Popcorn Culture
Ruminations on TV Shows, Comics, And Music
For the last few years, when I've looked at Best Of album lists, or which albums have won grammys, I kept seeing the name Jacob Collier, and thinking, I should probably check him out. And by the time I did, I realized he was someone I was quasi-familiar with for his split screen Youtube covers. They're impressive from an arragement perspective. It clearly takes a lot of talent and time to do what he did, and he has a pleasing croony voice, but split screen covers aren't really a genre I enjoy. At some point, I saw him doing live sing-along covers where he did a different song every night of a tour, and, again, I thought it was an impressive concept, and he clearly has legions of devoted fans, but it's not the type of thing I seek out. So when his fourth consecutive album came out on the fourth consecutive Best Of The Year list, I did more research and kept seeing him listed as a songwriter. Not just an arranger. Ok. I bought each of his albums, and decided to give them all a proper listen to and see if any of it appealed to me. It's not necessarily music I'm going to play frequently. He does have a calming tone and a rich voice. He hovers around several music styles, usually with a jazz/chill bent. You can hear the acapella kid in every track, nor matter how many instruments there are. And while, again, it's not necessarily something I seek out to listen to, it does fill me with nostalgia for my own time in acapella groups and doing musical theater. Even if it's not something I'm currently invested in, there's no denying that Jacob Collier is one of the best at what he does, and that alone means I'm going to keep going back from time to time to see what he's up to. This reimagined album is mostly made up of the Djesse Sequence, which comprise his second, third, and fourth albums. 1. Percussion is almost as important to this album as close harmonies, so we start with a drum beat, some tinkling chimes, and then the scat harmonies. The first lead singer on the album is actually Lianne La Havas who has a bit of an early Alicia Keys vibe as she breathily leads Feel, occasionally blanketed by Collier's multiple harmonies, as well as her own multiplied voice. It is a gorgeous effect. It surrounds such a simplistic, generic, easily rhyming song about first love that has an almost tropically soothing melt.
2. Rising out of the repeated vocals of the previous track is a single flute, eventually joined by multiple woodwinds and then, of course, close harmonies. Calling a song called Sky Above ethereal is kind of a no brainer, but it is. This is a children's lullaby/folk song with additional harmonies from MARO and Becca Stevens. 3. In Too Deep comes in like a soft rain before the main vocals hit, at which point it gets as close to modern R&B as Collier seems likely to get. The instruments are pure soft jazz, as opposed to R&B but Kiana Ledé's vocals have an R&B tonality that plays perfctly against Collier's layered croon. The chorus mantra is hypnotic, especially the way it's buried in the mix. 4. We're back to intense percussion with Dun Dun Ba Ba. Fuck this song is infectious. This song is an example of Collier's genius at arrangement. The lead vocals have him sped up at an unrecognizable but not unbelievable tone. The Cuban drumming is efuckenlectric. 5. There is another rise of layered vocals to bring us into the only cover I included on the album, Moon River is a song I've heard from so many different artists that I don't associate it with anyone. I will now associate it with Jacob Collier. He goes through an entire verse of the song with just harmonized humming. It sounds like a mimd-twentieth century Disney cartoon arrangement. The second verse starts with chiming acapella percussion before the lyrics kick in. The final verse ascends from chromatic mantra to a seemingly infinitely layered choir. Like twenty Pentatonixes performing at once. It's nearly overwhelming. 6. From the absurd crescendo of the previous track, we drop into stringed instruments and a very Beatles with Beach Boy backing vocals vibe. It makes you realize just how much of a Brian Wilson influence is in much of Collier's work. Make Me Cry is a soft rock pop future classic. 7. The title track to this imagined album, and the four album sequence it pulls from, Djesse is a self reflection and a romantic myth wrapped in one musical theater opener. Metropole Orkest is a perfect accompaniment here. 8. With The Love In My Heart is more madness with The Metropole Orkest. It's tough to categorize this. It blends so many genres that it falls into the worrying category of "World" which is one of those genres that eans nothing to me, as it could be anything from anywhere. It's usually the musical equivalent of colonialism and appropriation. But that's not the case here. This is a blending of so many influences that it becomes a new thing. It's almost Beckish in the best possible way. It then deflates into nautical bells and another chant mantra chorus. 9. Ty Dolla $ign and Mala join in the fun in the 1970s groovefest, All I Need. I love this track but don't have a lot to say about it. 10. Daniel Caesar and some cool effects are the highlight of Time Alone With You. We have more sped up vocals slipping around Caesar's chill delivery. It's almost Prince's Camille but with better technology. 