Tag Archives: pop

Marina and the Diamonds: “Oh No!”

22 Jul

This is the perfect pop song. It is not the first perfect pop song that I have come across, it won’t be the perfect pop song in about a week from now, but for now it is and you must know about it.

Start at the beginning and watch the video. Firstly, it is a great music video and secondly it lets us discuss the surface of the song. This is unapologetic pop. The singer is a very pretty girl in her young twenties, which is a good thing, in case you suspect me of more hipster-ness than good sense. You can hear the Lady Gaga and Gwen Stefani influences and there is more upbeat energy in three seconds of this song than I have managed in my entire life. Good, solid, unapologetic pop all the way though.

Now though, go a level deeper and listen to the lyrics. You don’t have to. This is a pretty good pop song even without them and you are free to enjoy the song however you like. However, take a moment and hear what she is actually saying. There are plenty of rip currents of depression running through this pink sea of happy pop. She may be singing that she’s going to fail and she’s going to die with the same smile that she has when singing she’s going to live and she’s going to fly, but you know that she is as earnest about the one as the other.

This is also a pretty intelligent record. The chorus of “I know exactly what I want and who I want to be” speaks layers about who she is and “The nod and a wink of TV told me how to feel, now real life has no appeal” followed by the repeated “No appeal” is easy to empathize with. More than that though, every time you watch the video (and I have watched the video many times indeed, did I mention how pretty she is?) you can validate a completely new interpretation of the song when you pair it with who the singer is. That for me is the borderline that separates intelligent art from the rest, when you can argue the nuances of its meaning.

 

Verdict: This is the perfect pop song. For now, everything should be this song. One week from now, I may be listening to something else, but as of now, this is what all pop should be.

– Nikhil

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Spud in the Box: “54”

27 Jun

“54”, a song from fresh new Bombay band Spud in the Box, is the musical version of a double-take. The song starts off ridiculously upbeat: a sparkly, summery ditty of a man with a fondness for pretty legs and juicy kiwi (albeit mysteriously with a shrink in the picture). By the time the chorus kicks in, still California-sunny, the lyrics veer into hypothetical stalking, seemingly in an obsessive, puppy-love vein of things. Alright. Quirky, but not abnormal.
But pretty soon after that, things veer sharply left of centre. Hypothetical stalking turns into imagined, deranged conversations with Dr. Phil. Then the story pans out to include a mental asylum, a car trunk stuffed with his crush’s boyfriend and – you guessed it – a serial killer’s knife in hand. You have to listen to the final lines of the song to understand what the ’54’ here signifies, although you might guess it. Either way, the contrast of the overt morbidity in the song and the outrageously sunny music (How sunny? It could work as the background for a Go Goa TV ad. Seriously.) is really something to look out for.
Mind you, this entire panorama of morbidity happens as a mere backdrop to the caefree, sunshine music. Imagine Cake singing about serial killers. Or Jason Mraz providing the soundtrack to Silence of the Lambs.
Spud in the Box recently signed on to The Random Dream Project, a brand-new record label (launched May 31st, 2012) that hopes to be a one-stop shop for India’s best indie talent. If all artists are as good as Spud in the Box prove to be on this track, we’re very excited indeed to see that this label puts out.
Verdict: As you can see, we’ve got nothing but good things to say about this track. Listen, listen, listen! We love this folk-rock band.

– Neeharika

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