#glastonbury 2017

[havithreatendub4]

Kris Kristofferson, 89 years old, has passed away at his home in Hawaii #September 29, 2024

#Johnny Depp #Glastonbury #festival #Kris Kristofferson

[margotrobbieuniverse]

Margot Robbie at Glastonbury Festival - June 2017

[dracolizardlars]

LMAO SOFT PLAY WALKING ONTO VENGA BOYS "WE LIKE TO PARTY"

[lestcat-de-lioncourt]

Throwback to Samhain 2017 🐲 in a thing I used to do 🌾

Gwythyr ap Greidawl - played by myself

Gwyn ap Nudd - played by Ross Bambrey

[sunburnacoustic]

New mates on the dash, should I attempt to resurrect some sort of a guide to the tags I use again? Because I am extremely disorganised but tumblr is Somehow Worse than me and so quite unintentionally, this tumblr has ended up being the most organised corner of my life. The repeated ones are mostly all searchable and have very specific purposes

[doyoulikethissong-poll]

Dolly Parton - Jolene 1973

Dolly Parton is an American singer-songwriter, actress, and philanthropist. With a career spanning over fifty years, Parton has been described as a country legend and has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time. She has had 25 singles reach no. 1 on the Billboard country music charts, a record for a female artist (tied with Reba McEntire). She has 44 career Top 10 country albums, a record for any artist, and she has 110 career-charted singles over the past 40 years. She has composed over 3,000 songs. She has founded a number of charitable and philanthropic organizations, chief among them is the Dollywood Foundation, which manages a number of projects to bring education and poverty relief to East Tennessee where she grew up. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Parton donated $1 million towards research at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, which funded the critical early stages of development of the Moderna vaccine.

"Jolene" was released on October 15, 1973, as the first single and title track from her the thirteenth solo studio album Jolene, and became Parton's second solo number one single on the country charts. "Jolene" became Parton's first top ten hit song in the UK, reaching number seven in the UK Singles Chart in 1976. It also re-entered the chart when Parton performed at the Glastonbury festival in 2014.

According to Parton, the song was inspired by a red-headed bank clerk who flirted with her husband, Carl Dean, at his local bank branch around the time they were newly married. In an interview, she also revealed that Jolene's name and appearance are based on that of a young fan who came on stage for her autograph.

During an interview on The Bobby Bones Show in 2018, Parton revealed that she wrote "Jolene" on the same day that she wrote "I Will Always Love You".

"Jolene" was nominated for the Grammy Awards for Best Female Country Vocal Performance twice, in 1975 and 1976. The first nomination was for the original recording, and the second was for a live recording from the TV series In Concert. It did not win either time, but in 2017, a cover by the a cappella group Pentatonix which featured Parton as a guest singer won the Grammy Award for Best Country Duo/Group Performance.

In 2023 she released her forty-ninth solo studio album, Rockstar, a collaborative project with a variety of rock musicians and where "Jolene" is sung by Italian rockband Måneskin, listen to it here!

"Jolene" received a total of 94,3% yes votes!

[twopoppies]

Artists don't headline Glastonbury for the fee. The organiser Emily Eavis has gone on record to say they have never paid more than £500k even to Elton and Guns n Roses. Harry is not going to go into negotiations demanding £1m or something because he'd never get it. The prestige of headlining the world's most iconic festival is enough.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/how-much-glastonbury-headliners-paid-33104817

Yeah, I have no idea about how festivals are run, or about Glastonbury specifically. Thanks for the info and the link. This makes a ton of sense, and honestly, this makes that whole receipt seem super fake.

Dua Lipa received around £200,000 for her headline slot - but she is expected to plough a large percentage of that fee back into her performance and “elaborate” set to make the show as spectacular as possible. Sometimes artists perform at Glastonbury and make a LOSS once they factor in their touring, crew and set costs. Dua is said to have thrown “everything” at the set and production…suggesting an eye-watering amount of money. She recently promised a night of "non-stop, relentless fun" on the night.

