Music and lyrics go together beautifully.
Hardly a seismic statement lyrically to remake history since d’uh of course they do, but there’s something about these five near-perfect songs that remind you how good it is when just-so lyrics meet perfectly-realised music.
When that happens, and it’s not always a given, everything gets engaged – heart, mind and soul – and you find yourself dancing up a storm at the same time as your mind is going “YES!” and your heart is echoing that sentiment with gushing sentimentality.
Music may not make everything better but good lord it comes close as you’ll find with five songs that really bring home how much we need a good tune and insightful words to make the world a better place.
“No One Dies From Love” by Tove Lo
You aren’t supposed to suffer at the hands of love.
Well, ideally of course, but as a chorus of unfortunate souls such as Helen of Troy, Romeo & Juliet, and yes, even Kermit the Frog, will attest, love doesn’t always go the way you want, something that Swedish singer, songwriter, and actress Tove Lo seemingly knows only too well.
In her heartbreakingly upbeat track, “No One Dies From Love”, which is all buoyant disco synth and introspectively reflective lyrics, all of them centred on the darkly painful days of a break-up which Thomas Bleach rightly observes may not kill you but will hurt like almost literal hell.
“Everyone says you can’t die from love, but the pain behind a heartbreak feels very literal, and in that moment it does really feel like you could die from how much it hurts.”
This is pain with dancefloor therapy and you can only hope all that dancing will begin to heal that will feels permanently and debilitatingly broken.
“Bang Bang (feat. Donna Missal)” by The Knocks
“Bang bang gotta get it fired up!”
If you’re going to craft a seductively upbeat dancefloor banger, then best to have some killer lyrics to go with it which is precisely what American electronic music duo The Knocks (Ben “B-Roc” Ruttner and James “JPatt” Patterson) have done wit their infectious af track “Bang Bang” featuring the emotive vocals of Donna Missal, a singer=somgwriter who hails from New Jersey.
The song is one of those songs that feels spaciously, generously alive, with Glasse Factory succinctly observing that the song, which possesses a “high energy beat and fun synth instrumental”, is “a song that can get anyone to dance during those summer nights.”
Mission accomplished then for The Knocks who had this to say about this headily upbeat piece of danceable pop.
“We wanted to make something that felt bright, easy and dance floor ready for summer while feeling like a modern touch on a throwback sound… We had our hearts set on Donna Missal from the start. She balances between raw emotive vocal delivery and delicate playfulness and we knew we wanted someone that could navigate the changes as the song progresses.”
“Skyline” by Khalid
My lord but this track feels like the perfect slice of bucolically light and escapist pop.
The song by Khalid, which Thomas Bleach has hailed as “bold return to that warm sound that immediately transports you [to] summer time”, is a thousand kinds of dreamy loveliness, anchored by the American singer’s warm and emotionally vocals which make even the coldest winter day (here in Australia currently feel like the hazy, lazy days of summer come early.
Unsurprisingly focused on the thrilling romance of finding that special one and having it consume you in the very best of ways, “Skyline” feels like one of those songs that soothes the soul even as it stokes to go full bore towards the simmering promise of gloriously good new love.
It’s a gem that Thomas Bleach assures us makes you “feel … euphoric energy throughout your whole body from the moment the song begins” which will hit home “even if you aren’t currently in love.”
Now that’s some pretty wonderful music right there …
“Words” (feat. Zara Larsson)” by Alesso
There’s something about the gorgeous buoyancy of Swede Zara Larsson’s vocals that make any song come alive in ways that lift your mood and heart in no time flat.
It helps when they are combined with dancefloor worthy choruses that up the emotional energy even further which can lead to fulsomely upbeat assessments such as this one from The Music Universe which capture the theme and musical vibrancy of this insanely catchy track from “boundary-breaking dance artist and producer Alesso”.
“With its dizzying yet immaculately arranged layers of beats, the high-energy track takes on a thrilling intensity as Larsson confesses to a certain fear of vulnerability in love. All glossy hooks and unbridled emotion, ‘Words’ ultimately arrives as an unstoppable anthem for owning your fear and following your heart.”
Lrasson admits she’s on the edge of saying “I love you”, something you will undoubtedly feeling like uttering too after this song digs its uplifting light and bright hooks into you and your music-loving heart.
“About Damn Time” by Lizzo
How can you not love and adore American singer, rapper and songwriter Lizzo?
She’s ardent advocate for being totally herself and celebrating who she is without apology, and this shines through with danceable force in the effervescent joy of “About Damn Time”, named with her cusotmary chutzpah and flair, which celebrates coming from a desperately low point and finally reaching a place where you’re able to stride confidently forth.
Coming ahead of her forthcoming July-release LP, Special, “About Damn Time” is a heady mix of empowering lyrics – “It’s bad bitch o’clock, yeah, it’s thick-thirty. I’ve been through a lot, but I’m still flirty” – brilliantly dancey R&B and the kind of attitude you need to deal with a world more apt to tear you down than build you up.
It’s a blissful piece of pop that makes the impossible feel possible, the bad suddenly feel good, and hope something you can hold and do something which, with positivity and confidence infused into every word and note of a song that Thomas Bleach rather wonderfully calls “a glittery disco-pop inspired Lizzobanger”.
SONGS, SONGS AND MORE SONGS EXTRA!
Everything old is new again and man alive, are we happy about it!
First ABBA dazzle with their first album in nearly 40 years – Voyage which released late last year – and now their groundbreaking motion-capture concert of the same name, and now Kate Bush is back at the top of the charts with “Running Up That Hill”, from 1985’s Hounds of Love, all thanks to being featured on the soundtrack for Netflix streaming phenom Stranger Things fourth season, volume 1.
POSSIBLE POSSIBLE AHEAD …
And here’s the original clip for this reborn track which has seen Kate Bush charting higher with this song than she did originally with, for instance, the song currently #1 on the ARIAs singles chart, which betters its original placing of #6 way back in 1985 …
