Christian Cohle – Oh It Must Be Nice
My friend makes toys using a 3D printer and the Amidon fabric that makes you want to order chips. They come out looking beautiful, and kids want to buy them at events. They’re cheap to make, cheap to buy, and easy to enjoy. But they won’t last for a long time. But nobody will mind, you reckon.
The exact same economic principles are used when financing a pop album. That’s why the vast majority of Billboard #1s are only remembered through a filter of nostalgia. Nobody actually wants to listen to them once the fabric’s started to break down and come off.
What has always been interesting, to me, however, are records made by pop stars who find themselves on the brink and want to use pop songcraft conventions in an original way. They’re artists like Christian Cohle. These sorts of songs, I am convinced, can be enjoyed for decades after they’re made.
There’s a pop song, for sure, at the heart of Christian Cohle’s” Oh It Must Be Nice,” but you’ll have to dig really deep to get to it. Interestingly, Cohle chooses to sing this like Bryan Ferry, making a 1980s pop record. Cohle emphasises the heartbreak as he sings about forcing himself to be happy for a friend’s success in their personal life, something that he craves for himself. It’s a strange pop sound, and one that will last.
Vilde – Isle
There’s not a great deal of manoeuvring when it comes to classic pop music. Stuck inside an office with record execs, or barricaded inside a music studio with producers, songwriters quickly find out that they can only use a few sets of chord progressions, that songs are either about falling in love or breaking up, and that nobody can dance to anything other than 4/4 grooves.
That’s why the artists who manage to create something that sounds special while using these constraints are truly to be lauded. The majority of artists, however, either accept that they must work within the aforementioned confines or they pack up their bags and search for styles that afford more freedom. Electronic dance music, for many years, and for many creative musicians, has been that place.
Vilde’s “Isle,” on the one hand, takes inspiration from mid-1990s trip-hop and electronica beats and textures. But the artist pushes sounds into unexpected territory, essentially taking the pop song format and misshaping it into something that defies conventional formats. It’s a strategy that works because the unusual choices make you prick up your ears, and the emotion of the music is helped to come true. The great songwriters are still learning to program beats and getting many of their ideas from dance clubs.