Festival co-organiser Emily Eavis, youngest daughter of the festival's founder Michael Eavis, confirmed that artists get paid 10 percent less than what they are typically paid by other festivals. That is because Glastonbury prefers to donate £2million to charities every year, which dispels the myth that some headliners are paid £1million - the number is likely much lower. In a 2017 interview with BBC Radio 6, she explained: "We're not in a situation where we're able to just give people enormous amounts of money. So we're really grateful for the bands that we get because they're basically doing it for the love of it."

Founder Michael once revealed that Coldplay and Paul McCartney were both paid around £200,000 for past headline sets. He said at the time: "Although it sounds a lot, they could have charged me far more." The exact number each 2024 headliner receives will be kept under wraps, but in an interview with Metro, a music consultant specialising in live music venues and festivals, Lyle Bignon, said of 2023’s headliners: "The likes of Elton John and Guns N' Roses, who have decades of global fame behind them, can likely command higher prices running into the £250,000+ range." But there is a limit, no matter how huge the star is. In an interview with Somerset Live, Bestival organiser Rob Da Bank revealed that Glastonbury's budget is under £500,000 per headliner. He said: "They cap their budget and even the headliners don't get paid more than 500 grand, I think, which is cheap for some of the headliners and they've had a lot of them."

in reference to this

full article here

[dreamings-free]

The Oasis frontman will front campaign alongside DJ Peggy Gou, actor Russell Tovey and skateboarder Sage Elsesser

Tue 3 Sep 2024 by Sammy Gecsoyler

Barely a week after ending a bitter feud with his brother, Liam Gallagher is going solo yet again.

Oasis fans need not panic, however. The frontman has been announced as the new face of the fashion brand Stone Island, fronting its autumn and winter campaign.

He has been a fan of the label for years, even lugging its parkas on tour in the middle of summer. In July 2017, he pleaded to the “cunt” who stole some of the brand’s signature jackets from his hotel room at the Glastonbury festival to hand them back, adding “all will be forgiven”.

A promotion for Stone Island’s AW 24/25 campaign featuring Liam Gallagher. Photograph: Stone Island

-> read the full article at theguardian.com

(I'll add the full thing here later, probably)

[zot3-flopped]

Niall has been doing festivals since 2017. Louis didn’t get invited to any until he created his vanity project festival himself and got himself to headline it. And like your anon said there will be comparisons made about these two. And since they sing the same 1D covers it is going to be worse for Louis. But I bet Louis will watch Niall’s set and use this to manipulate people to make them believe 1D members are still supportive of each other so he could ride on the headlines it would create.

But on the flip side this is not good news to Niall either if he is playing the same irrelevant festivals someone like Louis is also playing. Niall used to play bigger festivals and sometimes he still does with iHeart festivals and Summertime Ball. But he can’t even get a headline spot on these unknown festivals and instead is clumped with Louis. It must be hurting his gigantic ego too. Remember how Niall tried to self invite himself to play Coachella in 2022 when Harry headlined it? That is where he wants to be. And I’m sure without a doubt Louis would die to even get an opening slot at Glastonbury which he goes to see every year in hope someone would feel sorry for him and offer one.

So neither of them are winning here. They are both losers. One desperately wants to be Harry and wants his success and the other despise Harry cuz he thinks he deserves Harry’s success without lifting a finger.

.

[awesomefringey]

What's larryopocalypse ?

I bet it circulated around 2015 but I think it started being used regularly ever since in 2017, an anon sent this ask below to multiple larries on here:

Obviously - LARRYOPOCOLYPSE never happened. But we keep reusing the tag (fucking up how it’s spelled every time) and the expression for chaotic days like when we received a string of Larry receipts, or when in 2022 Harry was rumored to show up as a secret surprise act at Glastonbury, when Louis was in the crowd.

