Chart Review: 17th May 2024
Making sense of a nation’s musical tastes.
Let’s start with the bad news: Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” has (presumably) peaked at (6). I think this topped the charts in the US and I was hoping it would do the same over here, mainly because of how funny it would be for a song dedicated to calling one of your enemies a nonce to hit #1 (and also because the song’s fantastic in its own right). Alas, it wasn’t to be.
Three Eurovision tracks have cracked the charts. Least interesting is Baby Lasagna with “Rim Tim Tagi Dim” (36). This dude is from Croatia and has leapt onto the surprisingly buoyant trend of pop-nu metal. It encapsulates everything I don’t like about Eurovision, i.e. it’s not just a bad song but a stupid one, and I feel like folks are only listening to laugh at what our crazy friends on the continent are getting up to. There’s a charm to it because clearly the people behind the music are having a whale of a time and all the best to them, but I’m not one for high camp or so-bad-it’s-good business.
Joost Klein’s “Europapa” (37) is a bit better. This is full on Euro techno with a catchy chorus and an old school chintziness to the music. It’s cheap and cheerful but with a few decent hooks to it. I think there’s a strong pro-European togetherness theme to the lyrics, which are sung in Klein’s native Dutch (a big advantage because there’s less chance of me hearing something annoying enough to put me off it). This is the guy who got expelled from the competition for pushing a camerawoman or something; it’s not entirely clear what happened and I don’t really care, but the comments are firmly pro-Klein on YouTube.
Nemo’s “The Code” (18) won the competition for Switzerland. I’m fine with this one - it’s maximalist genre-swapping fun. Nemo trills out some operatic high notes then raps quite badly. The tune never sits still enough to get boring and they’re smart enough to jump straight into the good stuff. Judging it on a Eurovision curve, I think this is more than decent, even if it’s not something I’d ever actually listen to.
I like it a whole lot more than Myles Smith’s “Stargazing” (12), that’s for sure. Another entry in the impossibly sturdy subgenre of arena-ready indie, there are folky guitars and pianos, whoa-ohs, a beat that couldn’t be more basic, and some sensitive, vulnerable, totally anonymous lyrics. I absolutely detest drizzle like this. Everything about it is rudimentary and exploitative, deferring to lyric-free vocals wherever possible so that your audience can sing along without having to know any words. And again, that beat. It’s sub-Meg White levels of complexity. One of those nodding birds could play it.
Post Malone feat. Morgan Wallen is at (2) with “I Had Some Help”. Posty is the latest to take a swing at country, though to my ill educated ear this is the most transparent shoehorn job, give or take that Shaboozey song. That is to say, it’s a pop song with a few bits of slide guitar chucked over it. That said, I like this a lot. It’s got a superb chorus with some really nice lyrical flourishes that just feel premium compared to a lot of the rest of this week’s chart. The theme is one I’m not sure I’ve heard before in a song - wild man’s woman thinks he’s too wild but he says she encourages it etc - but it’s a smart one. I’m not exactly sure where Wallen stands in the court of public opinion at the moment but I know he’s at the very least, a bit of an idiot; all the same I listened to one of his incredibly long albums and actually thought it was great. Don’t think I want to hear a full country LP (or any LP really) from Malone but this is quality. I reckon it’ll be number one next week.
Not this week, though, because that’s Sabrina Carpenter once again. “Espresso” has essentially cemented itself as the song of the summer and quite right too.
Pick of the week: Post Malone feat. Morgan Wallen - “I Had Some Help”
