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deadcactuswalking · 4 months ago

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REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 24/08/2024 (Bruno Mars & Lady Gaga "Die with a Smile")

Chase, Status and Stormzy remain at the top of the UK Singles Chart for a second week as “BACKBONE” retains its #1 spot amidst a surprisingly slow week. The big story is Gaga and Bruno returning with their comeback duet to the top 10, but before we get to any of that, well, there’s just about everything else. Welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS!

content warning: references to war

Rundown

As always, we start our episode with the notable dropouts - those being songs exiting the UK Top 75, which is what I cover, after five weeks in the region or a peak in the top 40. This week, we bid farewell to a small group of “Alibi” by Sevdaliza, Pabllo Vittar and Yseult, “DEVIL IS A LIE” by Tommy Richman and two tracks from Central Cee - not his best week - those being “gen z luv” - thank God - and “BAND4BAND” with Lil Baby.

As for our notable gains and re-entries, we have “Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield scrape back at #75, but the big story in these categories is Post Malone, whose country duets album F-1 Trillion fails to chart any new songs, probably because it’s not all that great and the UK is going to rarely grant much success to a full-on country pivot, but we do have a big return for “Pour Me a Drink” with Blake Shelton at #39, and his other songs see gains: “I Had Some Help” with Morgan Wallen at #29 and the terrible “Guy for That” with Luke Combs at #25. We do see some notable boosts outside of Post, in particular for “The Man Who Can’t be Moved” by The Script at #64, “You’re Gonna Go Far” by Noah Kahan at #60, Taylor Swift gains for “Fortnight” featuring, well, Post Malone at #50 and “Cruel Summer” at #41, “Carry You Home” by Alex Warren at #46, “Sailor Song” by Gigi Perez at #35 - definitely not complaining about that one - “Big Dawgs” by Hanumankind and Kalmi at #15 and finally, Chappell Roan snabs her second top 10 with “HOT TO GO!” at #10.

Finally, in the top five… the trio of Huh, WhoNow and whatshername have finally made it, with “Kisses” by BL3SS, CamrinWatsin and bbyclose making it to #5. The rest should be familiar: “Guess” by Charli xcx featuring Billie Eilish at #4, “BIRDS OF A FEATHER” by Billie Eilish at #3, “Good Luck, Babe!” by Chappell Roan at #2 and the aforementioned “BACKBONE” at the very top. Now before we get to our big top 10 debut, let’s see what’s scraping up below it.

New Entries

#72 - “Cry Baby” - Clean Bandit, Anne-Marie and David Guetta

Produced by Jack Patterson and Grace Chatto

If we end the show with a long-awaited collab between two big-name 2010s hit-makers who have kept quiet for most of this decade, but always create a global smash when they arrive… then I guess we’ll start with a trio of European hit-makers from the 2010s who haven’t been able to go away, and given this is actually a week after it debuted in the top 100, I think the impact of that next Clean Bandit album may be a little muted. What I was personally terrified of when this line-up appeared was the prospect of the previous hit they’d blatantly sample, so the fact that this is an original song is already an improvement on my low expectations. As for its quality, well, firstly, it immediately sounded outdated. Sure, the country flair they acknowledged is contemporary but the Official Charts Company themselves noted that the whistling harmonised with the typical Clean Bandit string swell resembles the sea shanties of 2021, and really, this is just an undeniably Just Dance 2018 line-up. The main melodic hook resembles a traditional folk sing-song, but that translates to a particularly staccato tropical house drop, and when you find out from the band themelves in their OCC interview that this is straight out of 2020, with them dismissing most of the changes they’d made to the track since and releasing an earlier version, everything starts to make sense. Guetta says it was four years in the making but realistically, this had been made four years ago, and it speaks to the public’s change of taste that this seems to be more of a slow burn. The song is completely serviceable, but made redundant but much else of Clean Bandit’s catalogue, and this was made long before Anne-Marie really channelled her bratty instincts in her last record, so apart from some cute obnoxious laughter in the backing ad-libs, this feels dry, lacking in much to set it apart, which for all three of these acts, is pretty par for the course nowadays.

