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deadcactuswalking · 6 months

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REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 04/11/2023 (Taylor Swift's '1989' TV/Halloween/The Beatles' Final Single)

Content warning: some language

…Taylor Swift. Welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS!

Rundown

It’s an interesting week this week, for sure. It’s kind of both more and less busy than it appears at first glance. A lot of that is to do with Taylor Swift but we won’t be talking about her for a long time - instead, we start our episode always with the notable dropouts - oh, Taylor’s other songs dropped out to make room for her new ones? Of course they did. We do bid a brief farewell to “Style”, “Cruel Summer” (from the top 10 as well!) and “Anti-Hero”, but the latter two will be back in no time and otherwise, we have plenty of songs dropping out of the UK Top 75 - which is what I cover - after spending at least five weeks in the region or peaking in the top 40. We bid adieu to “Angry” by the Rolling Stones, “Got Me Started” by Troye Sivan, Nines’ “Daily Duppy” freestyle video, “I KNOW ?” by Travis Scott, “Cheat on Me” by Burna Boy featuring Dave, “Used to be Young” by Miley Cyrus and “Riptide” by Vance Joy - that one’ll be back soon enough, not sure about the others.

There’s no need to concern though because we have a disproportionate amount of returns, especially consider there is a singular notable gain, “Lil Boo Thang” by Paul Russell at #52. As for our returns, we have “Kill Bill” by SZA back at #70 and the typical Halloween re-entries, which seemed to perform a bit better this year for whatever reason, maybe because the charts are weak, and we do actually have two new Halloween songs debuting, but as for the re-entries we have “Somebody’s Watching Me” by Rockwell featuring uncredited guest vocals from Michael Jackson at #44, “Monster Mash” by Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers at #29, “Ghostbusters” by Ray Parker, Jr. at #21 and of course “Thriller” at #20. We also have the bizarre return of “Teenage Dirtbag” by Wheatus at #38, which thanks to a TikTok trend and a recent 20th anniversary tour, as well as a sped-up version being released last year, has finally gained enough traction to come back to the top 40. It’s a great song… kind of, so I’m not really complaining about it. In fact, I say this is revenge for when it was stuck at #2 for two weeks in 2001, blocked off by Atomic Kitten’s “Whole Again”, which is a fine enough song but really could have given Wheatus one week.

As for our top five, well, this is a family show, but Taylor Swift doesn’t want it to be, clearly. Her re-recording of 2014’s 1989 of course hits #1 as you’d expect, and we have three songs from her in the top five, starting with “Slut!” at #5. Thankfully there are no re-recordings that charted, instead these are all the new “From the Vault” tracks. Sure, “Strangers” by Kenya Grace is at #4 and “Prada” by casso, RAYE and D-Block Europe is at #3 but then we’re back to Taylor with “Now that We Don’t Talk” debuting at #2 and “Is it Over Now?” at the very top, becoming Taylor’s third #1. It’s the Taylor show way later on however as we have one of the more interesting batches of new songs I think we’ve ever had. Try and put these songs together in one room and see what happens.

NEW ARRIVALS

#74 - “Heart Still Beating” - Nathan Dawe and Bebe Rexha

Produced by Nathan Dawe and Punctual

So we start with a pretty normal introduction to our list of new songs, that being a pretty typical house track with Bebe Rexha on vocals and for what it’s worth, it’s pretty well done. The chill-out atmosphere with the looming synth bass and beeping is designed damn well, especially with the trickling patter of keys against the 90s house percussion that builds up into a really fascinating pre-drop, that creates a strange tension with itself so you don’t expect it when the hurricane actually makes landfall on that ugly but undeniable synth flourish. I would have probably gone for a vocalist who isn’t as annoying as Bebe Rexha can be, especially when her vocals are taken to weird lengths and inflections in the second verse, but she can belt as effectively as she needs to when she does need to, and the song’s ultimately a pretty simple copy-and-paste trick even if that one trick is done very well, so it’s in and out. It’s far from an unpleasant experience when it’s in, though, I’ll give it that.

