Now 107, the final Now release of 2020.
I’m not sure what the cover is really, it’s a load of multicoloured shiny, silver things. I mean, they look vaguely like they could be Christmas decorations from a distance, I suppose.
Track 1 on CD1 is a song which spent 6 weeks at number one, pop-R&B-trap song ‘positions’ by Ariana Grande. The video has her as the President of the USA, and no doubt was intended to nod to the fact there was a presidential election in America this November. As we know now Joe Biden won. His Vice President will be Kamala Harris, making her the first female Vice President. There hasn’t been a female President of the USA as of yet, Ariana Grande’s look in the video is modelled after Jackie Kennedy, the wife of and First Lady to John F. Kennedy. Jackie Kennedy is arguably the most famous First Lady, she’s certainly the one who was most a style icon, so I can see why they chose to model Ariana Grande’s Presidential look on her.
Ariana Grande is also on ‘Rain On Me’, a collaboration with Lady Gaga. I absolutely loved this track! It was an international hit, and is another “getting through tough times” song, with imagery of rainstorms, thunder and tsunami. With that, and the prescence of two big stars like Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande, it’s obviously very epic, but it’s also on the theme of acceptance. The line “I’d rather be dry, but at least I’m alive” is accepting the bad situation and looking at the postitive, but the song also has a sense of accepting that you’re going to get through it! It’s not so much as a fighting your way through it, it’s more of a “you’ve got this”.
My favourite song on here though is ‘my ex’s best friend’ by Machine Gun Kelly & blackbear. Machine Gun Kelly started out as a rapper, but last year he made a rock song with YUNGBLUD and Travis Barker, ‘I Think I’m OKAY’, which was my favourite song of 2019. After that song did quite well, Machine Gun Kelly wanted to do another one, and eventually made a whole album Tickets To My Downfall, which got good critical reviews and has been his highest charting album to date in many countries, even getting to number one in the US charts! Perhaps he should have been a rock act in the first place. Anyway, ‘my ex’s best friend’ is a great pop-punk tune and I like that sound might be back.
Kygo’s remix of ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’ by Tina Turner is fine, but let’s be honest, the most likely reason it happened is less due to inspiration and more due to Kygo having a huge hit last year with a remix of Whitney Houston’s version of ‘Higher Love’. “Hey, a Kygo dance mix of Whitney was a big hit, let’s have him remix a track by another old school soul diva!”. Repeat a successful formula with slightly different ingredients so it looks a bit fresher. Which, OK, fair enough, that’s just industry standard. But I don’t think it worked quite as well this time. Whitney Houston’s version of ‘Higher Love’ was an obscure gem on the Japanse version of I’m Your Baby Tonight, and the Kygo remix gave it an almost totally different modern spin. ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It?’ on the other hand is Tina Turner’s biggest hit, it’s already been covered, sampled and remixed a few times, and the Kygo remix doesn’t even sound that different from the original other than adding some electro-dance elements. Don’t get me wrong, the Kygo remix of it is decent, but it is a bit of a diminishing return.
This does give me the opportunity to mention one of my favourite bits of pop music trivia though. Tina Turner’s version of ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It?’ wasn’t technically the original. The first act to record it were none other than British pop act Bucks Fizz, of winning Eurovision in 1981 with a skirts ripping off performance of ‘Making Your Mind Up’ fame. Not only that, but ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It?’ was originally offered to and turned down by Cliff Richard! This is an occassion where our universe dropped lucky, because the song worked so beautifully for Tina Turner and was perfomred so well by her, while it didn’t quite work as a Bucks Fizz song (and I can’t imagine a Cliff Richard version would have worked at all!)
Tina Turner has also been on club/dance tracks before. Her 1999 album Twenty Four Seven and the hit single from that album ‘When The Heartache Is Over’ had some dance music influence, and the lyrics from the chorus of that song were interpolated on a dance track ‘Love On My Mind’ by Freemasons feat. Amanda Wilson in 2005.
‘Diamonds’ by Sam Smith is vocally strong, and well-produced. I’m not sure what else to say about it. I wouldn’t say it’s generic in the way ‘Giants’ by Dermot Kennedy is. That song also is good vocally and well-produced, but it feels like a million other songs, not least ‘Giant’ by Calvin Harris and Rag’n’Bone Man. I’d say ‘Diamonds’ is probably of higher quality than that, but it’s still feels perhaps a little too familiar.