Pretty much everything that causes mayhem - in a good way. 😆

[msdiamandis]

Some gifs of Marina during her performance of ‘Disconnect’ at Glastonbury Festival, 2017

[havithreatendub4]

Johnny @ #Glastonbury #June 2017 #Trump #question #comment #julien temple

[margotrobbieuniverse]

Margot Robbie at Glastonbury Festival - June 2017

[boonesfarmsangria]

WHAT EVERYONE SHOULD BE TALKING ABOUT THIS WEEK

readdork.com

The Agenda Setter: Watch the indie throne - The Maccabees are back

Returning to headline All Points East next summer, for The Maccabees, the best endings are just new beginnings in disguise.

Words: Stephen Ackroyd.

The thing about goodbyes is that they’re terribly unreliable narrators. Back in 2017, The Maccabees bid farewell at Alexandra Palace with all the finality of the last page of a beloved novel – tears were shed, hearts were heavy, and those songs rang out like the world’s most beautiful full stop. But sometimes, life has a funny way of scribbling in the margins.

Take Hugo White’s wedding in 2020 – not just a marriage ceremony, but an accidentally perfect festival lineup (Adele! Florence! Jamie T! – the kind of bill that makes Glastonbury look like your local pub’s open mic night). Five attendees, in particular, found themselves sharing familiar air again among this casual collection of casual British music royalty. Not as The Maccabees, mind you – just as friends celebrating love in its purest form. As Orlando Weeks puts it, with characteristic gentle wisdom, “I didn’t go because it was The Maccabees playing together again, but because it was a beautiful gesture to be invited and to contribute to the spirit of the day. What I wanted, band aside, was to find a way to be in each other’s lives.” (Spoiler alert: sometimes the best way to be in each other’s lives is to accidentally reform your beloved indie band.)

Now, Victoria Park is about to host the kind of homecoming that screenwriters dream about. The Maccabees – those chroniclers of London life, those cartographers of growing up – will headline All Points East on 24th August 2025, exactly where they belong. It’s the 10th anniversary of ‘Marks to Prove It’, their love letter to Elephant and Castle (because if you’re going to make a comeback, you might as well layer your symbolism as thickly as one of their signature guitar lines).

Their story began in 2004, reading like an indie-rock bildungsroman – from the wide-eyed enthusiasm of ‘Colour It In’ (remember ‘Latchmere’? Of course you do – it had a wave machine!) through to 2009’s ‘Wall of Arms’, where tracks like ‘Love You Better’ and ‘Seventeen Hands’ proved growing up in public could sound this good. By 2012’s ‘Given to the Wild’, they’d somehow managed to make existential crisis sound like the most beautiful thing in the world, weaving cinematic soundscapes through tracks like ‘Ayla’ and ‘Forever I’ve Known’ while ‘Pelican’ emerged as the kind of anthem that could close the final show of your career (which, as it happens, it did).

Just ask SOFY, who explained in Dork’s recent cover feature with the White brothers’ post-Maccabees outfit 86TVs that they were “a truly wicked live band who remain timeless storytellers” – high praise that had her diving headfirst into the scene herself. Or take IDLES’ Joe Talbot, who got properly deep about it: “They were the first band that I followed, loved, and believed in as more than music. They moved people forwards creatively.” (No pressure for the comeback, lads.)

‘Marks to Prove It’ arrived in 2015 like a love letter to their adopted corner of London, with ‘Spit It Out’ and ‘Kamakura’ capturing urban life with the kind of precision that only comes from really knowing your postcode. It shot straight to Number 1, which should have been cause for celebration – but behind the scenes, things weren’t quite so rosy. In an interview with the Independent back in 2020, Orlando laid it bare, explaining that he felt they’d “not moved on as far again” as they had with ‘Given To The Wild’, and they’d been doing it for “a very, very, very long time.”

The end, when it came, was almost annoyingly mature – no dramatic bust-ups, no creative differences, just the quiet recognition that sometimes the best stories know when to end their chapter. “It was everyone knowing that that was what was going to happen. We’d had a difficult time making that final record, and we’d reached the end of the line,” Orlando explained in that same Independent interview. “It just ran out of steam a bit” – making one of the most significant splits in British indie sound like a slightly deflated balloon.