#73 - “MONEY ON THE DASH” - Elley Duhé and Whethan

Produced by Whethan and Dru DeCaro

Whethan is one of those artists that I think we probably touched upon on this show but I have no real way of knowing because he seems to be nowhere and everywhere at once, and he doesn’t often make appearances on the pop charts. Regardless, he’s an EDM producer that has remix and production credits for days and out of his solo work, I’m pretty sure I’ve only heard his song with Yeat so I have no idea how he’ll work with… someone’s favourite Tate McRaesque singer, Elley Duhé, who has definitely charted before, although not in much capacity. This song is actually from the start of this year but has just charted and what the Hell is that vocal inflection? I don’t know who told Ms. Duhé she could do a deadpan semi-rap where she decides to have an episode whenever she says the words, “control”, “high”, “dice” or “slow”, but it’s so incessantly annoying that it basically just goes full circle and becomes catchy. Whethan’s production helps here given that he and DeCaro have an almost deceitfully simple slap house bass track that seems to show all its tricks to you in the first verse - or hook, she doesn’t actually say anything else - but there’s something else there, specifically this weird respite with flubbing synths and a soaring acoustic guitar line that just continues to develop on itself with a very tropical-feeling build-up that is rendered absolutely irrelevant by the fact it returns to the plodding bass drop with no fanfare at all and no elements of that mix remaining. I can’t tell if it’s a genius way of playfully implementing the attitude of a DJ mix set into a track or if it’s just a troll but either way… I kind of groove with this one. I don’t know to what capacity, but I feel like it’s just weird enough to get a pass. Watch this space, I could see it growing on me.

#55 - “Spooky, Scary Skeletons” - Andrew Gold

Produced by Andrew Gold

Alright, so this year we get two new songs added into the recurring Halloween canon, making their first entry into the top 75, starting with Andrew Gold’s 1996 novelty single “Spooky, Scary Skeletons”. The late Andrew Gold was already long past his prime when this was released. He had his intermittent top 40 hits in the 70s and 80s but this song is taken straight from a children’s novelty album he made specifically for the holiday. Gold wanted the nine songs on that album to fill a void that hadn’t been filled for Halloween songs that were both fun and scary. Interpolating a piece of classical music by Chopin, the song has always just been a bit of a goof. There’s a little narrative at play at least, with the skeletons who just want to socialise, and the melodies are cute if a bit incessant and jabbering. Now the story of the song’s success is a really nice one, mostly because it originates in a really cute place: a 1998 throw-away Halloween VHS by Disney that adorably paid up the song with their iconic 1920s short The Skeleton Dance. Hilariously, the Disney version didn’t go viral - a recreation by a YouTuber who could not find the original did, and thanks to its memehood, the song took on a new life in the 2010s that it never really had before, partly because of just how well the song fit the video but also it fits with the quirky, random sense of 2010s humour that emerged around this time. It also fit electronic beats, as an EDM remix of the track by The Living Tombstone is probably the more well-known version nowadays. It’s terrible, but of course it is, and it helped propel the song to where it is now: frankly, a Halloween classic. Just as cute as the Disney video is the one of a man dressed up in some kind of pumpkin-fitted morph suit that is from a very obscure Nebraskan local broadcast and just ended up in the hands of the Internet who fused it with the viral track and made something incredibly special with it. I may not really like the song, but the story of its success is a pretty fun oddity and whilst it’s a shame Gold didn’t live to see it, it has granted more attention to his work especially in recent years due to TikTok and a vinyl re-release of said Halloween album, now including the remix. Now, perhaps, quite unfittingly after a song about skeletons, a posthumous single.

