#DIRTBIKE LB | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

deadcactuswalking · 10 months ago

Text

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 13/01/2023 (Liam Gallagher/John Squire, Lewis Capaldi, Bring Me the Horizon)

Welp, Noah Kahan’s back at #1 with “Stick Season” for a second consecutive week - kinda surprised this is the hit song we start off the year with but alas, welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS!

Rundown

Now this is the kind of balls-to-the-wall week I expect from early January, and we’ll get to that, but as always, we start with our notable dropouts, songs exiting the UK Top 75 after five weeks in the region or a peak in the top 40. This week, we say farewell to “ten” by Fred again.. and Jozzy, “Take on Me” by a-ha, “(It Goes Like) Nanana” by Peggy Gou, “Everywhere” by Fleetwood Mac, “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)” by Whitney Houston, “Giving Me” by Jazzy, “Miracle” by Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding, "Escapism." by RAYE featuring 070 Shake and "As it Was" by Harry Styles.

Now as for songs still showing up on the charts, we have our notable gains, and given January actually has a lot of stuff going on pop music wise, I’m not entirely sure how well these will maintain their momentum but regardless, we do see boosts for… “When We Were Young (The Logical Song)” by David Guetta and Kim Petras at #53, “Riptide” by Vance Joy at #49 - oh, this is dire. Noah Kahan’s good, sure, but it really does not mean we need to stomp and holler our way back to 2014. Sigh, elsewhere, at least we have “Never Lose Me” by Flo Milli at #41, but also “Toxic” by Songer at #39 - God, let’s not do this, please - “Perfect (Exceeder)” by Mason and Princess Superstar at #26, “Feather” by Sabrina Carpenter at #19, “Popular” by The Weeknd, Playboi Carti and Madonna getting a second wind at #11 and finally, Teddy Swims with his first top 10 as “Lose Control” rises to #6, not really complaining about that one.

In addition, we see another film-related return with Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten” finding use in this romcom Anyone but You which no, I haven’t watched and unlike Saltburn, probably won’t. Regardless, the song debuted and peaked at #6 in 2004 the week that “Do They Know it’s Christmas?” by Band Aid 20 debuted at the top of the charts, and it’s now back at #24. I’m a lot less fond of this one, but it’s mostly fine, I’m more exhausted by how 2024 seems to be going even harder in just reviving catalogue songs instead of having new hits.

As for our top five, it seems pretty standard with “greedy” by Tate McRae at #5, “Prada” by casso, RAYE and D-Block Europe at #4 and “Lovin’ on Me” at #3, but then we have Sophie Ellis-Bextor reaching the same peak she reached back at release with “Murder on the Dancefloor” at #2. I don’t really get why the scene in the film, which whilst memorable, is hardly a worthwhile payoff to that shitfest, but I digress, is what propelled this but I almost think it was just sitting there, ready for any excuse to start skirting up the Spotify charts. Oh, and Noah Kahan’s at #1, of course, let’s check out what’s new, because there’s actually more here than last week… and it’s a bit more interesting… Hell, it’s actually pretty incomprehensible this week, so let’s just find some kind of through line, and we start with a certainty that is oddly comforting nowadays…

New Arrivals

#72 - “Skims” - D-Block Europe

Produced by THESCAM and Hash-K

Ah, my good old friends Young Adz and Dirtbike Lb. It’s even produced by… “THESCAM”, wow, I guess it says gullible on the ceiling of your mansion, guys. They released a mixtape or album or whatever and this is a single from it - yes, we’re getting back to back DBE weeks - and it’s just terrible as you’d expect. The tuned-out piano is almost plugg-esque, and surprisingly enough, Dirtbike Lb handles much of this, talking about women mostly as well as a lot of flexing, and whilst he can’t make a catchy hook to save his life, I like Dirtbike’s voice here, he sounds more… stable than usual, and the drums actually hit fairly hard through the whole song. On an objective level, if there is one, this is one of their most competent lead singles until Young Adz comes in with “Presidential, Emmanuel Macron”. That’s the French President. That’s just the French President, you can’t just say the French President. That’s not a bar. He’s mixed too loud and brags about paying with crypto and giving a girl so much money that she… can’t tax evade anymore. Sure. Good to have you back, guys.