In the years that followed, they scattered like seeds on fertile ground. Orlando went solo, crafting the kind of introspective gems that make rainy days feel intentional. Felix founded Yala! Records (“The idea for Yala! was to be in service of good music,” as he told us earlier this year. “Being involved in helping music reach people was really special.”) and somehow became cricket’s most unlikely podcast star via Tailenders. Hugo produced for some big names (Jamie T, Jessie Ware – the usual suspects) before forming 86TVs with his brothers Felix and Will. “It took a long time to figure out who we were outside of The Maccabees,” Felix admitted to Dork, “but 86TVs has been a revelation – a way to keep the passion alive without trying to recreate the past.”

Now they’re back – not with a bang, but with the kind of quiet confidence that comes from knowing exactly who you are. All Points East is a homecoming, after all. “In the intervening years, we’ve been to All Points East a lot, separately,” admits Felix, who’s spent years watching other headliners with what he calls “a pinch of regret… I thought that moment had passed, and it was something I was prepared to come to terms with that I was always going to miss. I think we’re all kind of shocked and excited that we get to do it together again.”

For Hugo, watching The Strokes at the festival was like looking into a mirror that reflected back possibility. “I could see that they were enjoying it,” he explains, “realising how great what they had created together was. Being a band, you are usually in a mindset of, ‘We can do better’, and you’re always chasing something else. This is an opportunity to realise that whatever we had in that moment was pretty special and get to enjoy it again. It’s a chance to appreciate everything, and especially how it impacts other people and created a community.”

There’s no promise of new music (yet), no grand plans beyond this one perfect moment (supposedly) – though the announcement does state they’re “happy to keep their minds open and see where these shows take them next” (which in band-speak is about as subtle as a brick through your favourite record shop window). For now, they’ll curate their own lineup at Victoria Park, a perfect blend of old friends and new faces, because The Maccabees were always about putting the music first.

Sometimes, it turns out, the best endings aren’t endings at all – they’re just really long interludes. And sometimes, if you’re very lucky, those interludes lead you right back home.

The Maccabees will headline All Points East on 24th August 2025.

[infohstyles]

Harry Styles foi convidado para ser o headliner do Glastonbury 2025 após ficar de fora do circuito de festivais de 2024.

Dizem que Harry Styles foi convidado para se apresentar no Festival de Glastonbury em 2025, e espera-se que ele tenha um novo álbum lançado até lá. O astro de 30 anos, que estourou nas paradas de sucesso, encontrou a fama em 2010, quando sua boyband globalmente famosa, One Direction, foi formada no programa de talentos da ITV, The X Factor. Desde então, Harry seguiu carreira solo e lançou três álbuns: seu álbum homônimo de estreia em 2017, Fine Line em 2019 e Harry's House em 2022.

Ele também teve um sucesso fenomenal em turnê. Sua primeira turnê solo, Live on Tour, o levou a se apresentar ao redor do mundo de 2017 até 2018, enquanto sua segunda turnê, Love On Tour, com 173 datas, o viu lotar arenas de 2021 até 2023. Relatórios sugerem que o cantor de Music for a Sushi Restaurant deve lançar um quarto álbum no próximo ano e subir ao palco do Glastonbury como parte de sua estratégia de promoção.

Havia especulações de que Harry faria uma pequena aparição no festival de 2024, com rumores de que ele se juntaria à artista da sessão Legends, Shania Twain, para um dueto, mas isso nunca se concretizou. No entanto, uma fonte afirmou sobre o festival do próximo ano: “Harry seria o headliner perfeito para o Glastonbury, e a (organizadora) Emily (Eavis) há muito tempo quer ele no palco de Worthy Farm, mas as datas nunca se alinharam perfeitamente.”

Eles acrescentaram ao The Sun: “Harry seria um show incrível para assistir no Pyramid Stage. O Glastonbury terá um ano de descanso em 2026, então agendar Harry para o próximo ano seria perfeito. É algo que a equipe do Glastonbury está tentando fazer acontecer. Se esse sonho se tornará realidade, no entanto, ainda depende da equipe de Harry."

