Feelin’ Good, I’m the Top of the Pops

Out of the blue, Pete sent me an .mp3, with just the words, “this shit built your camp.” I figured, whatever, and put the song on, out of politeness to my buddy. It started pretty well, reminiscent of Kylie Minogue’s “Love at First Sight,” except without the obvious Discovery-era Daft Punkish-touches. A bit more cascading it was, with a full round of the lyrics before there was even a bass drum kicking, much less a bassline. But the vocals were button-cute, with lyrics about going to the club, having a drink, and, following a trope echoed in “Love at First Sight,” finding some kind of heat on the dancefloor.

The song was “Heartbeat,” by Norwegian disco diva Annie, off her recently released album Anniemal. And Pete was right, it built my camp. But he was more right than he knew.

I liked the song enough, though I felt the bass presence was a little soft, so I went and hunted down the rest of the album (not available in the US). And, well, the album is, simply, fantastic. It maybe hits on just about all of my dance-pop fetishes, veering from deep house to cheery pop—as a poster wrote on Barbelith, it’s a lot like Saint Etienne “back when they were exciting” (though I, of course, still find Saint Etienne interesting).

The first single, and what’s apparently the song all the kids are initially going crazy over (I already had the album, so this track didn’t jump out at me as well as others, but let’s pause on that), is “Chewing Gum,” which even has a weird/cute video, if you don’t mind the WM-needed proprietariness about it. I’m still not sure what the song is going for, but, lyrically, it seems to be a conversation between two women (both portrayed by Annie in the video) about how to get good guys without having to offer a commitment. Kind of a weird topic for a pop song to address, right? Still (my transcription, far better than this one):

Hey, Annie, well look at you,
Is that a new boy stuck on your shoe?
C’mon Annie, how is it so?
You’ve always got a new bubble to blow. (!)

I’m gonna tell you how it’s gonna get done:
I’m just a girl that’s all (?) chewing for fun.
You spit it up when all the flavour has gone,
Wrapping around your finger like you’re playing with gum. (?)

Oh no, oh no,
You’ve got it all wrong;
You think you’re chocolate,
When you’re chewing gum!

Oh no, oh no,
A slip of the tongue. (later: No, you’re not the one.)
You think you’re chocolate,
But you’re chewing gum!

Annie veers into some serious ancestor acknowledgment later in the song when she channels former Page 3 girl Samantha Fox by coquettishly intoning, “I don’t want to settle down, I just wanna have fun. I don’t want to settle down, I just wanna chew gum.” The general production also calls to mind the Fox era, as there doesn’t seem to be anything resembling a real drum on this track—instead, the rhythm is carried by sweeps and a bouncing keyboard bass. Yes, though, the song does not lack for a cowbell.

Is “Chewing Gum” “obviously the great lost number 1 single of 2004,” as it’s called on Barbelith? I’m not sure. The video is slowly growing more addictive, however, and one of the lines in the last verse sounds like “I’m hooked up to a Turing machine,” but what gets me is that though the song is a good way to start the album, it’s not at all the strongest track on the album.

Before hopping ahead, though, I wanted to mention other strong results. “Heartbeat,” as mentioned, is a great, deep house classic to be, with a pedal eighth note bass part in the intro, before the real(-sounding) drums carry the rest of the song. “Don’t know your name, making me feel ashamed to feel the way that I do,” is also a great line. There is, however, an overwhelming sense of optimism about this “meet the hottie on the dancefloor” track that pushes aside the melancholic production.

Melancholy covers the oldest song on the album, the some four-year-old “The Greatest Hit,” which was produced by Annie’s partner, who died soon after the song was released, from the scuttlebutt I could pull from the internet. It samples Madonna’s “Everybody,” but sharpens the staccato keyboard flourishes to give an edge most recently seen, I suppose, in the Coup’s “Five Million Ways to Kill a CEO”—the flourish is what I call the “Bop Gun” flourish, since it sounds like the laser used by Star Child in the Parliament song of the same title. It’s fun to be told that “The Greatest Hit” is four years old, since you can sort of hear it. The skips in the polyrhythm as well as the flanged parts recall another disco anthem from the era, Spiller’s “Groovejet.” But in being dependent on a Madonna hook from 1983, it’s a lot less out-and-out disco than the Spiller track.