#71 - “Nothing Matters” - The Last Dinner Party

Produced by James Ellis Ford

Alright, we have our first of many sleeper hits to debut this week, but this is actually one of the newer ones, being released just early last year. This is the debut single for all-female indie rock band The Last Dinner Party, hailing from London and getting James Ellis Ford, who’s produced for a who’s who of British alternative acts and Kylie Minogue, to work on their debut album coming out in February. We start with an organ, which is almost ironically religious for this kind of song, as lead singer Abigail Morris, through her very British delivery, pretty much condemns herself prematurely for what she’s about to say, “I have my sentence now”, it seems final and self-loathing for what is pretty much a newfound love song, where her partner is struggling to move on but it’s a complete rush for Morris, who seems to hold a lot of power. They can hold her like they held their last girlfriend, but what she’s going to do is fuck you so good that none of that matters, and yeah, this is brilliant. There’s such a bending character to Morris’ vocals, I love the flailing yacht rock guitars in the verses that end up picking up into an incredibly catchy bass groove peppered by the claps in the basic yet anthemic chorus that doesn’t change because, well, it doesn’t change like much will change at this point. To her, there’s not a third person that matters, or at least there’s not a third opinion she values more than getting off on their misunderstanding, and then that staccato bridge explodes into a great squealing guitar solo that ends up seamlessly mirroring the plastic horns that appear in the back of the - admittedly maybe a bit too compressed - mix for that final chorus, where we get a switch up in the rhythm and some impressive vocal runs from Morris.

#59 - “A Cure for Minds Overall” - Lewis Capaldi

Produced by TMS

…Can I use my free Get Out of Reviewing a Lewis Capaldi Song card? Oh, there are two Lewis Capaldi songs both from his deluxe edition? Sigh… well, I guess I’ll use these for another time. Well, for now, I can say that’s an ugly Britpop guitar tone that easily sounds like it could be a MIDI guitar just playing the same chord again and again, and like all of the songs from this album, Capaldi’s voice is mixed bizarrely, and really close, which could help the song’s intimacy, and mostly does, especially given it’s just as self-loathing and wordy as the others, and it goes for the same explosion of strings and belting as the others for the chorus… but God, it’s so tedious. I actually don’t mind the strings, the lyrics are pretty great, but this mix is such a blur of nothingness and the guitar just doesn’t stop. There are supposedly drums in this but they’re so unimpactful and shrouded by the terrible blending of the strings that it just sounds like a guy arguing with clouds and losing… which may actually be what he’s going for, in all honesty. I suppose it works?

#52 - “Ophelia” - The Lumineers

Produced by Simone Felice

…Why? Okay, so this is a sleeper hit from folk rock group The Lumineers and like I said, we’re stomp and hollering our way back to the days of “Ho Hey” as somehow, “Ophelia”, despite releasing in 2015 and being a minor hit Stateside, had never crossed over to the UK. This is really not my thing, even if I know that it’s really not a bad song. The reverb envelops the mix in a cinematic if slightly cheap, commercial-sounding way, and Wesley Schultz is far from a bad singer, his feature on my favourite song of last year kind of proved that I like his voice way more than I should. The jaunty hook is catchy if a tad unmemorable, carried by the gimmicky piano frolick that I’ve never liked, and you can hear he’s straining a bit in the third verse, out of a slight frustration but not a specific one. This song has always felt like vague-posting about a relationship to me and not in a very effective way because there’s little poetic about this song. I’m sorry, I don’t dislike these guys, I’m just not big on this one at all. I get why it’s going to probably be a hit now, I’m not really happy about it.

#37 - “Strangers” - Lewis Capaldi

Produced by The Monsters & Strangerz and Michael Pollack

Okay, our second effort from Mr. Capaldi here… he references “Wonderwall” within 10 seconds, and that’s not the last time we’ll be talking about Oasis, it’s one of those weeks. Anyway, this is just awkward: Lewis isn’t really fit for the fast-paced melody he uses given his frail, froggy voice, and there’s not much to cover that up given the minimal piano and strings backing. I genuinely think this could be a great song if just put against some real rock guitar and groove, it has an insanely catchy lead melody in the chorus that would rip in a pop rock context, but here we just have adult contemporary mush about a breakup… has this guy had 47 breakups or is he just talking about the same one each time? I mean, I guess it’s better than the last one because the mix sounds slightly more professional, but there’s not exactly much to latch onto here either.