Como membro do One Direction, Harry desfrutou de grande sucesso nas paradas e em turnês mundiais ao lado dos companheiros de banda Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson, Liam Payne e Zayn Malik — que deixou o grupo dramaticamente em 2015. O restante da banda está tecnicamente em hiato, e alguns fãs ainda têm esperança de que eles se reúnam em breve para criar novas músicas e fazer turnês juntos novamente.

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 31/08/2024 (Fontaines D.C.'s Romance, Sabrina Carpenter, Coldplay)

Well, Sabrina Carpenter has done what Taylor couldn’t do: fill out the top three with her hits, though only the #1 debut - her third song to top the chart - is new, that being “Taste”, with her #1 album, which sold over 89k here, launching other Short n’ Sweet hits “Please Please Please” and “Espresso” to #2 and #3 respectively. Hell, while we’re here, let’s just chalk out Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!” at #4 and Chase & Status’ “BACKBONE” with Stormzy at #5. It’s… one of those weeks. Welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS!

content warning: sexual and mental health references

Rundown: Oasis Special

This week has a lot to discuss, a decent amount happening, but it’s all scattered throughout the entire chart and, really, not much of it is all that interesting, though that may just be a me problem in this case. There’s plenty of interest to many fanbases, including one of the biggest in the country but I personally can’t call myself a fan of Fontaines D.C., Sabrina Carpenter - the album was good, though - or even Oasis, the divisive but still massively successful Britpop band who have “reunited” (let’s be tentative about this) for a tour after over a decade of inactivity, though many people don’t recall or respect the years of shovelling out garbage that occurred long after their heyday, so it may seem like even longer. They do have three of their biggest, most respected hits on the chart this week, though only one of their eight #1s - more a demonstration of their quantity of hits than any comment on their lasting legacy.

Firstly, the song used in headlines about the reunion as if this really isn’t the most unstable tempering of relations since North and South Korea: “Live Forever” is back at #19. It debuted and peaked at #10 for two weeks in 1994, whilst Wet Wet Wet’s “Love is All Around” was #1, and made appearances lower down the chart for pretty much all of the 90s… and then 2017. It’s Liam Gallagher’s personal favourite Oasis song, and has since become a bit of a tribute ballad due to its sentiment.

At #17 is “Wonderwall”, which is possibly their most iconic tune and has spent a whopping total of 90 weeks on the chart, yet never matching its first-week peak of #2 in 1995, being blocked by a double-A-side release by Robson & Jerome that nobody remembers. It spent a couple weeks meandering throughout the 90s but resurged on digital sales platforms since 2008 and occasionally makes appearances lower down on the chart since, most recently in November of last year. Though the track may go down as one of the most-covered songs of all time, only a few non-Oasis renditions have appeared on the UK Singles Chart. The Mike Flowers Pops Orchestra actually took it to an identical peak of #2 that Christmas, being blocked my Michael Jackson’s “Earth Song”. 1996 would see dance versions by Bombayblue and De-Code reach #82 and #69 respectively, and American singer-songwriter Ryan Adams charted in 2004 with his rendition at #27. For my money, the best version of “Wonderwall” is when JAY-Z pettily butchering the song at Glastonbury in response to Noel Gallagher indicating his genre wasn’t welcome at the festival. Other than straight-up covers, you can hear elements of the track in Simple Plan’s 2008 hit “Your Love is a Lie” (#63) and Bugzy Malone’s 2017 hit with Tom Grennan, “Memory Lane” (#65). They are, like the original song, not worth listening to.

Finishing the Gallaghers’ trio of songs is my personal favourite of the three, “Don’t Look Back in Anger” which has actually spent barely over half of the weeks “Wonderwall” has on the charts. It debuted at #1, peaking there for one week in 1996, beating out spacemen, hippies and children. It dwoddled around for the next year, returned in 2017 and returned even higher today. The Wurzels reached #59 with their version in 2002.