#55 - “New Woman” - LISA featuring ROSALÍA

Produced by Max Martin and ILYA

Now if there’s something that definitely isn’t lacking in personality, it would be a track by BLACKPINK star LISA with a guest appearance from ROSALÍA, and naturally, production from Max Martin instead of any of the weirder acts like Arca or el Guincho that ROSALÍA often gels with, and LISA could use to help her carve a distinct sound. It struck me as a bizarre decision, and one that I’m genuinely surprised she had the ability to make, especially given LISA seemed inching closer to both rap and the avant-garde with “Rockstar”. Martin and ILYA may have taken themselves further out of their comfort zone by enlisting Tove Lo as a writer, and given the robotic vocal loop that is barely on beat, the blocks of synths against the factorial drums and even record scratches, you can hear her all over this more garish attempt at an 80s pastiche, even in LISA’s verses themselves, as her vocal delivery of monosyllabic, abstract and separate phrases borderline feels like an impression, before the fast-paced, staccato chorus full of stuttering meshing with the flashy chiptune synths that seems just as like Tove Lo.

The song is all about a newly-gained female confidence, and whilst the lyrics don’t stand out to me as particularly quotable, they may not need to, especially since ROSALÍA takes the song into a murkier territory with a wave of grim bass fuzz, drowning out the melody and replacing what remains with hyperpop-esque effects as she dominates the mix alongside a stray, overly loud snare, so she can take a flex verse to an oddly sinister edge, using her sheer emotional strength as a coping mechanism before it flashes back abruptly, in typical K-pop fashion, to the plastic pop mask. It’s rare that the stop-and-start momentum of K-pop is used to such thematic success, on the charts at least, and honestly I really like the progression, and they even find time in the mix to give LISA the opportunity to rap as a book-end on the intro and outro - it fits the call-and-response post-chorus really well. Surprisingly enough, I really enjoyed this, and I also appreciate seeing Max Martin being taken out of his comfort zone whilst still employing his signature sound. It makes a lot of sense that the presence of ROSALÍA and Tove Lo would prompt that, and I’m slightly more interested in where LISA goes from here rather than wherever I could have predicted she went from “Rockstar”.

#53 - “Pretty Slowly” - Benson Boone

Produced by Evan Blair

Well, at least one of these songs can be quick and easy. As the lieutenant-general of the Boonecorps and CEO of BDS - Benson Defense Squad - I don’t think this one’s too great. It’s still good, I genuinely like this guy and the wordy, tripping-over-himself way of writing his lyrics, but the folkish tones are almost childlike in the verses, not fitting for his whinier tone, especially with some questionable pronounciations and inflections along the way. The overlong build of the chorus makes perfect sense with the stomp-clap elevation and backing vocals given how the track lyrically themes itself around the gradual degradation of a relationship, with him only getting into his signature shriek once it feels too fast to prevent it all from collapsing. The harmonies that are slightly off on timing and have a gang vocals feel whilst still feeling very attached to Boone’s tone makes the song have a great sense of panic in its fuller moments. I just wish that led to more than the frankly disappointing bridge-turned-outro, as a mostly good song ends with a slower, melancholic rise, with an awkward vocal mastering job, and repetitive lyric that really does not resolve the song’s post-breakup angst in a satisfying or even compelling way. Even blowing out the mix to ridiculous proportions, which honestly usually helps me enjoy a song, doesn’t help me get over the weird left turn and frankly, I think this is where he needs some help lyrically: actually completing his song’s narratives. It’s still fine, though, and we stay in folk rock territory with…

