And THAT is how we make a pop song.

I’m sorry but when did Take That become this good? Witness, if you will, exhibit A:

Now, see, I quite liked Take That the first time round. This is not cool, because I was a 14-year-old boy, and as a 14-year-old boy I was meant to be spending my lunchtimes in music practice rooms playing “Come As You Are” on a nylon-stringed acoustic and pretending I’d loved Nirvana since Bleach. (This is so far from true that I actually had to wiki what Nirvana’s first album was just then.) And whyever would a sensible boy want to do that, when the world also contained Relight My Fire, a song with literally only one thing wrong with it, and that’s the even better original version?

Because everyone would think him a big fat steaming gay bear, that’s why. So I kept it quiet and learnt the words to Smells Like Teen Spirit, like you were supposed to, even the bit at the end of the chorus, which was weird. “An albino, my libido” my bottom.

Anyway, though, I digress. Point is, Take That Mk I, with their stomping Barry Manilow covers and absurdly catchy self-referential musings on the nature of boy-band fame, were, at their best, BRILLIANT, and anyone who doesn’t think so needs to get over grunge already.

Then they came back and it was sort of nice, mid-30s mum and dad music. I’m sorry but it was. Autotune had been invented, so you could no longer hear the endearing amateurish wobbliness of their voices, which I reckon was part of the charm first time round (a bit like how the Beatles* were never that great at their instruments, and we love them for it, surely?). Also there was a lot more money being thrown at it, and all the production was terribly well compressed and balanced, and al the notes were balanced, and it was all just a bit polite.

(*Ringo in particular, love ‘im.)

Not that there haven’t been some cracking songs. Shine is nigh on the most fun your ears can have in 3’34″. On Beautiful World there’s a lovely folky little song, sung by Jason of all people, called Wooden Boat, which has the prettiest chorus you could wish for. But, I dunno, I think it’s the Autotune that bugs me really. But that’s for another day.

Because today is about saying OHMYDAYS this new song’s good. Here’s a list of reasons why.

• Yada yada Robbie’s back etc. it’s all been said but it’s a JOY to see a wild boy settle down and make peace with his past, even if he does make a mint out of it.
• Gary Barlow writes an amazing pop song on a good day, doesn’t he? Proper varied tune in the verse, nice build-up to the chorus and then, as one reviewer put it, a chorus “that would make even Wembley Stadium feel cramped“.
• It’s got a key change! Not a Westlife, move-it-up-a-tone-and-get-off-our-stools keychange, but an actual, proper, I’m-Gary-and-I’ve-had-music-theory-lessons modulation! Not enough of those in pop these days. Pete Waterman used to do them (there’s three per verse in I Should Be So Lucky) but they seem to have fallen out of fashion.
• Gary’s face at 1’59″ as he’s trying to row. Hilarious but understandable.
• Get a load of the lungs on Williams and Barlow between 2’19″ and 2’37″. There was a period where I thought Robbie’d smoked himself out of a voice. Apparently not.
• The fact that they sound northern enough to rhyme “no-one understood” with “more of them than uz”. If everyone sang in their own accents pop music would be a much lovelier place (cf. Madness, Abba, Arctic Monkeys, Proclaimers etc.).
• They don’t stop rowing. They don’t stop rowing, people! That’s what I call sticking it to the man. Not stopping rowing. Yeah! Genuinely, when I first saw that moment – little shiver down my spine. The thing is, you can’t make big statements in your videos about perseverance and keeping on keeping on and such like when you’re 20. I love that one of the biggest pop acts in the country is singing and making videos about entering middle age rather than churning out repetitive songs about clubbing.
• The growly bass at 3’34″.

Um… yeah, that’s it. Well there’s eight reasons for you, right there, in roughly chronological video order. Well done boys. It’s not the cheeriest of songs or, in some ways, the cheeriest of videos, but I think, for what it is, it’s rather a triumph. Apparently the new album is an utterly bonkers electroglam techno stomping apocalyptic sci fi epic. That could be amazing, or rubbish. It’s in with a decent chance of the former, though, if this is anything to go by.

Advertisement