MUSIC TO SWEAT TO (2024): The inane that goes with the pain

Recently someone with time on their hands did the maths and announced that in the past four years there were only three weeks when bands had topped the British charts, one of them being the Beatles with Now and Then.

Every other week it was a solo act (or probably ft. someone like Bulldog, remember him?).

Further to that, in the week this very clever person was talking he noted that in the current British top 40 there wasn't a single band which had formed this century.

This isn't the end of civilisation as we know it, but it does indicate just how far the wheel has turned on the idea of bands, which – as many would be quick to note – seem to be a very masculine idea anyway: the last gang in town etc.

Certainly there are all the K-Pop groups which are nominally bands. But the old idea of “a band” seems to have disappeared from the wider consciousness of the public, in Britain at least.

In this part of the world it seems Six60 and LAB will be with us forever.

There is, however, another aspect of contemporary pop music which has changed. These days there are very few narrative songs, in other words lyrics which give greater context to a line like “I will never leave you” for example.

I'm hearing a lot of AutoTuned songs like that these days, songs where something like that line is almost the sole lyric and is delivered repeatedly over a relentless beat, usually in a shrill and annoying manner.

This is the price you pay when you go the gym without your own headphones. You get what they pump through their sound system.

But as I have listened over many hours what I hear is just a few lines – I suspect only sung correctly once, then simply looped – which arrive without any greater context.

Leave who? Why not? What if he/she/they cheat on you? You will still stay then?

More likely you will record another song in which the only line is, “I thought I could trust you!”

I've heard this song below so often I researched it: it took two production teams (Italian trio Meduza and Brit trio Goodboys) with British singer Becky Hill. Released in 2019, 943 million Spotify streams at the time of this writing.

Look up Becky, she specialises in a song which subsequently arrives in multiple remixes. Good gig!

Lose Control by Meduza, Becky Hill and Goodboys

 

But back to the point: songs with narratives, characters or storylines? I've never heard one in many weeks of listening.

I think back to the early Beatles: even She Loves You had a story (albeit brief) and three characters. The Rolling Stones were pumping out narratives and characters in their original songs (The Last Time, Satisfaction, Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man).

Right now songs like American Pie, The Ballad of John and Yoko, Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp, Pretty Woman, Fairytale of New York, Ode to Billie Joe and scores of others wouldn't get a look in. Or any of those great soul songs where you felt the heartache because the people in the songs were made real by the likes of the Supremes, Temptations, Smokey Robinson and Isaac Hayes.

Country and folk have always relied on characters and narrative, which in part explains the success of Taylor Swift who often does tell a story with characters. Some rap is big on a story, usually autobiographical.

But these days that huge mainstream pop audience doesn't want a story, people you can picture or a narrative arc. 

But even way back pop told stories: all those great death ballads of the Fifties. And Twinkle with Terry.

Okay, no one here is suggesting we need another American Pie or Ballad of John and Yoko.

But the point is that in many pop songs today the sentiments or highly wrought emotions come devoid of context.

“I will never leave you” doesn't mean very much, even when repeated ad nauseam and coming with a beat to keep you on the treadmill just that little bit longer.

Someone very clever might like to do a survey of songs on the singles charts and see if any of them – outside of Tay-Tay and her acolytes – tell a story as complex as Bob Dylan's Hurricane or Rod Stewart's Killing of Georgie.

Or as bloody stupid as Benny Hill's Ernie, the Fastest Milkman in the West! 

Maybe the gym isn't where I should form my music opinions, perhaps?

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The posted track here was one of the better ones I have heard at the gym of late, even though it doesn't tell a story but it's certainly about something more than "I will never leave you".

The Avener is Tristan Casara from Nice and he scored a hit with his 2014 reworking of Fade Out Line by Phoebe Killdeer and the Short Straws. Then came remixes like this one above.

And here is Bob Dylan telling a story of great complexity and delivering it with astonishing passion.