#48 - “Nobody’s Soldier” - Hozier

Produced by Bekon, Pete G, Chakra and Sergiu Gherman

Though not as explosive as his last EP of B-sides, thanks to the lack of a really immediate hit like “Too Sweet”, Hozier is still trickling out another trilogy, with the new EP Unaired. The stand-out opener is the anti-war song “Nobody’s Soldier”, which got the video treatment and takes on a lone-wolf character fitting for its strident guitar fuzz and distorted intro, taking a third option in between selling yourself physically to a warzone and selling yourself to a capitalistic society, becoming another product in the midst of others fighting for “consumer” attention, with several pieces of imagery directly mirroring the experiences of those in the trenches of the World Wars. Hozier sounds as powerful in the relentless, dynamically-mixed chorus as he sounds uncertain in the tense, breathy clinging of the verses, demonstrating a very real disillusionment with the selfishness inherent in a society that benefits financially from promoting and waging conflict, both as industry market competition and actual bloodshed.

Whilst more of an anthemic independence, Hozier can come off as a tad weak here, being buried in the mix sometimes by the more prominent, almost digital-sounding guitar pumping in the right channel, and not having the best enunciation - not that you really need that in a populist protest song - but the lyrics also seem to look too in between two dimensions to really settle for what change can be made. I don’t exactly think there’s all too much room in the geopolitical climate for centrist disgruntlement, and I can’t see a society where the potential motive behind this song - just being “all about the music” and wanting to release art rather than force himself into commercialism and/or war, which he paints several parallels between - isn’t selling yourself. Even in a world where art is not commodified to the extent it is now, the deeply personal lyrics of some of Hozier’s tracks combined with the need to create a centralised space wherein that art can be expressed, spread and accessed is creating a product out of yourself, it almost seems unavoidable. The song is still very good, I am not really going to defy a song’s impact, grit and tightly-written narrative if I don’t agree with it thematically, though I feel it may stem too closely to “Too Sweet” for Hozier’s own good in its overarching themes and tone, setting itself apart with a harsher and political edge but falling into the traps of circling itself into recapturing the same idea, to the point of being a tad under-developed, all the same.

#7 - “Die with a Smile” - Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars

Produced by Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, D’Mile and watt

As much as Bruno and Gaga both feel like icons of a 2010s style of grandiose pop long gone, they still have made plenty of work that I personally enjoy greatly on many more levels than pure nostalgia, and I think that’s part of why the two have resonated so strongly and for so long, alongside the diverse range of their talents and genre-scoping abilities, they’re like pop music polymaths, and in Gaga’s case, she works between so many forms and mediums that calling her a “singer” feels like an understatement. Both acts have recruited people from their side - D’Mile and James Fauntleroy are writing here alongside producer Andrew Watt from the pop rock sphere - so this dramatic re-entry, which may be on either artists’ album or both, whenever that’s coming for either of them since it’s been a while on both fronts, should be an easy push and slam dunk on both the charts and in the eyes of the critics. And is it worth the hype? Does it pass the already high expectations we have for these two, we can probably call it now, legends of pop music? …Yeah, obviously, the song’s fantastic.

The conceit of the exhausted “ooh-ooh” from Bruno that enters the song in through feathery falsetto and returns to signal the floating verses, both of which start outside of their respective singer’s control, is such a neat little detail that Bruno would obviously add in, those sneaky refrains are probably part of what makes his musicianship so special to Gaga herself, as explained in their Variety article, and you can definitely tell that this was Bruno’s song first, mostly because it’s a smooth jam that has his harmonies dripping all over it, even when Gaga’s supposed to be the lead vocal. The dramatic drumming that fills in for the gentler guitars is mixed so perfectly, down to a really brilliant panning job when they first come in, that it adds a lot of genuine strength to this power ballad, even when the rest of the instrumental benefits from its languid, throwback slide, balancing the song’s aged comfort, which you can really hear in Bruno’s “just for a while” delivery in the chorus, with a lovestruck intensity from their early 2010s work remaining, especially through Gaga’s belting that meshes note to note with Bruno, particularly in the rougher pre-chorus. It feels like a perfect middle man between the youthful, dedicated bops that launched them into fame and the natural adult contemporary conclusion, bringing that same 100% energy to a style more fitting of their age and career progression.

