Love is supposed to be always wonderful.
That’s the PR anyway, and yes, it can be absolutely glorious when everything goes well as some of this post’s artists attest, but sometimes it’s a car crash in the midst of a natural disaster cratering towards an apocalypse, and we have no choice but to live in that less than ideal moment too.
Were that life was about sunshine and love-filled roses, but it isn’t, and it’s that duality of romantic truth that makes this selection of five songs such a sage understanding of the truth of life.
The good news and silver lining in all these grey romantic clouds is that we at least have some damn fine music to soundtrack proceedings, good and bad, something to be thankful for when there’s not a lot else to be happy about …
“Pls Love Me a Lot” by YARLIE
Swedish singer-songwriter YARLIE knows how to craft a tune that will have you dancing and feeling all the things in one heady pop-crafted moment.
One of her latest tracks, “Pls Love Me a Lot” embodies all her many gifts, simultaneously a slice of euphorically uplifting music and soaring emotion-rich vocals and a lyrically intense evocation of the emotional mess left when “fire turns [your life] into ash”.
It’s clear that she’s not in a good place, sitting in the soul-crushing aftermath of romantic loss with the chorus a desperate plea for someone to care, to give a damn and to help her pick up the pieces.
It’s proof, if you needed it, that good pop music has the power to move us with its music, to hit us hard in the heart with an emotional tsunami and to get us thinking about what we do in the big moments of life when solutions are thin on the ground and all we want is someone to unconditionally step in and love us.
“One of Us” by Ava Max
Speaking of emotion knocking you clear into next week, Ava Max has it all and then some in new track “One of Us”, lifted from album Diamonds & Dancefloors which releases today.
“One of Us” makes good use of the artist’s soulful voice which may dance across a pounding dance beat but embodies an aching sense of the sea of emotions that swirl within you when you know that despite being willing to “give up the world” that you won’t be able to save your relationship.
Upbeat melody meets soul-excoriating words in a song that is a frantic cry out to a world unaware that the thing she loves and values most is falling apart before her eyes, with “paradise” and “heaven” coming at a high cost, especially if only one person is willing to fight for it.
It cuts deep into the soul and though part of you wants to dance up a storm to a song with all the beats, the truth is you’re simply marking manic time until your world implodes and you won’t dance for a good long while.
As portentous funeral songs for a relationship go, “One of Us” is as intense and emotionally honest as it gets …
“Love is Blind” by Sgt Slick
Hailing from Melbourne, Australia, Sgt Slick, the artistic persona of house music DJ and electronic music producer Andrew Ramanauskas, is convinced that “Love is Blind”.
Sweeping you up in ’80s-inspired euphoric pop that swells the heart and all but demands you dance up a storm (and you will), “Love is Blind” is a fantastically energising track, bursting with full speed beats and a wholly alive sense that you will lose yourself on the dance floor and be damn happy about it.
With “Filtering synths, a killer vocal, and the Sgt’s trademark fat drums and production”, Sgt Slick serves up one of those tracks that makes you feel like love is wondrously good but criminally flawed, a product of wish fulfilment that may end once the beats do.
It’s a soberingly thrilling dance between euphoric possibility and emotional truthfulness that works a treat in a song that’s determined to get you in the mood to go for the former and deal with the latter once the dance floor empties.
“Pink Noise” by Laura Mvula
British singer Laura Mvula has vocals that reach right into your heart, perfectly allied with an R&B-soul-jazz sensibility that brings you alive in all kinds of unexpected ways.
Ever since she burst onto the music scene, following classical training, in 2012 with the evocative lustrousness of She, Mvula has proven she has the versatility to move across all kinds of amazing music and to make her presence felt in every track.
Case in point is “Pink Noise”, the title track from 2021’s LP of the same name, which The Guardian hailed as “an album of overdue fun … fuelled by 80s dance pop – and letting go.”
That’s definitely the case with the track, in common with its album mates, a joyously infectious salve for the pandemic-afflicted soul, even 18 months later when we still need to feel the release of the headily upbeat.
“Make Me Feel So …” (feat. Daði Freyr) by Montaigne
Happy days are here again – and to be honest since May last year when the song was released – as Eurovision alumni, brilliantly creative Australian singer-songwriter Montaigne and Iceland’s sweetly quirkily and immensely talented representative representative, come together to make some creatively clever and emotive pop.
There is an arrestingly good effervescent emotional buzz to the charming track which, NME observes, benefits from the fellow Eurovision Song Contest 2021 contestants’ shared “goal to broaden the sonic palette associated with modern pop”.
The song, the clip for which has a glorious 8bit The Sims visual look to it, feels like all the giddy upbeat joy you could ask for, alive with the vocal acrobatics of both artists who deftly combine pinpoint delivery with real, affecting emotionalism.
With Montaigne noting that “‘make me feel so…’ is about the wonder of a love that makes you feel safe, which feels especially special after a series of bad relationships”, you can feel how all encompassing good it all feels to be loved and to have a song that acts as a happy soundtrack to all that bliss and contentment.
SONGS, SONGS AND MORE SONGS EXTRA!
Keeping up with the releases of the all-new lyric videos which combine old footage with new catchy visuals, ABBA have released not one but three new efforts, “Happy New Year”, released guess when, “Take a Chance on Me” and “Super Trouper” which are every bit as much fun as the songs itself …
Start the new year well …
And keep it going …
And on and on and on (see, what I did there?) …