Chart Review: May 24th 2024
Making sense of a nation’s musical tastes.
For the past several weeks, when checking out the bottom of the Top 40 I’ve noted with a chuckle that Disturbed’s cover of “Sounds Of Silence” has been kicking around the (50) mark. I really know Disturbed only from the “ooh-ah-ah-ah-ah” bit from “Down With The Sickness”, but I’ve been hoping for the opportunity to have a listen to this quite well regarded (Grammy nominated!) rendition of the ‘60s classic. I’m sure I’ve heard it before though I can’t remember it; if you’d asked me, I’d have said it was a daffy nu metal variation.
It’s finally reached (39) (though it has previously cracked the Top 30) and by God it’s awful. Firstly it’s not nu metal at all - it’s operatic and pretentious, delivered with bathos by the usually enjoyable gruff voiced singer. I assume this was released not too long after Limp Bizkit’s equally awful “Behind Blue Eyes” - it’s devoid of irony and fun and seems to completely misunderstand the power of the original song. Simon and Garfunkel sing with a weary resignation about the scary place the world was in back then; this guy performs like he’s trying to inflate himself. I was mesmerised by how bad this is. You’d have to be bats to listen to it.
At (36) we have Tems with “Love Me JeJe”. Boasting over 18 million monthly spins on Spotify alone, she might be the biggest modern artist I’ve never heard of. I really like this - it’s a cover of a track by a chap called Seyi Sodimu, who like Tems is Nigerian. It’s super smooth, with a lovely rolling bassline and cool restraint from the singer. She seems to have been a go-to featured artist for a lot of heavy hitters in pop, rap, and R&B; she’s evidently already a great big deal but on the strength of this, she’ll clearly be plenty bigger yet. My predictions have been wrong a fair few times on this front but I reckon this’ll go up and up over the summer. When I describe something as “tasteful”, I don’t tend to mean it as a compliment, but this has really wide appeal.
Some low energy trap at (32) in the form of Gunna’s “One Of Wun”. I wasn’t familiar with this dude but it appears he was embroiled in the same legal brouhaha as Young Thug but copped a plea deal, earning him his freedom but losing a lot of respect in the game. I think you can clock a lot of that turmoil on this track, even if you’re not catching a great deal of what the dude’s saying. This chap sounds exhausted, even defeated. I quite like the beat, which is moody and pulsating, but Gunna himself sounds in need of a hug. It’s perfectly decent stuff.
The big new player this week is Billie Eilish, whose new record Hit Me Hard And Soft has been received well (if by no means rapturously). I listened to it today; I’ve found Eilish easier to respect than massively enjoy in the past, but I thought the album on the whole was very good, with two of the songs that have cracked the charts numbering among my favourites.
“Birds Of A Feather” at (10) is the least interesting of the bunch but a nice track all the same. It works better as a palette cleanser on the record, a boppy, highly polished bit of timeless pop that breaks up some of the weirder, darker, or otherwise more restrained tracks on the project. “Chihiro” is at (7) and is for me the best track on the record. Eilish gives this one a lot of time to breathe and chucks in all of her signature sounds - intertwining spooky voices, those detached clicking beats - along with occasional blasts of euphoric electronics. She’s a master of restraint - these songs never wind up overstuffed (indeed on occasion they’re even understuffed). To have such a nailed-on sonic personality at her age is some going.
Her highest charting effort, unsurprisingly, is “Lunch” at (2). While less musically deft than “Chihiro”, it’s so hook laden and well crafted as to guarantee a hit. In the TikTok age, I think there’s an argument lyrics have seldom been more important, or more specifically a few memorable couplets that app users can mime along to or fit into their own lives. “Lunch”, with its extended food/sex metaphor and Eilish’s beguiling, lustful delivery, is tailor made for these purposes. It’s punky, groovy, genuinely witty - good, good stuff.
Sabrina Carpenter rubber stamps “Espresso”’s song of the summer status by nailing a full month at the top of the charts. She.s recently performed on SNL, too, and is presumably working the circuit during festival season. What a hit!
Pick of the week: Billie Eilish - “Chihiro”
