Tag Archives: so

#1229: Röyksopp – So Easy

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When I was a young boy back in the 2000s, the British mobile network operator T-Mobile – now known to you and me as EE – used to run an advert on TV that was backed by a really cool piece of music. I didn’t know what the people were singing. To me, it sounded like “Ooh, ung, ooh/Haanay, hun, haanay/Ooh, ung, ooh/Da-da, day-da, doo”. I would sing it like that, anyway. I can’t remember exactly what age I would have been at the time. I’m sure it was under ten, though. And I just thought it was one of those songs where the people were singing gibberish on purpose. People do that in songs all the time, so it didn’t seem that strange to me. That melody would stick around in my head for a long while.

Fast forward to my second year in university, late 2014. I’d known about Röyksopp for a good five years by that time. ‘Happy Up Here’ was my song for a good few months in 2009. I was sat in front of my laptop, looking for some electronic music to listen to get me away from the guitar-oriented stuff for a change. The duo’s debut Melody A.M. appeared to have been well-received by critics around its release, according to the sources on Wikipedia. Maybe it would have made more sense to listen to the album ‘Happy Up Here’ was on. But Melody it was. So, I got to searching on Spotify. The first song on there was ‘So Easy’, and holy moly, this was the track that was in that advert all those years ago. Röyksopp made that tune. Well, this album was getting off to a fantastic start.

Searching up ‘So Easy’ on Google upon inadvertently finding answered the question I guess I had about the song for all of those years. Turned out, whatever vocals were on there weren’t gibberish at all and were in fact a sample of a song from the ’60s – one that very much had actual lyrics. “Blue on blue/Heartache on heartache/Blue on blue/Now that we are through” were the actual words. Swedish vocal group Gals & Pals sang them. And it’s these vocal samples taken from this performance that ‘So Easy’ is built around. Well, Röyksopp also lift the source material’s pizzicato string introduction, over which a funky little bassline is laid out. The song ends early, closing out with this little interlude that leads into the next song on the album, ‘Eple’. That’s one I would have written about, but things didn’t line up. But it’s not the last of Röyksopp on here.

#1223: Kings of Leon – Slow Night, So Long

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It was during the Aha Shake Heartbreak era of Kings of Leon that I properly go into the band, due mainly to the three singles that popped up around those youthful times of 2004/05. But I didn’t get my hands on a physical copy of it until 2008, when I got it as a gift for Christmas. I don’t know what it was about that year that made me request it. By that time, Only by the Night was the band’s latest album which hoisted the group into household names thanks to ‘Sex on Fire’ and ‘Use Somebody’ which were now worldwide hits. I’m going to guess that, even at the age of 13 that I was that year, I was one of those people who thought, “Man… Kings of Leon have changed,” and wanted one of their old albums to remind me of the good times. But that is just a guess, I feel like I might be making that up completely.

‘Slow Night, So Long’ opens the album up, and I’ll straight up say it doesn’t really hold a lot of sentimental value. It was one of those songs where I heard it that first time and knew that it was a keeper, and so it’s been in the library ever since. Unlike the opener on the album before, which got things started quite swiftly, ‘Slow Night…’ builds itself up layer by layer, letting the anticipation set in before the whole band eventually kick into gear. Gotta appreciate that bass guitar hook by Jared Followill in that introduction, it’s the melody of that which Caleb Followill almost mirrors with his vocals and the riff that I think really ties the whole song together. I didn’t know this before typing out, so it’s a surprise to me as much as it might be for you, but the song concerns Caleb Followill’s feelings about a girl younger brother Jared was seeing at the time. He kind of liked her, the feelings weren’t reciprocated. It was a weird thing going on there. And Followill at the end of the song asks where the ‘leading ladies’ can be found, in the search for an emotionally stable relationship. KOL songs in those days were usually about women in some way, but would never have guessed any of that myself.

But as the people who enjoy this song will know, this track has a little surprise for you. The band come to a big finish, but there’s still about a minute and a bit remaining until time runs out. And after a bit of suspense, with Nathan Followill’s last chord still sort of ringing nearing silence, Caleb Followill’s guitar comes in on the right-hand side introducing a completely unrelated chord progression and segueing into the smooth coda to which you wanna grab your partner and slow dance to. Even got a little güiro going on low in the mix there. During this part, Caleb asks the “gold digger mothers” out there if “they’re too good to tango with the poor boys”, which I think could mean anything whilst also being very obvious. And with a nice touch of piano, the whole song comes to its actual close. But not really because ‘King of the Rodeo’ picks up right where the next bar would begin. No time to rest before kicking things up again.

#1198: Supergrass – She’s So Loose

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Looking back on the previous two songs I’ve written about from I Should Coco, I make a note on how I got the album for a birthday and how initially I thought it was stellar on the first listen, but as time’s gone on there are a few moments are there which are a bit of its time. In a way, I’ve done the same again here. But I guess that means I’ve just run out of different things to say about the album. I think it’s many people’s favourite by Supergrass, released in the midst of Britpop and giving us the summer jam of ‘Alright’. I wouldn’t say it’s mine, but that’s not to say ’cause it’s bad. You won’t go wrong with any Supergrass record you choose to listen to. Usually I think they were the best Britpop band all this time.

