Pop Song Review: “Earned It (Fifty Shades of Grey)” by The Weeknd

I’ve already reviewed one of the songs from the Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack; better go for the other one currently in the charts. Here’s a little recap of the story so far: I do not like Fifty Shades of Grey because it romanticises a relationship which is abusive, and because Christian Grey himself is a manipulative, sadistic, near-rapist arsehole. I do like Love Me Like You Do though because it at least seems aware of it’s source material’s more problematic elements and does try to negate them.

I’m not sure that same can be said about Earned It.

Before I start critiquing the lyrics though, let’s point out the good bit of the song: the music. With it’s strings and classical underpinnings, it actually sounds very lavish, understated and refined. The music is played with a lot of strength though; it’s very confidentially played with each individual note sounding like it’s been purposely placed where it is for maximum effect. In short, it sounds like I assume Christian Gray is supposed to: rich and classy with an undertone of power. It’s very Fifty Shades of Grey.

And I suppose the lyrics are too, though that is not a compliment. I’m assuming the phrase “Girl you earned it” was written to tie into the BDSM sentiment of “Yeah, you’re a bad girl, I’m going to make you earn your pleasure”, etc, etc; the girl in question having “earned” the narrator’s loving and sexiness by “work[ing] it” and being so “perfect” that the narrator has no choice but to be in love with them.

This’s all fair and good but let’s apply this to the narrative of Fifty Shades, shall we? At the start of the the first book, Anatasia Steel is stalked and threatened by Christopher Gray multiple times, being told at one point that Gray will not take no for an answer from her and will just straight up kidnap her if she refuses to go out with him enough times. Christian Gray saw Anatasia, perceiving her as “work[ing] it” and being “perfect”, and thus decided that he was going to have her. In order to get her, he resorted to intimidation and psychological bullying. The books gets away with it (vaguely) because Anatasia is actually quite into Christopher Gray and thus does say “Yes” to him eventually, but just imagine if Christian Gray saw someone who didn’t want to say “Yes” to him at all and refused to go out with him. See how quickly that story would become the tale of a violent, sociopathic rapist preying on a poor woman who doesn’t deserve it.

Considering how close to rapey Fifty Shades of Grey thus gets at the best of times, some of the word choices in “Earned It”‘s chorus become almost staggering stupid. In particular, the line “Girl, you deserve it”: Girl, you look sexy and I have decided to love you and thus I am now allowed to do whatever I want to you because you’re hot. More than that, you deserve all of what you get, purely because you are attractive. Put another way: She was asking for it officer; if she didn’t want anything to happen, she wouldn’t have wore that dress.

Now maybe this is a tad unfair and over-exaggerated a reading. Taken away from the Fifty Shades context, this song is about two people who have been burnt by love, yet are still attracted to each other. “I’m so used to being used / So I love when you call unexpected […] On that lonely night / You said it wouldn’t be love / But we felt the rush / It made us believe it there was only us.” The narrator loves his girlfriend and had seen her be hurt before and knows what that hurt is like, so he swears to protect her and makes sure she never feels that hurt again. It’s a solid enough sentiment to me.

When put back into context though, the words that this sentiment are delivered through become really unfortunate and crude. They fight against and in many ways negate what the song’s actually about; they’re not well chosen at all. Frankly, if you’re writing a song that’s about Fifty Shades of Grey, you don’t put the line “You deserve it” in the chorus. That’s genuinely enough to destroy the song for me alone.

It also doesn’t help that I just don’t like The Weeknd’s voice on this track: in the verses, he’s tries too hard to sound like Ne-Yo and ends up becoming whiny. He does sound better once he goes into falsetto but he’s never as smooth and refined as the rest of the track is (or, for that matter, as smooth and refined as Christian Gray supposedly is): his singing just doesn’t work.

Conclusion: Much like Love Me Like You Do, Earned It is a solid love song ruined by being associated with Fifty Shades. Love Me Like You Do had enough good elements to counteract the Fifty Shade influence though; Earned It doesn’t. It’s a not very good song for a not very good film of a not very good book. The best thing I can say about it: it at least fits its source materials.

Pop Song Review: “Take Me to Church” by Hozier

The problem with running a blog where I review every UK No. 1 is that the UK No. 1 doesn’t actually change that often. As such, I suppose I better talk about some other songs. Let’s pick the song in the Top 5 that I have the most to say about: this week’s No. 2 – Hozier’s Take Me To Church.

