The weather has been more changeable and surprising than the beef within the rap community this week, so for some musical joy the writers of The Panoptic present what we've been grooving to this week
Follow our Singles of the Week here.
Freddie Metherell, ‘Hello?’ by Clairo feat. Rejjie Snow
Clairo is a product of the internet era. Last year, in a way common to the age of the internet, she shot to fame with a 2:58 video she posted on YouTube. A year later, and she has just dropped her first album diary 001. In Hello?, the opening track of the album, she pairs with Rejjie Snow, my favourite Irish rapper. This song an ode to romance in the online age singing “You’re just one click away from something real or fake”. Her lo-fi pop melodies perfectly fit the muted and distant message of the song. This web narrative is playful and witty. Though her detached vibes would try to fool you, a lot of work will have been put into this tune, and it has paid off. Internet fame can fade just as quickly as it is thrust upon you, but with this new album, she may just be sticking around for a while.
Brooklyn Jones, ‘Hunger’ by Florence and the Machine
Florence’s new single is unbelievably striking from the very first line when she sings “at seventeen, I started to starve myself/ I thought that love was a kind of emptiness/ And at least I understood then the hunger I felt/ And I didn’t have to call it loneliness”. I mean that is a lyric that is not only unlike anything I’ve ever heard, but also pure damn poetry. The single is in classic Florence style with her unbelievably strong and distinctive voice standing out against plucked strings, a strong beat, and chordsy piano. This song should be listened at least once through only listening to the lyrics because, they are beautiful and amazing. I’m still in awe and I’ve been listening for an hour.
Molli Mitchell, ‘Give Yourself A Try’ by The 1975
The 1975 debuted their new single ‘Give Yourself a Try’ on Annie Mac’s BBC Radio 1 show after taking a year out from performing. The track from their up and coming album ‘A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships’ is a nostalgic tale told by frontman Matty Healy targeting baby boomers and millennials hard. The track covers themes of generational divisions, adolescence, identity, love, and all things sex, drugs and rock and roll.
The typical solo guitar intro to big 1975 hits like ‘Sex’ and ‘Love Me’ is visible except this time with a twist of an electronic guitar riff that is fused with Matty’s distant sounding voice and subsequently merged with more electronic beats. It sounds distorted but it is contagious and will guarantee to get crowds dancing at future gigs.
The lyrics read like an entry into Matty’s diary that he is finally ready to share with anybody because he knows you will relate. He preaches in the opening verse “You learn a couple things when you get to my age/ Like friends don’t lie and it all tastes the same in the dark”. He goes on: “What would you say to your younger self? / Growing a beard’s quite hard/ And whiskey never starts to taste nice”.
There is one strong message throughout this track for millennials: You don’t need to try and validate yourself, just give yourself a try.
