(t5!) My Year In Lists 2006: Singles! 15 to 11
I desperately wanted to hate this ever since Brandon Flowers had claimed that Sam’s Town, this single’s album, is “one of the best albums in the past 20 years”. Despite Flowers’ hubristic endorsement, Sam’s Town isn’t even the best this year. However, “When You Were Young” is so undeniably colossal that it’s impossible not to be enveloped by it. The vehement choruses they’re prominent for exists here also, but it’s more inspired by Springsteen than Morrissey. There are still remnants of orchestral Hot Fuss synths and they are still precisely haunting along with the crisp guitars and E Street rhythm. It seems that I have to wait until the next release to completely hate The Killers since I still can’t help but sing along with this one.
Of the eight schools of magic from Dungeons & Dragons (the inspiration for Owen Pallett’s second full-length), this title track is related to the School of Illusion. Here, you have Pallett falling in love with a video game character, a courageous pixilated accomplice to his fight against spell-casting wizards and sword-wielding monsters. But, tragically deceived by an impression of misleading affection, he was turned down by the fictional stud. Indeed, an ambitious tale of escapism; but soundtracked by lavishly arranged majestic strings, parading horns, and dramatic percussions, the extravagance of it all provides a channel for your own escape from reality. Just be careful not to be carried away by the illusions Pallet creates.
Jeremy Greenspan’s day isn’t off to a great start. Just moments after shaking off the cobwebs from gallivanting around town the night before, he got dumped quicker than he could ask “how do you like your eggs?” And rejected simply for being “too young”? That leaves you feeling inadequate. But Greenspan isn’t inadequate here; minimal, maybe. Perfect amounts of flickering keyboard arpeggios and guitar cadence allow plenty of space for his melody to plea for a second chance. Even the Britney gasps and the repeated “too young’s” enliven the already massive beat, but they never drown out Green
span’s soulful vocals. Here’s to Greenspan never finding true love because he’s obviously at his best when abandoned.
It’s already been well-documented that there is nothing stark about the Guillemots. So it’s expected that when they decide to tackle love songs, they’re going to do it to the most stratospheric degree. It begins with Fyfe Dangerfield professing his love atop soft drums and looping synthesizers. The vows are meaningless, but that’s the point: love throws sense out the window. Love plants you into a world where there’s poetry in “empty coke cans” and majesty in “burnt out caravans”. By approaching it with unabashed delivery and melody, Dangerfield was able to interpret the sensation without sounding cheesy. I don’t know how the first 42 versions of this song sounded, but this one is perfection.
“Everybody look at me,” commands Nelly with a chilling tribal chant. She arrives with a deafening combination of tom-heavy marching band percussions and synth brass. With Timbaland, the King Midas of production, by her side, she can do no wrong. If “Promiscuous” introduced a shift from Folklore Nelly to Loose Nelly, “Maneater” obliterated her old persona from your memory. It’s more massive, more ruthless, more stylishly bratty, more nymphomaniacal. And the chorus, fortified by the euphoric backing vocals, is more mesmerizing than the Nelly-Timbaland duet. By the end, with its triumphant conclusion of synth fireworks, it guarantees that no female artist today is more relevant.
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