Emma's Imagination - 'Focus'
OK, here's the deal. For every TV-related chart entry that gets into the Top 10, I'm gonna throw a review their way* - they're clearly doing SOMETHING right after all - and then crowbar in a few words for some other songs that don't quite have the same level of promotional oomph. That way we're neither snarking unduly at these performers who are new to the public eye, or leaving out other acts who deserve a bit of coverage.
This then, is this week's Pepper and Piano: a song which is being bought in some quantity after an appearance on This Must Be The Music. It's probably important to say that this isn't the only song to appear on the show in the last seven days, so even though there's an element of well-of-course-it's-going-to-chart to proceedings, Emma Gillespie has done better than her fellow contestants (and a LOT of seasoned pop stars) because she has a beautiful voice and a very nice song.
It doesn't START like a very nice song, mind. There are a lot of guitar minstrels out there who know how to throw a couple of plangent chords together and moan like Stevie Nicks. What they don't always have is the ability to freeze time around a massively distracting pop hook - in this case it's the "bay-bay-bay-bay-bay-bay-bay-bay-bay-bay-BAY-beh" bit. It's not an easy trick to pull off, cos you need the right idea, the right setting for it, and the right voice to deliver it.
But if you get it right, you don't need to have Dizzee Rascal nodding at you to get through to people. Although clearly it helps.
Now, let's leave the world of magical showbiz for a second and have a listen to You Me At Six singing 'Stay With Me'.
(. Important Note For Younger Readers: This is NOT how people are made.)
Now, the YouMe's don't have that stopped-time moment that Emma does, but they do have a heroic enormity, which could prove to be equally distracting. Everything feels like a titanic struggle between good and evil, where the possibility that someone might not stay with you is of equal scale and importance with a colossal asteroid falling out of space and destroying your home town.
Of course, if you're desperately trying to prevent someone from leaving, that's pretty much what it feels like, so they've definitely caught something there, and not just their privates in a mangle. And really, when your job is to throw around huge blocks of noise, you're going to need to match that with something of equal emotional weight, or your singer is going to come across like Tinkerbell cadging a lift off King Kong.
Interestingly, for all that the choruses of these songs do very different things, if you stripped the verses of this one back to just one guitar, and got a girl with a dark voice to sing it, it'd sound like Stevie Nicks.
Music: it's a smaller world than it seems.
Download: Out now
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(Fraser McAlpine)
*I may change my mind if there's an onslaught. Or they are rubbish. Or I get bored.
"The melodramatic ballads also seem to have taken over this album."
"The problem with You Me At Six is that you could close your eyes and be at any pop punk show and not tell the difference."
"'Stay With Me' highlights the band's increasingly sophisticated ability to blend devastating dynamics with immediate pop-fuelled hooks and intense lyrical themes."
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