As for the rest of what’s going on, well, don’t we usually start with the notable dropouts? Songs exiting the UK Top 75, which is what I cover, after five weeks in the region or a peak in the top 40? Yes, you’d be correct, I guess I just decided some angry middle-aged Mancunians was of more importance. Regardless, this week, we say farewell to: “You’re Gonna Go Far” by Noah Kahan, the “Set My Heart on Fire” mashup of “I’m Alive” and “The Beat Goes On”, overall credited to Majestic, The Jammin’ Kid and Céline Dion, “Not Like Us” by Kendrick Lamar, “MILLION DOLLAR BABY” by Tommy Richman, “Smalltown Boy” by Bronski Beat, “Birds in the Sky” by NewEra and Natasha Bedingfield with both “Unwritten” and the Badger remix of “These Words”.

As for our notable gains and re-entries, we have the return of Fontaines D.C.’s “Starburster” thanks to their album release - we’re actually going to review more songs from them than Sabrina - then solid boosts for a handful of tracks, thoe being “Close to You” by Gracie Abrams at #68, “Bring Me Joy” by Rudimental and Karen Harding at #61 and “Cry Baby” by Clean Bandit, Anne-Marie and David Guetta at #51. Now that’s all out of the way - in a different order this time - let’s crack down on the songs that arrived on the boat this week.

New Entries

#73 - “Diet Pepsi” - Addison Rae

Produced by Luka Kloser and ELVIRA

Sigh… first of all, I’m a Dr. Pepper girl myself. Secondly, Addison Rae is the exact kind of person I would never care about: a TikTok personality largely famous for being a social media “it girl” that makes industry-backed moves into traditional media outlets but never really performs too well, gaining a cultish fanbase in part because of that. You can say that she served only for long enough until people start asking, well, “what did she serve exactly?” I had the same opinion of Ice Spice when she first came out, but Rae is being propped by people I actually care for like Charli xcx and A.G. Cook, so surely there’s something there… no, there is not. Bizarrely, for an Internet personality, this feels dated and out of time with what is actually popular. This is a 2018-era falsetto-driven alternative R&B-esque track, complete with weirdly-mixed trap-adjacent percussion that really loves my left ear and synths straight out of The Weeknd’s Google Drive he shared with, like, Halsey, watt, Post Malone and co. back in the late 2010s. There are vague references to Lana Del Rey who approached this sound better on “Summer Bummer”, but there really just aren’t many lyrics here at all in this murky sex jam to form much of anything. The bridge is a vocaloid drop circa 2017 EDM but without any of the build-up, impact or even bothering to properly resolve that aborted bridge. It all just reeks of wanting to be interesting and not actually going for it.

#69 - “Favourite” - Fontaines D.C.

Produced by James Ford

I have yet to listen to Irish indie outfit Fontaines D.C.’s most recent record, Romance. I said when reviewing “Starburster” a few weeks ago that I was not familiar and the single had convinced me on them, but I guess I have my priorities, like relistening to middling James Blake albums from 2019 and contemplating the marketing tactis of the Grimace Shake. At the same time, of course. They would have topped the albums chart on any non-Sabrina week and are at #2 today, but we have more debuts from them to discuss, and I may be missing out on some greater album context, so bear with me on that regard. This was another pre-release just charting in the top 75 for the first time, and starts with a cascading guitar riff not dissimilar to 80s post-punk with a reverb-affected mix that cleans up quite nicely overall but does give vocalist Grian Chatten an interesting dynamic where despite a technically good and clear recording, he appears to purposefully restrain himself from hitting the notes exactly or enunciating all that well, meshing in with the thematically dazed content. He reminisces on simpler times, but ensures to place those times in context and understand that a lot of that nostalgia comes from an ignorance that he no longer has, or has to be strewn out on numbness to experience it, not that it helps since now, all that numbness does is prevent him from feeling anything at all. I will say that amidst the driving jangle of the track, there isn’t a solid hook, which again makes perfect thematic sense for the disoriented dream he’s having here but doesn’t string me back to this song in particular. That main riff is incessantly catchy but it feels a bit wasted on a more hypnotic structure that thrives more on that droning tedium emphasising how distant they are from youth and how paranoid that’s made him in his relationships. This is still very good, but outside of knowing how it fits into the album’s themes, I’m not sure why I’d choose this song in particular.