11. Do You Feel Love hits Much Heavier than any other track on this album. But it goes from its explosive beginning to a Michael Jacksonesque pop track. You know, heavy guitar riffs by a legend of hard rock (in this case, Steve Vai) over pop music that is somehow not incogruous. It also has lyrics about being dangerous, and, like Jackson, you like the song but think "Aw, honey, nobody is ever going to be afraid of your badassery." There is a nice moment of Freddy Mercuryesque background vocals just before we hit the obligatory chant mantra portion at the end of the song. Unlike previous songs, I think the chant mantra well overstays its welcome on this track, and I thought about cutting it, but I like this song as a loud outlier. 12. Thunder rolls us into a soft woodwind vibe before we pop back into the Jason Mrazy acapella style pop of It Don't Matter, complete with hand claps and snaps. Jojo's presence on this track is delightfully playful, as are the trilling keyboards. 13. Tori Kelly absolutely drives Running Outta Love, a straight up R&B pop song that wouldn't feel out of place in the early 90s or the early 2000s. 14. Lizzy McAlpine takes over the lead vocals for Never Gonna Be Alone, with John Mayer on cosmic, echoey, guitar. This really feels like the end of a trilogy of songs that started with "It Don't Matter". I'm not sure if it's the three female lead vocalists, or if it's that Collier has a limited lyrical style, so it sounds like these songs are calling back to each other, though I'm pretty sure it's unintentional. 15. Closing out the album is the first song I heard when I started this project, He Won't Hold You. It's pure Collier. He comes back to helm the song as lead vocalist until the halfway mark when Rapsody enters to provide the inspirational rap breakdown. The album ends, of course, on a chant mantra with layered harmonies. As it should.
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What was my favorite album from 2022? Unquestionably, Gabriels's Angels And Queens. I had missed their EPs, and was far, far away from watching American Idol by the time lead singer Jacob Lusk was on it. But hearing this album made me find every track I could from this band, and all of them are on this album except one song, which commits the crime of being the only very good track by a band who consistently makes Otherworldly Perfect tracks. I'm not going to say much more about it as an album. You can get how I feel from the description of every track on this album. I can't wait to put together the next reimagined album in their discography. 1. We begin with chimes and a single bass strum before the voice comes in. The voice. Oh, god. Loyalty declares I ain't gonna stop loving you before a woman's voice, beautiful but lacking the lustre of the the main vocals, comes in for alternating verses. This song is so intrumentally spare and vocally lush that it actually earns the term "haunting'. This is a timeless song that could have been released in the 1930s or last week. This is one of those songs that, if you're fresh from a broken relationship absolutely Hurts to listen to, and yet has you reaching for whatever button on your device will let you listen to it just One More Time.
2. Some hand claps and swallowed consonants later, and we're in the Luther Vandross thick Blind. The first time the breakdown happens and reveals we are absolutely in the 21st century, it's a revelation. Lusk's trills are so precise and ... is there a proper antonym for quavering that still allows for vibration? It occured to me as I listened to this, that I had no idea about the quality of the lyrics because the vocals were so powerful that the lyrics almost didn't matter to me. They're really basic love pop but, damn, Lusk can make you feel anything with his voice. 3. On the flip side of this, the lyrics to Angels And Queens are fucken banger, and drenched with the sort of funk that the musicians of Silk Sonic, talented as they are, can only dream of inspiring to. This is the zenith of unrequieted love funk. And there's not a hint of the misogyny that Mars and Paak cant help but squeeze into every one of their songs. 4. I haven't really talked about the orchestration on some of these tracks, other than mentioning its timeless. Simultaneously super retro and futuristic. Blame is a perfect example of this, as Lusk's vocals sounds like a high pitched 1930s animated cartoon devil. As he sings a love song that coud double as a crushing civil rights anthem, a self-help track, or a gospel lamentation. ¿Por qué no todos? 5. There is a Nina Simone inspired lead in to Stranger with an absolute crushing harmony set against a shimmering guitar. It brings to mind the musical dexterity of Nick Cave and Tom Waits but with soulful vocals that's just beyond almost any other modern pop/rock/soul vocalist. The bridge soars. Reviewers and critics use that phrase pretty frequently, but I feel like, after you listen to this song, every other song's bridge merely floats. When the bass goes stacatto against the falsetto, it's actually transcendent. I had to blink, look around, and make sure I was actually still in my living room, awake, and merely listening to music. 