I adore the production details down to Gaga’s vocal being distanced and filtered in the second chorus to bubble below Bruno’s delicate take, signalling the careening swell of pianos to come in the bridge, which wastes no time from dipping its toes into the shallow pool of water that sounds like it’s below their performance, to crashing into theatrics like a true megastar moment. The sheer strength of the instrumental break sends Gaga into a ferociously dedicated passion right after, and renders Bruno’s early coos into a screech that resonates through the mix well into the passage’s closing moments. I love the thematic conceit of Bruno always overpowering Gaga on the “I’d wanna hold you just for a while” line whilst she’s much more prominent in both renditions she has of the chorus’ first half. There’s simply so much to appreciate about this song, but perhaps its biggest appeal is just how big it sounds. It’s written like the climax to a soundtrack, its scale lyrically is that of the end of the world, and it features some absolute powerhouses going toe-to-toe on an instrumental so layered and massive that it could overpower any of the two at any given moment.

It should be of no surprise that these two titans come together for this extravagant of a song, and the two always felt like they should have crossed paths a long time ago given their similar - but not nearly identical - paths that have not just followed but actively played on the public perceptions of what a pop star could and couldn’t be, whether through the gesamtkunstwerk spectacle of Lady Gaga’s time in the limelight, using her decade and change with the public eye to make the most challenging pop of its time whilst branching across film, fashion and contemporary art in a way that has forever fused the artforms, or Bruno’s slow-burn dedication to perfectly replicate the styles of music he holds dear, in blind disregard to release dates, and prove himself as a man who makes art purely because he loves it and wants to transmit that joy he experiences unto others. Simply put, I imagine these two are somewhat on the way out in their hit-making career, so to have this beast of a power ballad as their ending credits, with the two finally coming together to prove that dominance and evolution, it really is kind of beautiful. It does help that I’ve been alive to track these artists’ progression, and for much of the second half, document it on here, so a song like this that even uses the subtext of their pop stardom being somewhat behind them, or even them just being beyond that now, will resonate particularly well with me, in particular because ARTPOP and An Evening with Silk Sonic are borderline perfect albums, in my opinion, and whilst this may be more comfortably in Bruno’s camp, “Die with a Smile” still hits immensely and I really hope it smashes just to give them that victory lap. I can’t say this about really any song that debuts and I have to review in real-time, but this one… it feels like an all-timer. An absolutely perfect song to end this episode. This is pop music incarnate.

Conclusion

Wow, I mean, you can’t really have it better than that! Only five songs, not one I dislike, and aside from one, they’re all very good, so it gives you an easy Worst of the Week - “Cry Baby” by Clean Bandit, David Guetta and Anne-Marie - without actually being hard to listen to, and I’m spoiled rotten for the Honourable Mention but the Best of the Week is barely a choice simply because of how far Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars run away with it with “Die with a Smile”. Ultimately, I gave the Honourable Mention to LISA and ROSALÍA for “New Woman”, mostly because there are small nitpicks with the others, but this is ultimately a nice little batch of songs. As for what’s on the horizon, I suppose we’ll have to look out for Sabrina Carpenter’s newest album release given her recently-acquired megastar status, as well as new tracks to look out for from Myles Smith and Coldplay. Hell, Fontaines D.C. might end up with something here, you can’t count them out. For now, thank you for reading, long live Cola Boyy, and I’ll see you next week!

#uk singles chart #pop music #song review #bruno mars #die with a smile #lady gaga #hozier #benson boone #clean bandit #david guetta #anne-marie #blackpink lisa #rosalía #new woman

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