This song just doesn’t fit in anywhere. It’s a dark, melancholic rock song played in a pop world currently dominated by Sing, Uptown Funk, Lips are Moving, etc. More than that, the song was actually released two years ago and has only managed to reach the charts now through word of mouth online, taking it’s place in the pop world alongside such other viral hits as Gangnam Style, Harlem Shake, Call Me Maybe or #selfie. No matter how you try to contextualise it (in the current pop world), this song just doesn’t fit.

There are connections to be made though. On a lyrical basis, the song is a love story about a man who loves a woman because she doesn’t fit in and because she’s a bad girl: “My lover’s got humour / She’s the giggle at a funeral / Knows everybody’s disapproval / I should’ve worshipped her sooner”. As such, the most obvious comparison to be made seems to be probably between this song and Love Me Like You Do. I also get a slight Blank Space vibe from it in that both songs are about a woman who’s demanding, controlling and violent: “My lover’s the sunlight / To keep the Goddess on my side / She demands a sacrifice / Drain the whole sea / Get something shiny / Something meaty for the main course”. Dangerous women with control over weaker men actually seems to be a theme of radio overall at the moment: see also Lips are Moving and Dark Horse, etc. So maybe it does have it’s place.

Where this song is completely apart from the crowd though (at least lyrically) is in the way it equates it’s relationship to the church. The relationship “offers no absolutes” but requires “sacrifices” to be made in it’s name, being built upon a “shrine of […] lies” which leaves the narrator scared, confused but in love and dedicated to the cause. That sure sounds like organised religion to me, what with its heaven/hell dichotomies designed to keep people following the rules alongside it’s focus on how it provides love/acceptance/social status so as to keep people invested in it, allowing it to perpetuate every level of our society despite lacking in any evidence that it might actually be right. I can’t help but see the narrator as having been brainwashed by his relationship – he knows that it’s violent and wrong but he doesn’t seem to care (“I was born sick, I love it”) – and if that’s so, then this song is basically equating being in a religion to being in an abusive relationship. That is one hell of a argument to make in the pop charts.

Even if the above paragraph is just me trying to read too much into it (and it might be), I am still to find an alternative interpretation of this song that doesn’t remain anti-church. If we are to take it at face-value that this song is just about a relationship between a sick man and a sick woman who do socially unacceptable things, the fact that the relationship is presented very positively in the lyrics still points to the idea that society’s morals are not worth following anymore and that institutions can be ignored (the song’s religious lexis thus becoming a largely ironic counterpoint to the song’s underlying message). Whatever the literal meaning though, the theme stays the same: religious and societal dogma is crap, rebellion is good.

So this song is a fascinating one written with a rebellious intent, otherwise known as basically the type of thing I’ve been waiting to appear in the charts for ages. It’s cutting edge, subversive, intelligent and important.

So why don’t I actually like it? Why don’t I look forward to hearing it on the radio? Ultimately, for all it’s lyrical interest, the song actually just sounds weak to me. The instrumentation is too quiet in the mix and isn’t given very much to do; in the chorus where the singer is giving his all and where the song’s themes and messages are coming to a head, musically we have a slow, subdued drumbeat with a few piano chords thrown over it. At this point in the song, we should have massive, pounding drums; a demented choir screaming their lungs out alongside the singer; heavy organ music played so densely as to become claustrophobic. If you’re going to be different and artsy with your music, you might as well go the whole hog with it. If you’re plan is to bring down entire societal institutions to their knees, then feel free to make a noise about it. There’s much to be said about subtlety but ultimately this is a rock song that compares a woman’s love to the fall of the church using a chorus where a man wobbles and groans his way through his emotions – this isn’t the type of song that needs subtlety in my opinion.

I like Take Me To Church more than I like listening to it. I’m certainly happy that it’s successful and it is certainly not a bad song. It’s at least another great step in the right direction though and if our path from club shit to intelligent, interesting pop currently goes from “Royals” to “Rather Be” to “Blank Space” to “Take Me To Church”, then frankly I can’t wait to see what’s next. Signs are good.

A No. 1 Review – “Love Me Like You Do” by Ellie Goulding

This year, I’ve challenged myself to write a review of every song that manages to get to No. 1 in the UK charts. Here’s the latest one:

Uptown Funk’s gone down: after seven weeks at the top, we finally have a new UK No. 1. And it’s by Ellie Goulding. I love Ellie Goulding. More accurately, I love Ellie Goulding’s voice. She sings as if she’s breathless, like she’s lying on a pillow and is whispering coyly into your ear – her vocals are just really intimate and thus really engrossing. More than that, she just sounds like she has complete control over her voice. This, for me, is what separates her from the other heavily stylised voices in pop at the moment. Sam Smith, for example, just warbles over his songs like he’s broken a leg during recording, only serving to distract the listener from the song at hand (something which can be fatal for songs like Like I Can which rely on you having an emotional connection to them). Compared to some of her peers, Ellie Goulding is a very minimalist performer but she performs without sacrificing what makes her voice special and she always works in service of the song itself. Sam Smith makes singing with emotion just seem like such hard work; Ellie Goulding makes it look effortless. She’s just the better performer.