#42 - “Now and Then” - The Beatles

Produced by Paul McCartney and Giles Martin

Now check this: not only are we getting a song from the Goddamn Beatles, but we’re getting it only a day after it released, thanks to great streaming and expected but still impressive sales. This song has only been out for around a day and a band like The Beatles has flourished on the longevity of their music, so it almost feels wrong to comment this early, even if the song in some form has been around for a while. Lennon wrote this very simple song in the late 1970s. It’s a wispy hiss of a ballad that he never developed on during his lifetime. In 1994, Paul McCartney found himself in possession of Lennon demo tapes, and the three then-remaining Beatles recorded a couple songs using them. “Now and Then” never made the light of day, mostly because George Harrison wasn’t a fan, but decades later, the main problem of vocal quality has largely been fixed thanks to AI technology they’d already used to isolate conversations in their 2021 Get Back documentary. You can vaguely tell that machine learning was used, sure, but it was not to create a synthetic recording and rather improve the quality of an already existing one. There’s also a level of love-letter attention to detail here that really convinces me this isn’t just a cash-in: Paul starts the song with a countdown like he starts the first song in their catalogue, but he doesn’t have the energetic 1-2-3-4 this time around, just a steady 1-2 and a faint 3-count. The bridge actually takes harmonies from dense vocal takes George Harrison did for some of their classic tracks, ones you wouldn’t really be able to notice in their original form because of the sheer amount of layers and takes a lot of those songs have, and places them on top of each other in this new recording to make sure he had extra presence on the track, including a tribute to Harrison in the form of a George-style slide guitar solo from Paul. This song definitely feels special, even if it doesn’t really feel like much of a song. It’s a fleeting final moment, ending The Beatles with a feathery ballad, but it’s still a beautiful one. The core “song” is essentially still in demo form here, with Lennon’s frail, depressed vocal take standing out as particularly sad when it has the reverb and echo against a backdrop of melancholy pianos and an absolutely gorgeous string section. I have already listened to this song a LOT and this has been what’s grown on me the most: just the absolute despair in this insecure, paranoid love song. Ringo Starr’s drums click with little oomph until the first chorus, where they finally ramp up alongside the strings, and Paul starts harmonising with his long-passed friend, “now and then, I miss you - now and then, I want you to be there for me, always to return to me”. Whilst never meant to be, the lyrics find themselves easily re-contextualised in the context of the legacy of The Beatles, and it’s pretty damn heartbreaking, especially with a much older Paul having his voice back up a literal dead man’s final recordings. That soaring solo is also astonishing in how it slides off the baroque instrumentation, and the strings roll back into the harmonies that sound like they were made for the song even if Harrison had originally recorded them for other sessions. It all lines up incredibly well - for an after-the-fact job, the mixing work is intricate, and there’s something profound about it ending with Ringo in the distance appreciating that it was a good take. I expect this to gain next week but after that, I doubt this’ll stick around, or give them an 18th #1 for that matter, but it’s an excellent little joy to have while it’s here, so let’s savour every moment of it.

#14 - “This is Halloween” - Danny Elfman

Produced by Danny Elfman, Bob Badami and Richard Kraft

Now this is the second Halloween song newly entering, and frankly the story is a lot less interesting. It’s the opening theme for a Halloween movie. It’s an incessantly catchy song performed by the citizens of the film’s zany setting conceived by Tim Burton in 1993’s The Nightmare Before Christmas which I have not seen since I was a child. I mean, it’s more accessible than the songs from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, I guess, but it’s kind of funny how this is the highest-peaking Halloween song this week given that it’s the most on-the-nose of the Halloween tracks but also the one perhaps least understandable if you don’t know the context given the amount of characters performing and to me, this has always been a fun novelty wherein I’m just not in on the joke. The song that the Official Charts Company credits also doesn’t really exist. There is not a version credited to Danny Elfman anywhere - there’s the version by “the citizens of Halloween”, which is the film version then tributed re-recordings by Panic! at the Disco and… Marilyn Manson. Well, isn’t that the scariest thing about this holiday? Get that man away from children’s media.