With the pandemic, animated music videos have become more common. While animation can be time consuming, I suppose it allows you to do whatever you want, pretty much anything you can imagine and draw. There are practical and technological limits of course, but with social distancing restictions I think that means there are less at the moment than what you’d get with live action.
The video for ‘my future’ by Billie Eilish is absolutely gorgeous! It’s an animated video directed by Australian artist Andrew Onorato, featuring a bright white full moon, raindrops on leaves and on a spider’s cobweb, sparkly stars and lovely blue tint before a sunrise where plants grow quickly.
‘Hallucinate’ by Dua Lipa has an animated video directed by Lisa Tan. It is a bright, psychedelic video where the animation is in the style of 1920s/1930s but also based on present day emojis. It has stars, robots, flowers, unicorns, peaches, aubergines, honeypots, ice cream cones, fireworks, hearts, dolphins, rabbits, dogs, elephants, bats, a giant evil clown, skeletons, rainbows, a planet shaped like a disco glitterball – all sorts really!
Dua Lipa has another track on here, the DaBaby remix of ‘Levitating’, the video of which was created in partnership with TikTok.
‘Tick Tock’ by Clean Bandit feat. Mabel & 24KGoldn isn’t anything to do with TikTok, though you can’t help suspecting it was given that title in the hope it will trend on TikTok! It’s a mediocre Clean Bandit song, which would have been massive in the late 2010s, not so much now.
As well as appearing on a Dua Lipa track, DaBaby is the lead artist on another song on Now 107, track 1 on CD2 to be specific. It is ‘ROCKSTAR’, which features Roddy Ricch. While it does have a bit of a guitar lick, it’s a hip hop/trap/rap track. But I think this is a case of when “rockstar” is used as a general term, the same way “popstar” is. This song did make me think of the 2002 hit ‘Rock Star’ by N.E.R.D and the 2007 track ‘Party Like A Rockstar’ by the Shop Boyz though, which were also hip hop tracks, but slightly in the rock genre as well.
The guitar sounds seems like it might be coming back into US hip hop a little, such as in ‘Mood’ by 24KGoldn feat. iann dior. Like DaBaby’s ‘ROCKSTAR’, ‘Mood’ was a US and UK number one single. ‘Mood’ is kind of… So Ok It’s Average, though. It’s one of those songs I like when it comes on, but I have no desire to pick it to listen to.
I recognised the sample on ‘Lasting Lover’ by Sigala feat. James Arthur as from ‘Time To Pretend’ by MGMT right away! I listened to MGMT so much in 2008. ‘Lasting Lover’ was, like ‘How To Be Lonely’ by Rita Ora, co-written by Lewis Capaldi.
‘Heather’ by Conan Gray is an unrequited love song idolising a girl named Heather – except he’s not in love with Heather – he’s in love with the boy who’s in love with Heather! He’s talking about how perfect she is but in a way that’s bitter and jealous of her. So it’s different from the well-trodden path of unrequited love songs AND songs with girl’s names in the title, not least because it isn’t heterosexual.
A song with a girl’s name in the title but from the perspective of a girlfriend who knows someone else is interested in her feller is ‘Natalie Don’t’ by RAYE. It is intended to be a modern version of ‘Jolene’ by Dolly Parton, and in fact directly references it! Also like Dolly Parton with ‘Jolene’, RAYE says ‘Natalie Don’t’ is about a real situation she was once in!
KSI is back to back on tracks 8 and 9 on CD1. Track 8 is KSI’s song with Craig David and Digital Farm Animals – ‘Really Love’, the highest charting song to date for both KSI and Digital Farm Animals, and Craig David’s highest charting song since 2005. The chorus was co-written by MNEK, and it contains a sample from ‘Do You Really Like It?’ by DJ Pied Piper and the Masters Of Ceremonies. KSI’s rap also references a lot of people, such as Ainsley Harriott, Mohammad Ali, Miley Cyrus and Kylie Minogue, who appears later on CD1 herself with the disco track ‘Magic’.