#53 - “Wait for You” - Myles Smith

Produced by Peter Fenn

Oh, the world’s just been waiting for the “Stargazing” follow-up. This is similarly plucked straight out of 2014, with the folk pick-up and over-processed vocals that really reach a territory difficult to listen to in that pre-chorus, and become a full-on wall of vocal on the chorus about waiting for this other person to be… happy. Okay, so lyrically, there is an interest to this that there isn’t really to its instrumental - I like the perky drums that pick up the pace in the second verse, though - as whilst it’s not too specific, it appears to be about an undying loyalty to a friend struggling with mental health, always being by their side, but also, it hits a weird note on the idea of waiting, not actually acting upon the compassion he has for this person, and because of the focus on Myles himself and just how he wants to wait for this person to be okay, it fails to be inspirational or a generic empowerment anthem, yet it cannot function as a love song either because of how dedicated he is to the mental health angle. Some of the lyrics downplay the issue, though, deriding it as “words in [their] head”, and that trust me, he knows what it’s like, but it’s still their problem to deal with it. It appears well-meaning until that one line in the chorus: “you can’t push me away”. It almost seems obsessive and hopeless, that Smith is clinging onto someone who he’s already tried helping with the meaningless platitudes he fills this song with. I may just be reading too much into a badly-written folk-pop motivational song, but there’s a hint of weirdness to the emotional balance here that is very distracting and self-focused, that I can’t help but think this won’t connect on the same level as “Stargazing”, even if it’s a bit more tolerable on a sonic level to me.

#52 - “In the Modern World” - Fontaines D.C.

Produced by James Ford

Our second of the pair of Fontaines songs is much newer, with the album pumping it up to their highest peak so far, and I’m starting to find it really interesting just how numb these tracks from an album titled Romance are. I also start to understand why this one in particular was what got so high, given the on-the-nose lyrics about just feeling nothing in particular in the 21st century - not feeling anything, but at least not feeling bad - and the clearly post-Britpop strings that bring this into 2000s UK radio rock territory. This really isn’t that far from mid-era Feeder’s wheelhouse, which is not a comparison I think I’d have made for a charting song in 2024, but hey, if I get Feeder propaganda out there, I will. Some empty promises are made to a lover that they complete Chatten, help him belong and hence he’ll make sure that when he does feel some life, she’ll be included, and it’s largely thanks to her… but he doesn’t want to dwell on that too much, he wants to remain some sense of authority in that softly-spoken bridge. The back-and-forth between Chatten and the even wispier Conor Deegan on the chorus is a really unique take that feeds into these lyrics but, wow, the song just goes nowhere. It ends about as empty and airy as it started which actually does not fit as well to me as the less solid structure of “Favourite”. This could be taken to much grander spaces and feel arbitrarily shortened, or at least having cut some paths in the songwriting process that might have actually been worth exploring. This is far from bad, but it’s somewhat disappointing that the song feels like this much of a draft, though it iis pleasant enough to listen to, and I do think that given its middle placement on the album, this could be a case of needing to understand how it plays into other tracks. As far as I can tell, though, this is far from what it could be.