#5 - “Slut!” (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault) - Taylor Swift

Produced by Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff and Patrik Berger

Welp, now we’re in Taylor Territory and I will try to keep it brief - after all, these are barely even singles. These are deluxe tracks she cut off the original and waited damn near a decade to re-record and re-release, the fact that they’re being promoted and streamed is more a by-product of them being Taylor Swift songs rather than on the merit of them being, you know, songs. This was the intended single - things didn’t really work out, more on that later - and I should warn you, I don’t like 1989 that much to begin with. It has some of her best singles but is also much less sonically cohesive than it should be and has some of her all-time worst songs, some of which were actually improved in this re-recording. This is still a finished song though, and a pretty decent one too, with Taylor sarcastically convicting herself of the “crime” of being lovestruck with a guy and losing her mind about him, but with the acknowledgement - and looming threat - of how the media and society as a whole treats women and their sexual relationships. You can kind of tell she wrote this before she started swearing because the title drop is so faint and sounds borderline accidental with her typical breathy delivery amidst an expectedly reverb-drenched synthpop instrumental. The harmonies in the pre-chorus are particularly beautiful and whilst I really don’t like the flat-feeling percussion, I understand it kind of comes with the material as far as it comes to indie-infused pop from the mid-2010s. For a song called “Slut!”, it does a lot to make itself sound kind of cute and bouncy, and I can appreciate that dissonance, especially on the oddly glitched outro which is a pretty nice surprise by the end of the track, which does kind of run its course at that point. Anyway, next.

#2 - “Now that We Don’t Talk” (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault) - Taylor Swift

Produced by Taylor Swift and Jack Antonoff

Continuing the relationship story, we have a post-breakup track where Taylor reminisces but honestly most just bitches about this guy that she can no longer know the inner workings of because they don’t talk anymore. This one’s just fine. The lyrics have a similar level of detail but there are also just less lyrics to think about, and her falsetto in the chorus, as well as her generally staccato delivery, is kind of grating against a particularly rubbery synthpop backing that feels much more like an 80s pastiche than the other vault tracks. I guess she just really wanted to replicate the feel of the original album with this one. That’s not a compliment.

#1 - “Is It Over Now?” (Taylor’s Version) (From the Vault) - Taylor Swift

Produced by Taylor Swift and Jack Antonoff

Now this is what the fans essentially chose as the single, and I can see why because this is fantastic. From the slightly off-beat echoing vocal loops in the beginning of the track that seem to collude around this faint very 80s synth propulsion to the contradicting lyrical detail, anxiety is ridden through this confessional track about mutual infidelity taking place at the very end of a dying relationship. The drums have a real power to them, coming in alongside a bright synth flare that really hits hard in that pre-chorus, and the way that Taylor’s vocals handle the wordy, off-rhythm lyrics is really interesting, it’s like she’s constantly doing damage control for her own song, which devolves into bitter half-rapping with some of the best vocal takes I’ve ever heard from Taylor. This is what all of Midnights should have sounded like - Hell, it doesn’t even sound like it came from 1989, it sounds straight out of her recent work. Maybe it was just a timeless track, but I find it very difficult to imagine that Taylor - or Antonoff for that record - passed on what would be an absolute slam-dunk of a single nine years later. Either way, it’s here now, it’s excellent and we’ll see how long it lasts. I have a feeling it’ll be longer than we expect.

Conclusion

Well, ultimately, like I said, it was a very interesting week and honestly, a pretty great one where I’m excluding the Halloween tracks on the principle of novelty - they function less as real songs than even the Christmas tracks - but liked pretty much everything else, except Taylor Swift’s “Now that We Don’t Talk” which does get the Worst of the Week but batting 2 for 3 is not that bad at all, and she grabs the Honourable Mentions with both “Slut!” and especially “Is it Over Now?”. The Best of the Week… I mean it wasn’t ever a competition, was it? It goes to “Now and Then” by The Beatles as you could see from a mile away. Anyways, we start the holiday season with practically the next episode, with Taylor acting a send-off to… normal music, so be prepared for that. For now though, thank you for reading, goodbye to Matthew Perry - we’ll try to keep it down - and I’ll see you next week!

#uk singles chart #pop music #song review #halloween #nightmare before christmas #danny elfman #taylor swift #1989 taylor's version #1989 vault tracks #andrew gold #the beatles #now and then #elley duhe #whethan #bebe rexha #nathan dawe

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