#27 - “Practice” - Drake

Produced by 40 and Drake

This is a deep cut from 2011’s Take Care. What the Hell is going on?! To be fair, it’s still Drake, but it’s not even a song he’s pushing or got any kind of boost outside of a TikTok trend and, well, it fits the climate of pop music right now at least, since it samples the bounce classic “Back that Azz Up” by JUVENILE featuring Mannie Fresh, who also produced one of the most recognisable beats of all time, and a young Lil Wayne on the bridge. The Weeknd says he wrote the hook but it’s word for word from “Back that Azz Up” so not really sure what he’s going on about there. The explicit yet undeniable club jam actually never charted in the UK, but hey, now we have Drake singing it to yet another stripper he’s in love with. As for that version, I’ve never been a fan of this era of Drake, where he takes himself uber-seriously, can barely sing and is pathetic in a murkier way that just bothers me more than it allows me to laugh at him, especially when he just… recites the chorus to “Back that Azz Up” over a cloudy alternative R&B beat, and a lot of Juvie’s first for that matter. Outside of the drums, which sound straight from 2011, this isn’t exactly a beat too far from what Drake is putting out right now - he’d probably add a female vocal sample and 21 Savage guest verse if he were to make it today - so I suppose I guess why it’s here, but I can get this vibe done much more compellingly from early Weeknd, I see little value in this, or really the album as a whole in 2024, other than constructing the guy’s wounded armour in the public eye. I do hear people say they want the old Drake, so I guess the fans just put their streams where their mouths were.

#21 - “Kool-Aid” - Bring Me the Horizon

Produced by Zakk Cervini, Oli Sykes and Dan Lancaster

This cover art looks like an edgy AI prompt for “Kool-Aid Man digital art”. The Horizon boys have released many a single from this upcoming album, and I’m actually less excited with each one I hear, so I’m cautious here, especially given… well, it’s called “Kool-Aid”. Welp, is this an “Oh Yeah!” moment? No, not at all. This is an “Oh no” at best, and maybe that’s giving it too much credit. I do like the build-up with the shuttering synths and two-clap drop in the intro, but the rest of the song spends so much of its runtime in muddy breakdown mode that it just fails to function in any other way, despite going for screaming breakdowns afterwards as if the song had any momentum in the first place, with Oli Sykes going on about drinking the Kool-Aid and, man, I don’t think the social commentary is that interesting or up to date, and the violent relationship analogies aren’t nearly as transgressive as he thinks they are. The haunting backing vocals from Lucy Landry in the bridge are pretty sick, but they once again find themselves in a song that REALLY wants you to convince you on something, but never really tells you what that something is. They go all out with every Bring Me the Horizon trick in the book for the final chorus and it just seems desperate. I’ll pass on this, I hope there’s more to the deep cuts.

#16 - “Just Another Rainbow” - Liam Gallagher and John Squire

Produced by Greg Kurstin

This was headed for #1 on Sunday, really. Now at a much more reasonable spot but still higher than Liam Gallagher should be in 2024, this is the lead single from a collaborative album between Mr. Gallagher and John Squire, who used to be the guitarist for The Stone Roses, an influential and for what they were, incredibly popular rock band from the Madchester scene in the late 80s and early 90s. They actually released two top 40 comeback singles in 2016, to which Squire contributed, but have otherwise been largely inactive, with this being his first top 40 hit to his own name, with Squire making a guest appearance at Gallagher’s recent Knebworth performances in tribute to him guest starring at Oasis’ classic 1996 concert there, which I guess rekindled something in the duo. Is this slice of 90s alt-rock nostalgia going to be any good? You know what? Probably not, but on this week I’ll take it. Liam’s voice is still grating but that psychedelic guitar lick is pretty washed-out and cool, and I think the way the mirroring bass is mixed against it makes it sound pretty interesting instrumentally. It sounds lost and uncertain, finding itself only when the drums come in and it turns into a bit of a bluesy rocker that is just solid. There’s little to complain about other than Liam’s voice just being an acquired taste, as the song just slides itself to and fro, with some lyrics where he literally just lists the colours of the rainbow at some point, it’s kind of silly. I don’t see this lasting even a second week and it’s of course not the best of the rock songs of this week, even if it has the coolest solo of all of them: it feels really dynamic and kind of goes on forever in a soaring linger. If anything is proven by this song, I mean, John Squire still has it after all those years just painting away. That’s good to know.

Conclusion

Best of the Week should be pretty obvious, it’s going to The Last Dinner Party for “Nothing Matters”, which is actually fantastic and almost shocked me since I don’t expect much to stand out from the charting remains of indie landfill. Speaking of, I mean I guess it’s typical that another rock song gets the Honourable Mention, but no one was really competing with “Just Another Rainbow” by Liam Gallagher and John Squire, since the rest of this week really was kind of garbage. I actually think Bring Me the Horizon, who I do like around half of the time, snab Worst of the Week for “Kool-Aid”, which I feel second-hand embarrassment for. The Dishonourable Mention… give it to Lewis Capaldi. Moreso for the first one, but it’s not like “Strangers” is saving that sinking ship. As for what’s on the horizon, no pun intended, we’ll probably Ari and Lil Nas X playing an incredibly unbalanced game of tug-of-war for the #1. Thank you for reading and I’ll see you next week!

#uk singles chart #pop music #song review #liam gallagher #john squire #lewis capaldi #bring me the horizon #drake #d block europe #lumineers #last dinner party

5 notes · View notes