Track 9 is ‘Lighter’ by Nathan Dawe feat. KSI. It also features Ella Henderson on vocals. In fact, technically it was originally her song! It was a ballad, but she decided not to use it for her album. Nathan Dawe made the track more uptempo, and altered the pitch of the vocals – I wouldn’t have known it was Ella Henderson if it hadn’t been mentioned in the booklet! Then they got KSI to add his rap.
Internet Money is technically a record label rather than a group as such, and they have made an album full of reworked songs which they’ve had for a while, some of which were initially turned down by other artists. It looks like it’s worked out OK though, the album went top 10 in the US, and a single from it ‘Lemonade’, which features Gunna feat. Don Toliver & Nav, made it to number one here in the UK! (It got to number 6 in the US). The video has a goldfish bowl filled with lemonade, which also has a whole ecosystem of fish, turtles, dolphins and sharks, plus rappers using an underwater car and mermaids.
UK garage was quite big back when I was a teenager in the late ’90s/early 2000s, and trends tend to go round in circles, it seems like it might be back in style again. ‘West Ten’ is one of the 2010s UK garage hits, a duet with two big British pop-R&B stars of the moment AJ Tracey and Mabel.
Following the tragic death of rapper Pop Smoke in February this year, he has had a lot of posthumous hits. ‘What You Know About Love’ reached number 4 here in the UK, and it samples Ginuwine’s 2001 track ‘Differences’.
‘Four Notes – Paul’s Tune’ has quite a backstory. Paul Harvey is a former music teacher who now sadly has dementia. He was given four random notes with which to compose a song from, and he did. It became a viral video when Paul’s son Nick posted it online, BBC Radio 4 found out about it around the time of World Alzheimer’s Day, and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra recorded a version arranged by Daniel Whibley, it was released as a single with the proceeds being divided between two charities, the Alzheimer’s Society and Music For Dementia.
‘OK Not To Be OK’ by Marshmello & Demi Lovato was made in partnership with suicide prevention organisation Hope For The Day. I don’t know if ‘OK Not To Be OK’ had any inspiration from ‘Who You Are’ by Jessie J, but “It’s OK not to be OK” was a very memorable line from that song, and while ‘Who You Are’ wasn’t about suicide prevention per se, Jessie J has said that at least one person wrote to her saying they almost commited suicide but that song stopped them doing so. So yeah, sometimes pop songs can make a difference.
According to the Now 107 booklet, Becky Hill hasn’t even released her debut album yet despite releasing several singles since 2014. I assumed that the “upcoming” album would be one of those compilation ones dance acts sometimes do, but looking into it she has already released one of those, called Get To Know You, so it looks like this new one will be more like a studio album.
Keith Urban is a country singer, despite the surname. As far as I know, there isn’t a rapper named Rural out there, though. ‘One Too Many’ is a duet with Pink, and is actually the first time Keith Urban has gone top 40 in the UK singles chart. He only just got in though, as it peaked at number 40. Still, he can now say he’s had a UK top 40 single.
Gary Barlow and Michael Bublé doing Latin Pop? Apparently so, with the track ‘Elita’. It does feature Sebastián Yatra though, who is a big Latin popstar.
I’m not sure which is more annoying, ‘Sweet Melody’ by Little Mix which goes “do-do-do-der-der-do-der-do”, or ‘Take You Dancing’ by Jason Derulo which goes “da-da-da-da-da-da”.
I really can’t stand ‘You Broke Me First’ by Tate McRae either. Yet another song which became a hit due to TikTok and yet another reality TV contestant (the US version of So You Think You Can Dance, if you’re wondering). But that’s not why I don’t like it. The song is so dreary, feeble and whiney! It’s like the John Lewis advert cover of itself.
Given that ‘WAP’ by Cardi B feat. Meghan Thee Stallion was such a huge hit you can see why it was on Now 107, but the problem is that the song’s whole thing is about being explicitly sexual, so it had to be a heavily edited version which ended up on here – so you can also see why it’s in the lowly position of the final track on CD2.
Now albums by their nature are a mixed bag, but I think Now 107 came off as more incoherent than most. There are a couple of songs on here I really liked, but I wasn’t a fan of this album as a whole. It also somehow had more acts appearing more than once than Now 105. By all means buy Now 107 as a Christmas present if you want, but I don’t think it’s one of the better ones.
headphonedaydreams 