Weekly Fiver #14

Welcome to the Weekly Fiver, where I’ll pick five recently released songs of varying degrees of quality and thoroughly break them down for you. No two songs will be on the same tier, and they’ll be listed from best to worst. The top song will be an excellent must-hear tune, while the bottom song will be one you ought to stay away from or else you will make your ears sad. It’s all very scientific.

Excellent Song of the Week

Everything Now- Arcade Fire

Everyone’s first thought upon the opening piano riff: why is there an ABBA song in my Spotify playlist? Second thought: Oh wait this is Arcade Fire…cool.

Win Butler‘s ruminations on the surfeit of content in today’s digital world are set to an instrumental so unique that even if they’re not your style, you need to admit that there’s really nobody else that could pull them off like this. There isn’t any other modern mainstream act that this could be. Regardless of what genre they dabble in, Arcade Fire have perfected their melodic fingerprint so that their tunes are instantly recognizable. It’s a straightforward classic from the collective, and despite the 70s pop influence it’ll sound right at home sandwiched between their other work.

 

Pretty Decent Song of the Week

 

Sleeping Around the Corner- Lindsey Buckingham & Christine McVie

Speaking of 70s pop, here’s another surprise: the two Fleetwood Mackers have some sort of duet album out now and the first single is pretty great. The chorus is a  winding earworm of a hook and the acoustic bounce makes it a perfect addition to any summer playlist. Pick up your copy of their new self-titled album today!

 

Meh Song of the Week

 

The Wake of Your Life- Mew

You know, this was supposed to be one tier higher but listening to it again I just can’t bring myself to calling it “pretty good”. It’s got two great (really great) choruses, and hits all the right spots dynamically. It features Jonas Bjerre‘s soaring vocals. It even makes good use of an overdone rhythm. And then two-thirds into the song the band doesn’t bother to write a concise ending. They just let the keyboard arpeggio run through every possible chord there is until they’ve finished all of them. It’s just a boring instrumental outro that doesn’t even have the decency of building up or having a point. It just continues to fill up runtime. All in all, Visuals was a disappointing album from the Danes and this is the last song I’ll be writing about from it.

 

Below Average Song of the Week

Cut To The Feeling- Carly Rae Jepsen

Based on the rapturous reactions of her fanbase online, you’d think that this was going to be the indisputable song of the summer, some hidden gem from the vault. It’s literally just a B-side from E-MO-TION, and it sounds every bit like that. It’s not unlistenable, as it follows pop conventions pretty well, but it is incredibly generic and it was smart of her team to cut it from the 2015 album. Not sure whose bright idea it was to unearth it.

 

Disappointing Song of the Week

 

Young Thing- Joseph of Mercury

Cool artist name, promising sound, and then…….a double dose of terrible choruses. First it’s a boring, repetitive, monotonous “you’re my favourite you’re my favourite you’re my favourite”, and it’s followed by the guy making a weird noise that sounds like a dog whining when it wants to go outside to pee or poo. It’s pretty cringeworthy and totally wrecks any vibe the song might have had.

Author: D-Man

Hey, I don't know what to say. Ok, bye.

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