6. I have easily heard dozens of covers of Screamin' Jay Hawkins's I Put A Spell On You. I don't need to hear any more. I wouldn't say this version invalidates the power of the original. No, Hawkins's original is an untouchable classic. But this violin-centric cover is what every slowed down, retro, Postmodern Jukebox style track inspires to be, but isn't quite. Not an homage. Merely, a second perfect version of a classic song. Hmmm, a third. I had almost forgot about the Nina Simone version, which would have been a crime. The skat vocals in the middle of this track are so tight that is he had trilled another millisecond, he would have split his DNA. 7. My partner loves flamingos. I don't know his stance on The Flamingos, but I think, with the possible exception of Lauryn Hill, they ourtight own doo-wop doo-wop. I would caution any other artist from trying to borrow or sample that seminal piece of music history. But The Gabriels, with just piano, bass, harmony, and finger snaps have stolen doo-wop doo-wop and tossed it into the heavens. In Loving Memory is a haunting, eternal, love song. 8. There are very few upbeat tracks on this album. But there is a 1970s soul groove to Remember Me that makes you want to toss on roller skates and just chill your way around a track for a few minutes. It's a Teddy Pendergrass track with ... I don't want to say Luther Vandross vocals because it's more than that but also reminiscent of that. It's almost like if Luther Vandross had squeezed the fuckboi out of CeeLo Green's range. 9. Innocence booms into the room. Is there a lyric in this song that isn't belted? Not so much. Is there a lyric in this song that needed more restraint? No. The quivering strings under the thunderous vocals and the occasional paino smash are pure musical theater carnage. Ain't love a hypocrite leaves the listener absolutely slain as the strings come back in. When the harmonies come in during the final verse, the audience of ghosts evaporates. 10. Another rare upbeat song, Taboo is very Gnarls Barkley era CeeLo Green. I know I mentioned him somewhat despairingly just a couple of paragraphs ago, but Green was a giant in modern soul and R&B, and if he'd released more songs like this istead of, uhh, being who he is, his name would still be on the tongues of every music fan. Lots of delightfully naughty words in this one. Totally worth every one. 11. Mama sounds more modern than almost any other track on this album. With its pitch-shifted mutterings in the background, and more relaxed vocals, this is one song I can imagine other modern artists covering and not embarrassing themselves. There's a little bit of Sampha's vocal stylings from (No One Knows Me) Like The Piano in this song, and I'm here for it. 12. The 1930's orchestral sound is back as lushly as possible in Bloodline. I can see this as a black and white animation. Again, the devil. But the sweetest devil. The most beguiling lover. The most inspirational crooner. 13. If You Only Knew with its spare piano trilling, and its gospel chorus, would be the highlight of almost anyone else's album. It's gorgeous, and instantly sing-alongable. I mean, you're not going to do the vocals any justice, but you're going to try. And you're going to geel good about singing. And yet, this isn't even close to the best song on this album. That's how aspirationally great this album is that this could be just an average track. Ooof. 14. Back to the mid-20th century cinema we go for To The Moon And Back. That touch of Nina in the delivery. Those muted, echoey background vocals. The song drenches you in music. Most songs, when I'm into them, I feel like I'm in the room listening to the artist perform them. Here, I fell like I'm sitting in the center of a room with the music surrounding me. The vocals are from everywhere. Every instrument in the orchestra is directed at a different bone, organ, or muscle in my body. It is radiating every pore. 15. We break out of that song with an upbeat piano riff, and some classic 70s soul vocals. One And Only is a Stand Up And Dance anthem. It brings a kind of musical joy I haven't felt since Lizzo dropped Good As Hell. It's a song that makes you want to strut, even if you would look absolutely ridiculous doing it. 16. Gabriels recorded a short film version of "Love And Hate In A Different Tme" which ends with Lusk's performance of Strange Fruit through a megaphone at a Black Lives Matter protest. I prefer flipping the order of these two songs but, ooof do they play beautifully off each other. 