Blood Red Shoes - 'You Bring Me Down'
Pop music: It's not just there for the good things in life. I mean you're not in a state of perpetual bliss, are you? You don't walk around all the livelong day with a big daffy smile on your face, winking at the old ladies in the bus queue, pinching the cheek of a passing baby (which is easier than you'd imagine, given recent advances in stretchy nappy technology), and whistling, do you? No, you don't. Even Keith Chegwin has his emo* moments, so why shouldn't pop music, eh?
And make no mistake, this is pop music in the exact same way that Girls Aloud or McFly are pop music. It's all in the riffs and the shimmy and the pout.
Riffs are for backbone, you can't make a decent pop song without a good riff or two, even if they are played on not-guitars. Blood Red Shoes have icepick-sharp, shiny, modern riffs, played on one guitar (you can breathe easy, rocksnobs) by a GIRL (haha! Just kidding!), which they love so much they refuse to allow them to be sullied by any other instruments besides drums (that's it, rocksnobs, in through the nose, out through the mouth..).
They also have that very important shimmy thing, for the glam factor. This is crucial in all great pop, from Little Richard to Kylie and back again. It's not about being sexual, otherwise Paris Hilton would be a great pop star, and Lord alone knows she is not. It's about being confident enough to lose yourself in your onstage persona, but with a slight wink to it, as if you're also well aware that you are only a singer, on a stage, making noises. X-Factor contestants are always far too terrified to shimmy properly.
And then there's the pout. The pout is what sells you as a performer. The pout is how you let your audience know that you really MEAN what you're singing about. In hard rock and hip hop, the pout is about looking as angry as you possibly can, and spasming violently in time to the music. In folk, it's about looking beatific and peaceful, as if you've got a telepathic link to mother nature herself and nothing can possibly bother you (apart from the death of your first-born in a cholera epidemic in The Past).
In pop, it's often about looking aroused, which is fine because so many pop songs are about sex, particularly about the moment when you want to convince someone you really do rather fancy them, like, LOADS.
Blood Red Shoes are not trying to convince you they fancy you. Not in this song, at least. No they're trying to do to you what Kate Nash did to her fella in 'Foundations', pluck up the courage to dump your worthless ass. It's three in the morning, they know it's over, but for some reason they just haven't quite managed to tell you yet. The pout is what sells this as musical truth, rather than an in-character song ABOUT someone who wants to dump someone.
So there we have it, riffs, shimmy and pout. No emo moment is complete without them.
Download: Out now
CD Released: February 4th
(Fraser McAlpine)
*The Â鶹Éç would like to point out that use of the word 'emo' does NOT imply a musical style in this context. It doesn't really imply a musical style in ANY context. But particularly not this one.
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