#44 - “WE PRAY” - Coldplay featuring Little Simz, Burna Boy, Elyanna and TINI

Produced by Max Martin, ILYA, Bill Rahko, Daniel Green and Michael Ilbert

I saw the album’s tracklist. I knew this was happening. Yet it still doesn’t make sense when it’s being written out like that. This is a Max Martin-produced Coldplay track with conscious rapper Little Simz, Nigerian Afrobeats crooner Burna Boy and barely substantial vocal contributions from Palestinian singer Elyanna and Argentine TINI… in less than four minutes. Now, as of recent, Coldplay have done similarly off-the-beaten-path, artsy stringing together of disparate collaborators and ideas for vague conscious platitudes, Everyday Life is probably the most obvious example, but this really does not function properly as a song, over anything. As a reflection of multicultural understanding and collaboration, it’s something, but it also sounds like Imagine Dragons. That weak hip hop beat is placed under some grandiose strings that are at least clearly orchestrated and expensive, but Chris Martin’s vocal delivery is not very inspired, and his lyrical framing of being on the outside looking into struggles experienced not just by unnamed brothers and friends, but specific indigenous political activists in Guatemala, but still claiming to be “in the valley of the shadow of the death”, is either a misunderstanding of the phrase or giving himself some detached self-importance that does not help the populist tinge of what is supposed to be a relatively inspirational track, praying for better times to take us out of the difficulties of now. Burna Boy sounds great and I actually appreciate that he and Simz get to play off each other in backing vocals but by that point, the song’s nearly finished and both Elyanna and TINI are rendered part of the choir singing a wordless refrain, turning what I’d call meaningless platitudes about a better world into, well, literally and objectively meaningles lyrics. I don’t think Virgilio Aguilar Mendez can “la-la-la” their way out of false arrest and systemic oppression. I’m also just ashamed that the one time I talk about Little Simz on this series, she delivers her most generic and phoned-in verse that, for what it’s worth, spreads the love more evenly than Martin’s. I really wanted something like this to work, for the sake of the promising ambition and social context it’s supporting, but I really don’t like this at all. It has the grandiosity to pick up the entire world in its mix but does little more than shake it around and make pleas, which… honestly may be a more fitting analogy for modern society than I’d hoped for.

#1 - “Taste” - Sabrina Carpenter

Produced by John Ryan, Ian Kirkpatrick and Julian Bunetta

This was far from my favourite on Short n’ Sweet - in fact, I think it’s relatively unremarkable, even if still good - but its narrative about a breakup between Sabrina and her partner, who’s gone back to his ex-girlfriend but now has the lingering influence of his relationship with Ms. Carpenter when he’s back together with her, or at least that’s what Sabrina wants to believe, makes for a good, sapphic music video where actress Jenna Ortega murders her boyfriend because she hallucinated that she was kissing Sabrina instead. Carpenter - in seemingly both the video and the song - plays a nonchalant but quietly obsessed figure who drives the two to paranoia through very specific and often sexual remarks that are cute, pointed references to her own public image and potential celebrity feuds. It’s definitely the ultimate pop star move for the social media age, but the song’s just fine: the slick guitars are cute and I like the subtle distortion in some of the vocal takes and drum patterns, particularly that moment before the chorus, that adds an edge to what is otherwise a very shiny little song, made to be an earworm but also a flickering reminder of her existence to this new girlfriend that doesn’t really connect with me because… well, who cares? Relationship drama on this level without higher stakes doesn’t really grab me as anything worth caring about, especially without a whammy of a bridge to really hold it together. I prefer it to “Please Please Please” but the album overall, a very nice collection of pop songs that’s lackadaisical and surprisingly organic, has a better selection of songs to choose from. “Good Graces”, “Sharpest Tool”, “Juno”, “Dumb & Poetic”, to name a few. I’m definitely not complaining about this new #1 though, it probably has a lot of legs, I can see this one sticking to people real fast.

Conclusion

Well, that was… something, wasn’t it? I feel like there are genuinely just a ton of mixed bags here, not just between songs but within them: a lot to love, a lot to dismiss and a fair bit to just be unsatisfied with. Best of the Week goes to Fontaines D.C. for “Favourite”, but it’s not that impressive and Sabrina Carpenter’s “Taste” gets a very faint Honourable Mention. It’s the same case for Worst of the Week, though, as nothing in here is offensively bad, just sighworthy. Honestly, Coldplay might get Worst of the Week for having the gravitas for a mostly empty statement in “WE PRAY”, whilst Addison Rae is close behind with the very ignorable “Diet Pepsi” as the Honourable Mention. As for what’s on the horizon, Rizzle Kicks will swoop in at #1, mark my words. Welcome back, lads. Thank you for reading, long live Cola Boyy, and I’ll see you next week!