17. So we close out with the aforementioned Love And Hate In A Different Time. It's not the best banger from this album. Not the smoothest ballad. But it's the kind of song where I can see credits rolling over it. It has a much different style of background vocals than anything else on this album. Alvvays Reimagined Discography For Nostalgic 90s Kids Seeking New Music In Their Middle Age12/28/2022 For 2023, I'm trying to listen to recent bands who either flew under my radar, or whose work I didn't give enough attention to because I'm older, and radio is pretty much dead, and I prefer listening to the music I've purchased from the unscrupulous 20th and 21st century record companies than Spotify, which still gives money to the unscrupulous record companies but adds another layer of scum on top of it. I'm perusing people's Best Of 201x or 202x lists, buying what sounds good to me, and then doing what I usually do with music I like, paring it down to the songs I love. Alvvays most recent album showed up on several Best Of 2022 lists, and I remembered hearing one of their songs enough times that the name Alvvays registered but I didn't have a feel for the band. Having listened to their first two albums a few times each now, I feel comfortable recommending it to people who really loved 90s music indie soundtracks. Not necessarily Super Underground Films, but things more along the lines of Pump Up The Volume, Run Lola Run, and Clerks which had soundtracks that looked forward rather than the nostalgia fueled Quentin Tarantino flicks or the Seattle focused Singles Soundtrack. This is a melodically and tempo-diverse set of songs that have one thing in common: sludgy female vocals buried too deep in the mix. It's a style that seemed super big in the early to mid-nineties. I don't hate it, or I wouldn't have bothered making this album, but I generally prefer the vocals to be a bit clearer than they're going to be on any of these tracks. 1. Lottery Noises is the perfect opening track for this album, as it has an ambient start with clear lyrics and then the wall of guitars come in to bury Molly Rankin's vocals. It's an uplifting montage song shot with a shaky black and white handheld camera. There's lots of running, and it's unclear whether it's playfully or purposefully away from whoever is holding the camera.
2. The 80s drumbeat and new wavey effects may give you the hint that Very Online Guy is going to be an 80s throwback, but then there's the vocals, and it's no mistake that the crew in the studio was wearing flannel. The video is very borderline 80s/90s. More dial-up than DSL, certainly. Like many of the tracks, I don't really get a sense of the lyrics because they're so deep in the mix. But, as you might guess, they're about a troll. 3. On the flipside, the lyrics on Your Type are easy to discern, though they're no more clearer here than on any other track. But it's a Very 90s unrequited love track with a bouncy beat and an almost 80s/early 90s REM delivery. 4. Velveteen is the most most 90s soundtrack closing song on the album. Any video would just be credits rolling. Winona Rider, Clare Danes, or Christian Slater is the lead. There's a climbing synthesizer in the background that contrasts very nicely with the muddy lyrics. The vocals skyrocket nearly into head voice at the end, and it's beautiful. 5. The early lyrics in Forget About Life grab me more than any other lyrics on the album so far. I adore the spare arrangement, and the way the synth gets called out in the lyrics just after it starts to buzz a riff that most groups would have put on guitar. Then we get the piano sound building into the background before the song crashes into instrumental break. It's probably my favorite song on the album, and it's definitely the make out scene in the film that the audience has been waiting for. I especially love the wavy outro. 6. The blooby intro to Hey weaves wonderfully with "Forget About Life"'s outro, and then introduces a very 80s U2 guitar effect over the usual grungesurftar melody. It's definitely a head bopper as it bounces between Garbage and The Cardigans. If "Forget About Life" is the single from this album, this should be the B-Side. 7. I've said a couple of times that the lyrics aren't usually the main draw for me on this album but College education is a dull knife cut right through me. Yeup. You can perfectly hear the despair of going to college because it's what's expected of you in Easy On Your Own. I didn't quite feel like I was in my early 20s again but I definitely felt like those nights where I waks up in a panic because I dreamed I had to go back to school. 8. Belinda Says is a perfect follow up, as it talks about moving back to the country and just seeing how life goes if you surrender to it. The driving guitars near the end are gorgeous. 9. I'm not sure which track from Empire Records, After The Earthquake sounds like but it absolutely jangles like it belongs there. There's even a Gin Blossomy guitar riff. But then there's a beautiful extended breakdown before we get back to the sort of rock-y climax. 10. Not My Baby is another montage song. The instrumental intro is catchy as hell, and then the whole Now that I'm not your baby / I can do whatever I want makes for a delicious chew of gum. It's perfectly paced, and its echoey background vocals are used with just the right level of restraint. 