A disclaimer: I don’t like most of what I write about why I like songs. It doesn’t do them justice. Architecture about dancing, and so on. But I do understand why lists are pointless. So, with apologies to the records in question, I am (today) unable to choose between:
Destiny’s Child: “Lose My Breath”
It’s just an all-out assault, from the “Hit me!” at the start, right through to the last seconds. No space here for Michelle to interject a couple of lines about God or about Doing The Right Thing. And no, ‘You’re no match for me’ is hardly new lyrical territory for the genre or DC themselves, but it’s just flawlessly done. The bit (at 1:30, if we’re being all Ian MacDonald about it) when the “Funky Drummer” break (or something very like it) joins the rest of the drum track like the most natural thing in the world. The melody on the last line of each verse (“Grabbed you Grind you Liked you Tried you/Moved so fast baby now I can’t find you” being the first) where there’s no passing notes, just these fantastic, aggressive leaps up & down. The fact that, drums aside, the whole of the backing track consists of just three notes (two high string-ish hits and one droney lower one).
Girls Aloud: “The Show”
Lyrics about the value of not rushing into sex (except for, you know, the bits that aren’t). That splendidly sarcastic intro/outro. That keyboard noise - the first thing you hear - which is so crunchily textured that you can feel it as much as hear it. The ‘here it comes!’ reverse-echo thingy on the vocal before the second “That special something...” bit. The not-in-Kansas-anymore structure, and the fact that it’s quietly and absolutely in service of the song, rather than making an issue of itself. If only the band themselves weren’t so off-puttingly homely...
Radiohead: “Pyramid Song”
Not a song I’d’ve chosen to like, if that was the way things worked. I find Radiohead tiresome, for all the obvious reasons (although I recognise that at least some of them have more to do with the NME and my friends and my issues than they have with Radiohead themselves). And so it took me about two years to realise or admit just how much I do like this. It feels like it’s in some weird time signature although I’m not sure that it actually is: it’s kind of slippery, like you have to watch your footing in case it disappears underneath you. I particularly like the way “There was nothing to fear, nothing to doubt” comes out like it’s the saddest thing in the world. And, hey, you can’t trust anyone who doesn’t like any embarrassing records, can you?*
Brandy: “What About Us”
It’s weird and it’s catchy. It may not sound like a big deal, but that pretty much sums it up. Growing up in the late eighties I remember thinking that mainstream pop music seemed to have given up on sounding like nothing-you’d-ever-heard-before, and wishing that it hadn’t. The best bits of the last seven or eight years of US R’n’B have felt, then, like something I’ve been waiting for for as long as I can remember: it’s weird and it’s catchy. And none more so than this. Again, it’s rhythmically treacherous - like there’s two entirely different things going on at once, or like it’s a zombie dragging one of its feet behind it**. And there’s all sorts of time-stretched, backwards, apparently malfunctioning noises going on. And it got to number four.
and Mariah Carey: “We Belong Together”
...which I’ve already said more than enough about here.
___________________
* Something I do believe, actually, although now’s probably not the time.
** Not my line, sadly, although I can’t recall who I pinched it from. |