“The Greatest Hit” is followed by the longest song on the album, “Come Together,” which opens with 1:40 of Annie singing in her ethereal (yes overused but appropriate), breathy voice over an empty chill section. After announcing the the title of the song, the track collapses into an electric piano–fueled vamp which has contemporary comparisons in, um, Fiji Mariners, and, um, Jamiroquai, but which sounds more simply like early adult Stevie Wonder, except, you know, house. Still, listening to the track is a lot of fun, since if it wasn’t recorded with a live band, it sure as hell sounds like it. The drum track keeps shifting, and there are many different fills employed throughout. It’s great fun and keeps you guessing, and, well, I sort of like to imagine that it’s what the Allman Brothers would sound like if they started now and, like, Duane was reincarnated as a chanteuse, leaving Gregg to drive the sound from the keyboards. And boy is it driven.

Other tracks hit the general wide swath of pop sensibility from various directions. “No Easy Love” is a sleazy, slippery bit with a guitar part ripped right out of Chic, but with a filtered bass more ripped right out of an ass (ouch). “Anniemal” is a silly, Erasure-esque (note the arpeggiated keyboard in the back providing the high end) bit that sounds like early Saint Etienne. “Helpless for Love” starts out whatever but picks up electro steam before toppling over its hurried, tumbling chorus. If Anniemal suffers, it’s from withholding on deadly bass parts too late–40 seconds is sort of pushing it, kids. “Always too Late” sounds too much like “Human Behaviour” out the door for me to get really into the whirrs and clicks that provide most of the actual meat of the song. Here, the vocal part is almost a little too rushed. The effect is of a song that’s way too fucking dark to be track three.

But I’m done horsing around. The best song on the album, and a current contender for “perfect pop song” is the fourth track, “Me Plus One.” Enthusiastic but Mediocre beat me to the punch on a lot of the fine points of the song, but I’ll re-echo them here. The song seems to be a sort of apotheosis of the tried and true formula of, when in doubt, writing a song about being (or trying to be) a pop-star. I never read “me plus one” as an invitation to a threesome, as Edward does, but I do see it as tied into the comp scene of networking in the biz. Annie offers to sing us a song about a girl she used to know, but the chorus jumps into the first person (again, my transcription):

This is B,
This is E,
This is A-U-T,
This is I,
This is F-U-L.
I’m gonna reach the top,
I ain’t ever gonna stop,
And I’m sure gonna ring your bell. [bell rings]
This is D,
This is I,
This is F-F-I,
This is C,
This is U-L-T.
If ever there’s a girl that can rock your world,
Then that I’m sure is me. (?)
Right!

Yes, that spelling beats out Len’s “I was lying on the bench slide in the park across the street / L-A-T-E-R that week” from “Steal My Sunshine” as cutest instance of spelling in a song, ever. But the track as whole is much, much more than a great chorus (the rest of which is too rushed for me to properly transcribe, and the internet ain’t helping). Sure, it’s “Kylie Times Ten,” but isn’t that, well, kind of a good thing? And, yes, the echoes of “(Keep Feeling) Fascination” are there, as others have noted, but it’s got a lighter feel to it that robs it of the certain overdone seriousness (the deep chorus, namely) I get from the Human League hit.

In any case, I really don’t want to say much more about this song other than that I listened to it over 20 times over the weekend. It’s absolutely fantastic. I’m bordering on demanding its getting dropped at Turkey Dance, and it’s damn, damn near guaranteed you’ll be getting this song on a CD if I like you and make you a CD any time soon.

I wish I could say more about the production of the album, but that’s not really my forte. I can just say that Anniemal is a ton of fun, and I can’t wait to buy it stateside. For how much I liked Fever, only a few tracks remained dear to me. Here we have a pile of instant classics, with maybe only two or three totally dismissable tracks. That’s some sort of serious effort there on behalf of Annie’s producers. I think the main difference is that Fever had fantastic dance tracks, but the generic pop tracks were kind of too canned and weak (oh, god, the intro to “Give It to Me” still hurts). Here it’s all strong. “Me Plus One” and “Chewing Gum” can be dropped on the floor with no trouble, but they’re not as murderous as “Heartbeat” or “The Greatest Hit.”

Yes, this is the best thing to come from Norway since First Band on the Moon. I Have Spoken.