And it’s a good thing that she’s as good as she is, because Love Me Like You Do should be intolerable to me. The reason for this is basically because it’s the theme song to the Fifty Shades of Grey movie, Fifty Shades being a deeply worrying phenomenon which purports to show a romantic BDSM relationship but in actuality shows a deeply abusive one. The problem really lies with Christian Gray: the guy’s not a BDSM dominator, he’s just a controlling sociopath. He uses his riches to stalk the object of his desire; he threatens her if she ever decides to say no to him; he lets her know that he’ll basically just kidnap and rape her if she doesn’t want to be with him anyway: he’s a highly dangerous, law breaking arsehole*. And any love songs written related to Fifty Shades from the female perspective are going to be tricky to pull off because they’re fundamentally going to be sung about this horribly unlikable man in a way that will be almost impossible to manage unproblematically. So how does Love Me Like You Do – a Fifty Shades of Grey love song from the female perspective – try to manage it?

It’s main attempt to remain palpable is to basically sand off all the corners of Christian Gray’s character and reduce him from a Chris Brown tribute to a much vaguer type of dick. As such, the type of love interest that Love Me Like You Do describes isn’t so much an arsehole as much as he is a ‘bad boy’. “You’re the light, you’re the night / You’re the color of my blood / You’re the cure, you’re the pain / You’re the only thing I wanna touch”, You’re so good for me but you’re so bad, You’re multifaceted and mysterious and deep, blah blah blah, etc. Lyrically, the song’s actually a surprisingly bog standard entry in the “Bad Boy with a Soft Side Love Song” genre, but, that said, I don’t think any other type of approach would have actually worked as well. It walks a good line between reflecting the character from Fifty Shades and creating someone who you can understand the attraction for. Against all odds, it actually works quite well.

There are some surprisingly clever subtle touches to the lyrics as well. “Love me like you do”, when taken in the context of Fifty Shades, is quite obviously a reference to BDSM – touch me like no-one else does, i.e. presumably with a leather strap, etc. The lyric also works when removed of the BDSM context though – “you touch me like no-one else does” is still a pretty romantic sentiment in it’s own right. The song thus works both as a soundtrack and on it’s own right. Indeed, the song works much better on it’s own right without the Fifty Shades baggage being added to it: Fifty Shades’ presence on the track only serves to introduce the potential subtext of abuse to proceedings but, once removed of that subtext, the song does basically lie upon a genuinely romantic sentiment. It’s Fifty Shades of Grey itself which is dragging the song down and not vice versa; Love Me Like You Do excels beyond it’s source material in pretty all ways it can.

That said, I do actually really like the way that song treads the lines between the themes of submission and dominance. Ellie sings the lyrics “Yeah, I’ll let you set the pace / Cause I’m not thinking straight / My head spinning around I can’t see clear no more” but then immediately follows them with the line “What are you waiting for?”, a surprisingly forceful and direct question that demands an answer. “Yeah, I’ll do whatever you want. So fuck me, now.” Musically, I also love the contrast between the quiet orchestra music and the chorus’ pounding drums: light and heavy, good and bad, submissive and dominant – this song is just an exploration of polar opposites through and through. This song is entirely about unions and the breaking of boundaries from one thing to another – it reflects it’s source material, it works as it’s own piece of art; it is just extremely well put together all around.

Ultimately my opinion of Love Me Like You Do is that it’s very well considered and that everything in it has been written with intelligence and tact. It’s pretty much as good and romantic as it could’ve ever been given it’s limitations. Can I call myself a fan of it though? Not really, but that’s just because of its Fifty Shades connection which changes the song in ways it fights desperately against. It’s fight is a valiant one though and it punches above it’s weight in every way it can. It’s a good song; a very good one indeed.

* And don’t tell me “But he gets better as the narrative goes on; Anastasia Steel manages to negotiate the relationship more the further into the books you get and eventually everything becomes workable” because, if anything, that makes things worse. It just falls into the common narrative of abusive relationships where the abused goes “Yes, so-and-so beats me and is horrible but they’re actually really sweet and if only I could bring out that side of them more, everything would be perfect”. No, if someone is abusive to you, get out of the relationship. They are not a nice person. They are unlikely to change. Get out, anything else is just going to be dangerous. Don’t do it. God, the fact that this book seems to be seen as romantic terrifies me.

