynamics after the first 10 seconds of the track.
Will the U.S. buck the international trend and keep “Call me Maybe” from reaching number 1?
So in this series we’ll explore the tendencies of contemporary pop (hint: catchy), evaluate the authenticity (or lack thereof) or an artist making a “hit”, and investigate exactly what makes a song popular.
Gotye, “Somebody that I Used to Know”
This is Wally de Backer. He’s a Belgian-born Australian who generally makes cut-and-paste electronic music under the stage name Gotye (gau-tee-yay). He’s been somewhat successful down under but has just scored his breakthrough hit with an undeniably catchy tune called “Somebody that I Used to Know” featuring a guest verse and backing vocal from Katy Perry some woman who sounds just like Katy Perry. Take a listen, then read on…
The track is undeniably catchy; the following elements all contribute to that:
-The xylophone line (I had pretty much forgotten this instrument exists)
-The sparseness of the instrumentation (at a time when the consensus in pop seems to be “bigger is better” the fact that this song is uncrowded is startling, in a good way)
-The chorus hook: “But you didn’t have to cutttttt me outtt, (blah blah blah) never happened and no, we weren’t nothing”
-He sounds like Peter Gabriel.
-The guest verse and backing harmonies from a different voice, bolstering the final chorus (though these may just be catchy because she sounds like Katy Perry, and Katy Perry is catchy like Eliot Smith is depressing)
Now, before we make a determination on whether the song is catchy and good, or just catchy, let’s look at the things about it that are decidedly not good:
–First and foremost, the lyrics, which are banal to the point of irony, but sung with too much conviction to be ironic:
“Now and then I think of when we were together
Like when you said you felt so happy you could die
Told myself that you were right for me
But felt so lonely in your company
But that was love and it’s an ache I still remember” barf.
–The guest verse: this is good and bad; good because it adds some sonic variety and the harmonies over the last chorus are excellent; bad because, come on, that’s seriously not Katy Perry? It makes me question the validity of the entire song that this woman is trying so hard to sound like someone she’s not. This is not to say Katy Perry is the gold-standard of female musicians, but be yourself Kimbra.
(She even kinda looks like Katy Perry)
If you’re keeping count, the catchy outweighs the bad, and here we come to heart of the question “Is this song good, or just catchy?”: every catchy song is good, unless it isn’t. Songs can beat you over the head with an infectious melody until it’s stuck in your head for days (apropos: my mom had Deep Blue Something‘s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” stuck in her head so badly she lost sleep, not exaggerating), but if what surrounds that melody is contrived or if that melody is annoying, it does not a good song make.
Stay tuned for further discussion of the “Catchy, Good, or Both?” issue and for now:
Happy Music Sad Music 