‘She’s So Loose’ is the ninth song on Coco. Very, very sure I liked this one on that first run-through on the album however many years ago. The track consists of mainly choruses, three in total, respectively preceded by two short verses and the final instrumental break. Those choruses appear to describe a sexual encounter between two people, in ways that you don’t really have to thoroughly examine to understand, but also not in a way that’s graphic or distasteful. More like a, “this happened, then this, overall, a good time was had” kind of way. Very matter-of-fact. And the activity is celebrated via the rousing melody the track’s title is sung with as the chorus’s last line.

I’ve always thought of this as an example of a perfect three-minute pop number, you know. There’s nothing too complicated to get your head around, though the guitar chord choices in here aren’t the usual G-D-E (or whatever) types of progressions. The changes throughout add a little mystique to the whole affair. And I’m very much a fan of Gaz Coombes’s vocals on there too. Delivered with a youthful exuberance that you can only when you’re in your teens and feeling good making an album. And that little reverb production trick that lingers after the “awaaaaay” in the verses is a minor thing that I appreciate. All in all, the song’s a short introduction, a little verse, a bigger chorus, repeat, and throw a breakdown in there for good measure. Easy to singalong to and very memorable as a result. I don’t have much else to say about it, to be honest. I’ve never found much reason to dislike it.

#1157: Weezer – Say It Ain’t So

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According to my post for ‘Buddy Holly’ years and years back, I properly started getting into Weezer when I was about 10 years old. 29-year-old me can’t remember so well, so I’ll take 18-year-old me’s word. But it does sound about right. 2005 (the year I was 10) was around the time Make Believe was out, and although that’s considered to be one of the band’s worst albums, I think my interest in them stemmed from seeing this video for ‘We Are All on Drugs’ on MTV2 on the regular and other Weezer songs I’d catch on the TV by chance. ‘Buddy Holly’ became a favourite song of young self very quickly, and I think it was through trying to find its music video online that I then came across ‘Say It Ain’t So’, whose video was a lot less gimmicky in comparison but, to me, still impactful nonetheless.

It’s all coming back to me now, actually. I remember spending a lot of time repeating the video at certain points during the song. Not on YouTube (which was busy not being active), but some other vague music video site that probably doesn’t exist now. The “bubbli-hi-hi-hi-hiiing” was unexpected. As was the delivery in the “wrestle with Jiiiimmy”. The string bends in between the power chords during the second chorus. There were all these little quirks and changes within the song that were drawing my attention. And it was through watching the videos for this, ‘Buddy Holly’ and ‘Undone’, not necessarily in that order, that I thought that I had to get The Blue Album in my possession. All the singles were good, so it was a no brainer. Still I have my copy to this day since 2006.

‘Say It Ain’t So’ is rightly one of Weezer’s most popular songs. Probably one of the best alternative rock songs of the ’90s, to be fair. It’s weird though nowadays, ’cause Weezer’s a band that lot of people like to joke about or make memes out of, so you never know if people are really listening for the music or whether they want to be in on the joke. But there’s no joking about this song. It’s all straight from the heart. The track sees Cuomo battling a personal demon he faced when he was 16, when he saw a can of beer in the fridge and, from that, assumed his stepfather would be leaving the family because his biological father started drinking when he left his mother. Cuomo said he probably shouldn’t have written the song about trauma like that. But he did. And it’s very, very good.

#1002: Fall Out Boy – Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued

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Another album opener, ‘Our Lawyer…’ is the first track on Fall Out Boy’s From Under the Cork Tree. It’s an album that many a fan of the band’s hold dear to their hearts. Has the well-loved classics like ‘Dance, Dance’, ‘A Little Less Sixteen Candles…’ and of course, ‘Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down’. Can’t say I hold the same regard. If there is a best Fall Out Boy, it’s clearly Folie à Deux. Cork Tree for me sounds a bit dated in comparison. A lot of the sentiments on there I just can’t vibe with anymore compared to when I was, let’s say, 13. But it sets off with a great start and a whole lot of self-deprecation and sarcasm, which I’m always all in for – especially when it’s done right.

“Brothers and sisters put this record down / Take my advice ’cause we are bad news” are the opening lines to this track, and for the rest of the track Patrick Stump sings bassist Pete Wentz’s lyrics which further go onto to tell the listeners the myriad ways in which the band will let them down and the superficial things that they’re good for – like celebrity status and fashion sense – that don’t really amount to anything properly meaningful. The track is set to a swinging tempo, but there’s an aggression and heaviness to the way the guitars are played that enables automatic headbanging among the instinctive swaying motion that you have to do with those types of tempos. Patrick Stump sounds like a kid, and he pretty much was – would have been 20 during the making of the album – but for a guy who supposedly wasn’t too confident about his singing, I’d say he does the job well. He’d only become better as the years went on, full embracing his inner soul-singer on Folie à Deux.

The song’s title is one of truth. Its original title was ‘My Name Is David Ruffin And These Are The Temptations’, but the band’s lawyers intervened and made them change the name. Either way, it’s another title of the band’s during that time that were very long, were usually never mentioned in the lyrics at all, and were probably named as such just to get some reaction from the listener. Funnily enough, I think one of the band’s shortest song title is on the same album too, with ‘XO’. That’ll be the next one from the record I do a post on. As I said earlier, not so much a fan of it now. But there’ll be more Fall Out Boy in between, for sure.