SONG OF THE WEEK
The Vamps
I Found A Girl Ft Omi
I read a thinkpiece the other week about how the boyband was dead. How something something masculinity something something post-gender power structure something something Mike Nesmith’s bobble hat. Look it up, it’ll be on the internet. Anyway, 3:12 in the company of the Vamps suggests this theory could yet prove false. I Found A Girl has everything a boyband track should – catchiness, major-key upbeatery, males being respectful to females. But it’s also as 2016 as it comes, being about a boy falling in love with a girl who turns out to be gay, but that’s ok and there’s no reason they can’t be friends. Includes the lyric, “Baby you’re mistaken, I’m not into bacon,” which makes me worry for the singer’s penis.
WSTRN
Come Down
Obvs one of the problems for boybands was that the structure fractured, with boyband pop being accompanied by boyband emo, boyband indie and so on. WSTRN are boyband R&B but seem to imagine themselves as something more adult (adult meaning “it’s ok to sing about a woman as if she’s your possession”). This is badly executed crud, featuring humdrum vocals, predictable flows and, worst of all, a botched appropriation of the melody to Love Come Down by Evelyn “Champagne” King. To top it off, they pretend the video is set in Example’s house.
Biffy Clyro
Wolves Of Winter
Speaking of emo boybands, here comes a song that starts off like Satan demanding his lawnmower back and ends up like a sing-a-long at an international lacrosse fixture. Cool Game Of Thrones cash-in title, though.
Alessia Cara
Wild Things
I read a thinkpiece the other week about how millennials are something or other. But millennials better enjoy their moment because the next generation are coming and they’re even more self-involved. Well, they are if Alessia Cara is anything to go by. She’s 17 and the author of a collection of naive truisms – “The cool kids aren’t cool to me/ They’re not cooler than we are” – that will get you to about 23 then leave you in a fetid pit of despair. And you’ll deserve it.
Shizz McNaughty
Practice Hours
Not strictly “out” this week, but it’s on YouTube. I found it clicking on a link on JME’s Twitter feed and it’s like a little homage to the distant past, ie 10 years ago, when grime was fresh and new and angry and filmed on low-quality cameras. It’s a pastiche but a deeply felt one and it’s rather good for that.
