Life is a LOT.
A LOT.
And when it all gets so overwhelming that you don’t know which way is up, you need people who have lived and breathed the same kinds of highly emotional moments as us to really give it voice and make sense of it all.
Which is precisely what these immensely talented and insightful artists do, diving into the existential challenges of life and giving them form and understanding and some seriously cool and highly danceable musical accompaniment.
It’s life on the dancefloor with heart and mind engaged and it sounds wonderful …
“Summer Really Hurt Us” by ALMA
Songs that really drive home the emotion of the lyrics are always mesmerisingly good to listen to.
Especially when they are sing by someone as vocally talented as Finnish singer-songwriter ALMA who channels every last shred of emotive impact into “Summer Really Hurt Us” about the way life can go from awesome to very much not in a scarily short period of time.
“In ‘Summer Really Hurt Us’ I go back in time,” she begins, “I think it was summer 2018/2019 when I really felt like I lost my control. I was doing show after show and going out a lot. That mix is just not great. We’re all human and when life gets too much we tend to do things that hurt us and others. I think for me the biggest lesson that summer was that I’m so privileged to have such an amazing group of friends around me. Even if I lose my control they will always be there to back me up and help me come out the other side. We are there for each other, we support each other no matter what.” (DIY)
It’s all kinds of melancholy regret with even the drivingly upbeat music echoing an aching sense of loss, an emotion that infuses every lyric and note in a song that has the feels and a some salient truth for anyone of us who has ever felt life spinning from our grasp.
“Summer Really Hurt Us” is the lead single for ALMA’s next album, due out later this year.
“Heartstrings” by M-22 + Ella Henderson
Speaking of songs that will drive the emotion home and then home, leave impact marks all across your heart, listen to the immense, expansive and intimately sorrowful “Heartstrings” by British-German DJ and producer duo M-22 made up of Matt James and Frank Sanders and English singer Ella Henderson.
The song soars with immense power and conviction – “I just want you to stay / I just want you to stay / Never change” – thanks to lyrics that beautifully capture what it’s like to have someone still feel like they are still there close to your heart but knowing that what gave birth to that closeness is long gone.
“Heartstrings” captures with stunning emotional impact, matched with driving, soaring music, what it feels like to be caught between the reality of something and that part of you that is desperate to hold to what you clearly wish could have been entirely different.
It’s agony and the song, written on Ibiza, is suffused with all the pain and longing, given extra driving urgency by a driving beat and Henderson’s voice which is all the emotions needed and then some.
“Nothing Lasts Forever” by Dylan
It’s a truism that people cast out like philosophical confetti, but the truth is that “nothing lasts forever” comes loaded with a lifetime’s worth of emotional baggage.
Every last suitcase and valise is crammed into “Nothing Lasts Forever” by Engish musician, Dylan, who hails from Suffolk, and who spends the song explaining to her “hopelessly romantic” would-be significant other (his view on things, not hers clearly) that while he thinks they’re falling in love, they’re NOT.
It’s brutal honesty but there’s a sense of vivacious truthfulness to her admission, delivered not in a cruel way but with a refreshing willingness to tell it like it is, something that let’s be honest, is often not present when it comes to love, romance and dating.
This sage lesson in the fact that not all meet-cutes get that big rom-com finale is accompanied by robustly upbeat music that surges in all the right places, sounding muscularly joyous and maybe just a little mischievous, delivered by someone who knows who she is, what she wants and isn’t afraid to say so.
All to one of the most banging tunes that makes being let down by the object of your attention not as bad as might otherwise be …
“Hold the Girl” by Rina Sawayama
One of the “It” singers of the moments, Japanese-British singer-songwriter (and model) Rina Sawayama’s well-deserved place in the musical zeitgeist is bolstered by “Hold the Girl”, a song that has an epic feel to it, the kind of song that needs some dramatically cinematic visuals to go with it.
Which is fortunate because the clip that accompanies the song, the title track of the artist’s new album, is big, bold and emotively as powerful as the track it’s there to promote.
With vocals that seem to hold the entirety of human emotion, and lyrics full of promises to herself that she admits haven’t been fulfilled in later life and that now need to be renewed (“I wanna remember, she is me, and I am her”), this is a song full of existential angst but also the hope of action now action, however delayed.
It’s a song that envelops you heart and soul, and while it does sound intensely earnest, it’s never cloying or overdone, always feeling authentic and real in ways that really move you heart and soul.
“Bad Memories” (feat. Elley Duhé, FAST BOY) by MEDUZA + James Carter
What is the solution to lots and lots and lots of angst?
Why the making of “Bad Memories” a song by Italian production house MEDUZA and producer James Carter, with vocal contributions by American singer-songwriter Elley Duhé and FAST BOY, an electronic music project founded by Berliners Lucas and Felix Hain that goes to the heart of what it means to deliberately lose yourself in a night of abandonment and escapist indulgence.
Even the most cautious among us will see the value of sometimes letting loose with life requiring so much of us that the only response at times is to lose your head and keep losing it for as long as it takes.
Paired with a massively sprawling clip that drives home epic the night is, and sporting some suitably danceable musical vibes, “Bad Memories” is a driving dancefloor-filler that might sound like empty escapism (not a bad thing; there are time when “empty” is necessary and good) but which comes with all kinds of existential imperatives, the kind that all but mandate finding a way to relieve the pressure.
SONGS, SONGS AND MORE SONGS EXTRA!
ABBA has a new lyric video, one of a very much welcome stream of reimagined clips that take the old visuals and marry them with something fresh and lyrically new. “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)”, famously and rarely sampled by Madonna in 2005’s “Hung Up”, is the song on the gloriously retro blocks this time and it looks amazing, fresh and new and not a day over 43!
Eurovision Song Contest 2023 update!
We have a home for next year’s event! Liverpool UK has been chosen as the Host City for the 67th Eurovision Song Contest with the BBC co-hosting with Ukraine’s public broadcaster, UA: PBC, an arrangement necessitated sadly by the war caused by Russia’s invasion of 2022’s winning country.