(via Shutterstock)
Do you like your upbeat songs with a side order of intensely personal lyrics?
Or perhaps you just want some effervescent fun to light up your day?
Whatever is floating your musical boat, it’s wroth diving into these five songs which give you infinitely repeatable music, cleverly incisive lyrics and a pop sheen that makes everything feel, if not better always, then explainable and maybe even dealable.
“Too Sweet” (Feat. Candy Crush) by Łaszewo
(courtesy Soundcloud)
Can a fantastically catchy song be inspired by a tournament for an online mobile game? Of course it can!
In what eclectic trio Łaszewo, who are, in their own words, “3 kids from 3 different countries with 3 completely different tastes in music”, said to Rolling Stone was a “great creative project”, the song “Too Sweet has emerged as part of Candy Crush Saga’s third annual Music Season tournament.
It was the perfect chance to experiment and mix different sounds, ideas, and vibes in a way that felt fun and free — that’s what music is all about for us. With this song, we wanted to capture the feeling of everything sweet, winning, and dreaming that Candy Crush brings. (The band via Rolling Stone)
The songs is unabashedly deliciously luminously all kinds of technicolour fun and well worth putting on repeat especially if you’re in need of some soul-uplifting music with a vivacious colourfulness and joy.
“Backseat Driver” by Orla Gartland
(courtesy official Orla Gartland Facebook page)
There’s something incredibly bouncy and fun about the songs of Irish singer-songwriter-musician Orla Gartland even when she’s addressing some pretty serious material.
Case in point is the energetically vibrant track “Backseat Driver”, lifted from the artist’s Everybody Needs a Hero album, which is all sassy melodies and expressively upbeat vocals filled to the brim with trademark incisively introspective lyrics.
She blatantly honest about her failings and the lyrics are almost excoriating in the way they lambast her perceived deficiencies all the while wondering why anyone want her if they knew the real her.
We’ve likely all asked ourselves the same question more than once, and “Backseat Driver” absolutely nails how it feels, channelling it into a ferociously listenable that captures all the feels and the thoughts in just under three personably revelatory minutes.
“Safety Net” by Bea and her Business
(courtesy official Bea and her Business Facebook page)
There’s a joyously gleeful sense of fun to the intro music to “Safety Net” by Bea and Her Business, the stage name for British music artist Bea Wheeler, which belies the role of the song as a furious takedown of a romantic interest who has severely messed up EVERYTHING.
In a song that takes no lyrical prisoners, Bea and her Business delivers the same kind of “razor-sharp lines” that made the singer’s debut single, “Born to be Alive” such a standout musical arrival.
Try these blistering “ripping a new one” lyrics on for vengeful size …
I got bored waiting for you to get your shit together
You really thought I’d be there at your beck and call forever
You lost your chance, well, that’s what you get
For thinking I would be your safety net
You wanna get a drink, now I’m the one who can’t be bothered
How does it feel to know a broken heart just made me hotter?
You lost your chance, well, that’s what you get
For thinking I would be your safety net
If ever there was a sense of expectation of an easy relational return by a spurned lover who clearly betrayed her by dumping her for someone else and then thought they could blithely “dip, dip, dip, dip into [her] world”, Bea and her Business puts paid to its very quickly and with no room for any sort of comeback EVER.
“Something in the Air” by Lauren Mayberry
(courtesy official Lauren Mayberry Facebook page)
It’s been hard to miss the rising star of Scottish singer-songwriter-musician Lauren Mayberry lately and that’s for one very good reason – she writes and records fantastically memorable songs, many of which will find a home in the Chvrches frontwoman’s debut solo album, Vicious Creature, due out later this year.
One song definitely out in the streaming wild is “Something in the Air” which the singer says popped up out of the blue.
’Something in the Air’ is a song that really came out of nowhere. I was in London finishing another song with my friend, co-writer and producer Dan McDougall. We were taking a break in the shared kitchen in the studio complex when a pretty iconic British musician, who I won’t throw under the bus here, came in and started making conversation about electricity, 5G, and how it’s making us all sick. Dan and I went for a walk around the block before going back to the studio and were unpacking those theories, and why people want to believe them – and the chorus lyric just appeared. (Rolling Stone)
It’s a brilliantly catchy song that marries some insightfully rich lyrics with an atmospherically beautiful track that feels epic and intimate all at once.
“PAIN” by King Princess
(courtesy official King Princess Facebook page)
“PAIN”, and yes all those caps do need to be there, is a song that begins playfully enough with “Tu, tu-tu-tu” uttered over an ever-escalating beat and melody before it keeps the gloriously fun music but adds some deeply introspective lyrics about how easily love becomes pain.
American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist King Princess aka Mikaela Mullaney Straus laments the fact that she sabotages all her chances at love, turning love into pain and that even though “You and I just get along … I wonder how I’ll fuck it up”.
Its hopefulness and dark resignation into affectingly intense lyrical mix and it lands a real punch to those of us who never stop feeling the springing of hope eternal even though we know we have a better than even chance of ruining this good thing we have desired so long.
Talk about horrific existential bedfellows, but good lord King Princess turns out this hellish torment into a song that grabs your soul with your lyrical truthfulness and keeps you listening with music that elevates what she’s saying to brilliantly affecting degrees, resulting in a song that Hot Press beautifully describes as an “eclectic new dance banger”. (Granted it was released four years ago, and this reviewer has just discovered it, so the “new” bit may not be apropos still but the song still has SO MUVH PRESENCE all fronts).