Adele–Rolling In The Deep

Released 29th November 2010
Billboard: #13
UK: #2

“Do you let your heart lead the way, or do you usually let your head make the decisions for you? Have you encountered situations whereby your mind told you one thing but your heart said otherwise?”
(extracted from http://www.great-inspirational-quotes.com/heart-quotes.html)

For me, I find that my brain and heart will both respond to a song. If they both approve of it, such as B.o.B’s Airplanes or Kanye’s All of the Lights – or if they both disapprove of it (there are way too many examples to list here), then it’s pretty straightforward; the former case will score well while the latter, poorly. However, there are situations where the head says one thing and the heart another. In most ‘dispute’ cases, the head says it’s bad or unimpressive while the heart loves it – Bruno Mars’ Grenade and Drake’s Forever are two I can think of – and these usually end up quite decent, too. Today’s song, however, is a special case. I, honestly, don’t really like this song.

In terms of vocal ability, Adele is certainly by no means lacking as she powerfully knocks through the notes of the chorus along with that backing choir – though sometimes I’m not sure I like my songs with that much power slammed into each syllable. My head can appreciate this – my heart is turned off. I’m made to recall Cee-Lo’s Fuck You but as far as I’m concerned, this is controlled power which on a head level works very, very neatly for me; I found the latter song clunky and essentially, a mess (and much worse than Rolling in the Deep). (Notice ‘neat’ is something I’d be more likely to think about cognitively than feel emotively?) It’s good but gets grating quickly.

It probably is appropriate in conveying the rage one might experience at the (opportunity as well as emotional) costs of a breakup, but I’ve got to ask myself whether this is the kind of thing I can possibly enjoy listening to frequently.  Maybe I’m more of a passive person, but breakup songs of quiet resolve and tempered anger (Heartless), or those of sadness (Jay Sean Lights Off) seem to work better.

Perhaps a comparison to Bruno Mars’ Grenade may be appropriate – these songs are both about questionable ways of dealing with break-ups. Grenade is certainly ludicrous; Rolling in the Deep’s method is questionable, but not as nonsensical – it’s left ambiguous (I’ll lay your ship bare…). It’s okay.

I think it’s the production that kills things for me though – the backing chorus is too extensive. Someone once described Willow Smith’s Whip My Hair as a “noisy” song – and it was much worse than this, but unfortunately I’d find Rolling in the Deep having a bit too much unnecessary noise in the chorus.

I don’t know. This is a hard song for me to like – I find it gets grating quickly. I can appreciate the power in her voice, BUT I cannot listen to this without getting annoyed.

OVERALL RATING = 5.5 / 10
I can see that there is power in Adele’s voice, but somehow I find the production a bit of a letdown here, and it seems to mess things up. Technically she is strong, the concept of the song is fine, but… the execution of the song somehow pisses me off.

JLS–Beat Again

Released 12 July 2009.
Billboard: NA
UK: #1.

If I review this as a reality-show-winners’ (though they actually got 2nd place) single, this on first glance looks excellent. This song is has a pretty workable R&Bish, danceable sound to it, and is probably quite a bit more memorable than almost every other reality-show-winners’ or second place singles that I can remember (off the top of my head, I can only remember Kelly Clarkson’s A Moment Like This, and… Bleeding Love, though that was actually Leona Lewis’ second single, after she covered A Moment Like This, and also partly because of Eurovision, Tom Dice’s Me And My Guitar which is also his second single after HE covered Bleeding Love!). The blue-red-green-yellow backing theme on the CD cover looks pretty nice too.

In terms of sound, the song’s a pretty harmless piece and actually quite nice to listen to; it’s not bad for casual listening. The little electro effects e.g. tune out at beginning of 2nd verse are decent, and the chorus is pretty catchy too. The bridge sounds pretty good and the ending part is nice too – all in all, it’s a reasonably refined, if standard kind of work.

However, this is not a sing I can sing at all, much like BedRock – though unlike BedRock, which I can’t sing because I would utterly laugh while failing to sing Call me Mr. Flintstone, I can make your bed rock, this one is more an issue of disgust than humour.

Damn
The doctor’s just finished telling me there’s no time
Losing you could be the end of me, and that I
Should do the things that I wanna do, how could I
Without you without you ooh ooh

In terms of cheese, this one destroys Replay completely, I think – the idea of death should one’s lover leave one is quite a bad one, I think. It seems that the persona in the song shows elements of calculated emotional blackmail too… Let’s look at the chorus.

Let’s just get back together, we should’ve never broke up
They’re telling me that my heart wont beat again
We should have stayed together, cause when you left me it stopped
They’re telling me that my heart wont beat again
Won’t beat again
Its killing me…

This is where the problem of mixing the idea of the heart as a muscle supporting the body’s functions, and as a centre of emotions and feelings comes in. If your heart stopped when she left you, she couldn’t have left you for very long, and besides it’d be nigh impossible to sing a 3:21 (or so) song. I wouldn’t really complain about this normally – the idea of having one’s heart stop can figuratively mean a shock of some sort, but the use of the doctor at the beginning of verse 1 makes it a problem, the mention of “love CPR” in the bridge, and most scarily, the sheer spookiness of verse 2:

If I died, yeah would you come to my funeral?
Would you cry?
Would you feel some regret that we didn’t try?
Or would you fall apart the same as I
And would it always haunt you baby that you missed your chance to save me?
Cos you know its not too late
(Hey hey heeeeeey)

Ouch. It’s downright disturbing.

OVERALL SCORE = 5.5 / 10
For a reality-talent-show group, I cannot deny that JLS has put forth a musically strong first effort with Beat Again. I find the song reasonably well constructed and catchy; it’s pleasing as a casual listen, but the incredibly questionable lyrics knock this one down a point or two.