Groove Armada ft. Mutya Buena - 'Song 4 Mutya'
The best happy songs are always the ones which come with a great big dollop of sadness at their core. The ones which capture that exact moment of a rotten party - like the one you shouldn't really have gone to cos you've just been dumped, or the one where your crush is copping off with your best friend - where you decide to stop crying in the corner, and dance your pain away.
The most obvious example of this is the old disco warhorse 'I Will Survive', although pop connoisseurs have rightly pointed out that ABBA's 'Dancing Queen' is actually better, because it perfectly captures the feeling of dancing to spite your broken heart.
You know what it's like, you take a shuddering deep breath, let yourself go, then the dance-endorphins kick in, and perspiration starts to loosen the dried mascara on your cheeks. Bizarrely, the line the band are singing at that exact moment is "feel the beat of the tambourine, oh yeah". Which just goes to prove that lyrics, for all their power and weight, account for about 20% of why music affects us as deeply as it does.
Anyway, here's the latest song from Groove Armada, and it features Mutya Buena admonishing herself (easy, pop pervs, it just means she's telling herself off) for caring who her ex-boyfriend is seeing these days, especially as he is clearly only going out with that girl to send some kind of unflattering message Mutya's way.
The chorus is especially interesting, as it seems to be a devastated rant between Mutya and the twin-Mutyas who do her backing vocals. They're kind souls, and they really don't want to see things spiral out of control just because their namesake has had a nasty shock in traffic (as a result, "don't panic panic, Mutya, don't drive erratic" gets my vote for Lyric Of The Year).
Now, lyrical brilliance aside, in other, wetter hands, this kind of musical story would be an excuse for maudlin, introspective, mournful sad-pop - like Natasha Bedingfield's 'Soulmate' only grumpier - which is why working with Groove Armada and crafting a Prince-style '80s party-jam out of all this angst is such a brilliant idea.
All of the anger and frustration in the lyrics comes out in a great big rush of defiant energy, calling anyone in a similar situation to rush the podium and strut their cares away in a great big pile-up of wronged catharsis.
Which makes this song less about forgetting your troubles in a mindless way, and more a kind of instant group therapy in pop song form.
And if that doesn't win you round, just imagine the lyrics are about Amelle joining Mutya's former bezzy-mate Keisha in the Sugababes, and there's a whole other world of fun to be had. Toodle-pip!
Download: Out now
CD Released: July 23rd
(Fraser McAlpine)
Comments
I really like this song, even though its not the kind of music I listen to. I think it's a nice summery track, and its been created in a way that it doesn't seem like a dance track, which I like. The lyrics are really catchy too.
I always imagine this song in context with the whole Suagababes replacement thing xD Makes it hard to take seriously.
This is a great song, really summery and bouncy despite the lyrics. Is that how her name is pronounced - Mut-ia? Because is says that in the chorus. Her hair is really gorgeous.
I love this song, real fell good