Billionaire Rebellion x Mermaid AND Daniel Valencia Reviewed
Billionaire Rebellion x Mermaid – Man O’ War
Hamburg loves to play that damn Aqua song about plastic dolls up and down the Reeperbahn. There’s a growing love of techno remixes of Britney Spears songs in Berlin. And by most accounts, 90s and early 2000s bubblegum pop is quite in vogue in other trendy places around the world. Is this just nostalgia creeping in and forcing these comebacks?
It might be more than that. While people were busy complaining about the musical integrity of producer-driven pop back in the 1990s, they failed to recognise that the mood around them was, generally, a very positive one. That kind of pop music merely makes people remember how they would like to feel. Billionaire Rebellion and Mermaid acknowledge this.
They do something about it as well. The collab of “Man O’ War” takes the achingly sweet pop clichés of 90s dance pop, blends them with the sugary confection of Disney soundtracks, and adds a layer of modern, over-the-top production for good measure. The result is a song that might just make you think it’s all going to be alright in the end and that we’ll all end up dancing on some beach somewhere.
Daniel Valencia – Never, If Not Now
Rock n’ roll has done wonderful things for us. That’s the reason why we keep it around. It makes us cheerful when we have no reason to be. It gives us the energy we need when not even a good night’s sleep will help. And, most importantly, it gives us all something to aspire towards.
But, in doing that, it’s also done some terrible things. Rock n’ roll might have sold many of us an illusion. That illusion revolves around the idea that most of us are sitting, waiting around for something of great importance to happen and that, until then, there’s no reason to really get started on anything else.
Daniel Valencia is an optimist. It takes real guts to be an optimist these days, and even greater conviction to try to turn others into people who embrace this philosophy. “Never, If Not Now” is more than a carpe diem song, a “let the good times roll” catchphrase.
Valencia embraces the chaos and imperfection of the world and would like you to do the same. The single is charming, powered by strong melodies and an even stronger single. But there’s tragedy at the heart of all this optimism. What if today is all that you get? Are you really going to waste it waiting for something better? Come on!