11. Closing out the album proper (you'll see what I mean by that soon), is Dreams Tonite is the most Cardigans song on the album. It's so chill and inviting. The lyrics are so basic, you feel like you have the song memorized as soon as it starts. But that's not a complaint. It's nice to end on something familiar, and the way it echoes out at the end? *Chef's kiss* Here's my confession. I thought Alvvays had only put out two albums. I'd simply never come across their first album. But while I was putting this together, I did some research and, oops. But I gave the album a listen. It's definitely my least favorite of the three, but there are a few tracks I'd be remiss to not include, so I'm including them as a Bonus Disc. BD1. Adult Diversion is the lo-fi intro that really hinted at the band's trajectory. It buries the echoey vocals under the wall of guitar. It's a song about unrequieted love that breaks no ground and has a very flat melody. But it's still catchy. BD2. Archie, Marry Me is more Cranberries than any other tracks on the album. It's better written, lyrically, but Rankin's vocals have that sharp O'Riordan quality that I miss in modern pop. and BD3. Actually closing the album out is Red Planet, which sounds like if early Phil Collins wrote video game music. Spare drums. 8-Bit Synth. It ends with effects rather than a fade out. Everyone has a band or two that seems like it should fit comfortably on their emotional/mental playlist but that they just can't get into. I have a few: The Who, Elvis Costello, and ABBA being the ones that spring immediately to mind. I don't dislike any of them enough that I'm likely to skip their track if it shows up on a random playlist, but I never feel like I'm looking forward to their music. I thought, of the three, ABBA was the one I could most likely sift through their discography for an album of music I liked. I was not mistaken. This is nowhere near a Greatest Hits album. I don't like a lot of their hits. They released twenty-three singles in the 70s and 80s. Six of them appear here, and two of them are heavily edited. I didn't really reach into their B-Side catalogue but I listened to each of their albums a few times, and found some gems that didn't sound as bland as their hits but we're definitely recognizable as ABBA. I find that much of their material reeks of the filler music from rock musicals. Either spare ballads choking with loneliness in the lyrics but almost blandly sung or wildly overproduced orchestral pop that buries the vocals in the mix. I tried not to include (m)any of those songs on this album. I wanted to reward them for those times that they took musical risks that paid off. A tropical themed lovesong, a funk song about a creepy old rich guy, a hand clappy punk song. Of course Dancing Queen is on here, and a few other songs that I imagine everyone who's ever heard of ABBA, and a few who haven't, have heard before. But this is mostly ABBA stretching their wings and playing out of their 1970s AM radio comfort zone. I was going to include stuff off their reunion album but then I listened to it. There weren't any risks taken. I'm calling this album The 1980's Theater Tech Kids Backstage Makeout Playlist somewhat ironically. It's what I would call the album filled with all the popular ABBA songs that I didn't include on this reimagined album, and ABBA Spreads Its Wings just sounds like a predictably 1970s ABBA album. 1. Of course, if there's a track that begins with clockwork, or just the ticking of seconds passing, and the song is good, I'm probably going to use it as an opening track. For this album, that track is Like An Angel Passing Through My Room. It's almost a Bonnie Tyler ballad with the edges sanded off of her vocals. It's almost a 20th Century Disney ballad. It's the kind of track that you'd think would just be one verse, but it does go to a second one without overstaying its welcome. It's incredibly well-produced as a music box song. If you'd told me it was off their reunion album from 2021, I'd believe you, as it has a wistful nostalgia to it.
2. As the clock continues to tick down, we move to another really well-produced track. This one is a very 80's tropical cheesy dance number, though it was recorded in 1974. It seems so soaked in a Hawaiian shirt, that I'd have sworn it came out ten years later. Sitting In The Palm Tree is one of the rare tracks that I'm including with Björn on lead vocals. 3. Lay All Your Love On Me is the first track that, to me, sounds Totally ABBA. Unlike the first two tracks, this one pops up on their Greatest Hits collections. It's overly orchestrated with a disco beat and the weirdly uninteresting and uninterested vocals that I associate the band with. But this one is bright and poppy enough and, again, like many ABBA songs, sounds to me like it came off the Hair Soundtrack. It was clearly influential on Ace Of Base and Madonna. It could have easily been an overly produced remix track from Like On A Prayer. 4. The last track ends on applause, which makes it easy for me to do an edit. Look, the rise to the excellent chorus of Fernando is exquisite. And, it's nice that is isn't just a bland love song. But the song is too long for me, so I spliced out the first verse and chorus so that you only get the best parts of the track. I have no regrets about this. 5. Nina Pretty Ballerina begins with a train whistle is early early days ABBA. It's silly pop but there is slightly more emotion in the vocals than in later tracks. And it's just a fun song about an office worker who dances her heart out on weekends. I'd put it on-par with a Beatles B-side. The football style audience chants during the song help propel it into my heart. 