Pop Song Review: “Lips are Moving” by Meghan Trainor

The problem with running a blog where I review every UK No. 1 is that the UK No. 1 doesn’t actually change that often. As such, I suppose I better talk about some other songs. Let’s pick the song in the Top 5 that I have the most to say about: this week’s No. 4 – Meghan Trainor’s Lips Are Moving.

Before we start though, I feel like I should talk about Maghan Trainor’s other hit: All About That Bass. I do not like it. It’s the lines “Tell those skinny bitches where it’s at” and “I can shake it, shake it, like I’m supposed to do” which put me off: they belie the fact that the message of this song is not “You are beautiful no matter who you are” but is instead “Women are supposed to look nice for men; fat women look better to men than skinny women; ergo fat women are better”. Once I had figured out that that was the song’s message, it became almost intolerable to me. It’s poppy, I-don’t-give-a-shit sugar coated attitude stopped being the sounds of a female figurehead who doesn’t care for the opinions of others and instead became the sound of a deeply smug person who believes herself better than those she sees as inferior. All All About That Bass ultimately does is feed into the cultural view that women should be objectified by men and should feel good about it when they are, the only difference between the song’s message and that of the mainstream media’s being that All About That Bass wants fat people to be objectified instead of skinny people. In reality, no-one should be objectified by anyone. I just politically disagree with it.

The reason I mention All About That Bass at all though is because I’m not convinced Lips Are Moving isn’t actually exactly the same song. A cheerful “nothing phases me” attitude facilitated through a poppy retro doo-wop sound: check. Empowering female orientated message: check. Female backing singers who repeat one word over and over again from the chorus: check. Constant references to how she has “the bass”: check. What are the actual differences here?

I suppose the main difference is in the subject matter: All About That Bass was a pop anthem about being happy in your body (technically) while Lips Are Moving takes the smaller route of being about Meghan dumping her man because he’s been cheating on her and lying about it. The problem is that this immediately hurts Lips Are Moving because the narrative of “woman dumps her cheating ex” is overdone and boring by now. Katy Perry has done songs on that subject, Christina Perry has done songs on that subject, as had Cheryl Cole, Beyonce, etc; I can barely think of a female singer who hasn’t. Furthermore, All About That Bass was a statement: despite it’s flaws, it was a woman taking on the cultural zeitgeists of her time and fighting against them. To then follow that genre-breaking song up with something that any other female artist in her genre could sing just seems to me to be a shame. It seems to me like it’s playing things safe.

Indeed, that’s the problem I have with the whole song. The similar instrumentation, the clumsy way that the “Bass” references are inserted into the lyrics, the fact that the video uses the same pastel colours and mise-en-scene style that All About That Bass did – I feel like the entirety of this song is designed to make me think of Meghan Trainor’s last one. Which implies to me that the record company either a) didn’t think that this would become a hit on it’s own, or b) don’t think Meghan Trainor is going to have another hit without linking it to her last one. It seems to me like they’re all playing it safe because they don’t trust the material to stand on it’s own. Of course, it doesn’t stand on it’s own, because it’s derivative and boring. But it’s derivative and boring because it’s playing it safe. It’s playing it safe because it doesn’t believe it can stand up on it’s own. It’s caught in a vicious cycle; it’s not it’s own song anymore. Releasing this song after All About That Bass just seems to me to have been a big mistake.

The real shame of all this is that, in many ways, Lips Are Moving is a much better song than All About That Bass. The music is a lot faster which makes it more immediate; add that to some pretty good insults in the lyrics (“You’re full of something but it ain’t love”) alongside Trainor’s trademark confident delivery and you have a song that manages to pull a surprisingly good punch. I don’t hear the underserved smugness of All About That Bass here, I instead hear completely deserved righteousness. When taken on it’s own as a single musical entity, it works.

It is just a shame that the song’s genuinely good aspects are unable to escape the shadow cast by Trainor’s last hit. Hopefully her album Title and her future singles will have a bit more of their own personality to them (by the way, naming anything “Title” is never as clever as you think it is); otherwise Meghan Trainor will just become the woman who sang All About That Bass and a few minor hits that sound just like it. One Hit Wonderdom is a genuine possibility based on this track; it’ll be interesting to see if we even remember it come the end of the year.

So goodbye-bye-bye, bye-bye-bye.