6. While on the subject of office workers living out fantasies, Anni-Frid gets the bouncy anti-capitalist ditty, Money, Money, Money. This could have definitely come off an Andrew Lloyd Weber musical from before he started wholesale plagiarizing other artists while calling himself a composer. Allegedly. 7. The Visitors is easily my favorite ABBA album. It's a little darker, it's got tight 80s production, and you can tell the band is going through the kind of turmoil tha turns out albums like Fleetwood Mac's Rumors. This track also has some early Genesis prog rock vibes with a deliberately flat tonality that also has late Beatles vibes but with a hand clappy 80s chorus. 8. Another of ABBA's Greatest Hits wildly edited. I really don't like Mamma Mia. It's breakdown is So Excellent, but everything around it I find forgettable. So you get one verse, one breakdown, one chorus, and a fadeout, which is all you really need from it. 9. On the flipside you get the full version of another Tropical Loveland song. It's definitely more recognizable as an ABBA song but it's also got that soft rock colonialism We Sailed Our Ship To This Island Once So Its Musical Cultural Is Now Ours feel to it. It's a very bouncy ooooooooooooooooh song. 10. The halfway point of the album happens at the crux of tracks 10 and 11, so you're welcome to think of SOS as the end of Side A. Though it would be a better start to Side B. This is one of their hits, and I understand why. This is another case of a song that's a bit over-orchestrated. It's a little too dense to be fun. But it's still catchy. 11. And look, I really don't think you can have an ABBA album without Dancing Queen. This was the first track I heard by them, and realized I'd heard it covered several times before I ever heard the original. It could easily be creepy, being a song about how attractive a teenager is. If one of the men sang this, it could be on Ephebophilia Top Forty (don't look that up). Instead, it's a woman seeing a little bit of herself in the beautiful girl on the dance floor. Much more palatable. This also suffers from overproduction but the piano chops through the noise just enough to be endearing. 12. When All Is Said And Done marches out of the fadeout from the previous track. It's a closing time song with a good hook, and one of those cool 70s songs where the music flashes into a sort of breakdown where there's still a ton of noise around the vocals but it's ... less noise than in the rest of the song. 13. I love funk. At my last retail job, the owner was also really into funk, so our store played funk all the time, and it was glorious. The bass here is completely 100% funk certified. Man In The Middle is another song that drops the age "seventeen" but isn't creepy, as it's about watching a rich guy who loves to be in the spotlight. 14. We leave funkytown for Italy and more orchestral grandeur, this time with 80s country style vocals. This Italy is funkytown adjacent, though, as it also has a shiny 70s bassline. One Of Us isn't a folky song about possibly seeing God on a bus, but a lyrically bland song about how love is sad that rhymes lying with crying. 15. King Kong Song is the crunchiest song on this album. Heavy (for Abba) guitars and the vocals having a punk wall of sound quality in the background while the actual background vocals are pitched into the foreground with a doo-wop style. It's a wild, dumb ride with an almost Queen sort of hand clap percussion. It's got definite Banana Splits vibes. 16. If you've ever been trapped in an elevator on the way to a job interview, you've probably heard something that sounded remarkably like My Mama Said. I know that sounds like a diss, but there's something appealing about this song, whcih also has vocals that are absolutely buried in the mix for no reason. 17. Why Joan Jett hasn't released a cover of Hey Hey Helen, I'll never know. Maybe she thought it would be redundant? There is a funk breakdown near the end of this song that makes virtually no sense, as it's otherwise as new wave punk rock as ABBA ever gets. 18. Returning to the bright and bouncy technopop from earlier on this album, Head Over Heels is another song where I can't tell you why I like it more than most other ABBA songs. It's mostly the squeaky clean production. 19. A whispery Every Musical In The 80s and 90s vocal drags us into the piano an ooooooh ballad, Kisses Of Fire, that then slams us into pop. It's a perfect transition. Something about this song makes me want to hear Lizzo cover it. It doesn't sound like a Lizzo song at all, and there isn't a flute solo or anything, I just think this song is due for another single release, and I think she'd spin it in a fantastic direction. 20. ABBA has precisely one banger in their arsenal. One perfect song from beginning to end, and it's Take A Chance On Me. Every piece of this musical puzzle fits snugly together from the disco vocals to the occasional doo-wop background vocals to the occasional spoken line, it's just expertly crafted. No other song by the band can possibly follow it, so we let it fade the album out. |
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