THE EDGE OF GLORY

Lady GaGa

As is usually the way with Lady GaGa’s singles, I’m finding this song incredibly frustrating. There are plenty of good elements in this song, but when you strip it down to the basic melody and lyrics, it falls considerably short of greatness. The start is great; all sorts of low-key sounds coming together gradually, but the moment the singing starts the quality dips and keeps on dipping. That’s not Lady GaGa’s fault - she may look as though her entire wardrobe was created with the aid of Blue Peter competition entries, but she is a very, very good pop singer. No, it’s the structure of the song that’s to blame. This single desperately wants to be a 1980s pop anthem, so much so that it even has its own saxophone solo, but it’s following old tracks rather than laying new ones. That’s what’s so frustrating about this song; the production’s top notch, there are enough flickers of originality here and there to indicate how much effort went into it... the problem is the song itself isn’t that interesting, and if you get that bit wrong, well, there aren’t many ways to cover it up. Lady GaGa’s done what she can with what she had, but it’s just not enough.

TROUBLE

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs

Be honest, that’s a brilliant band name, isn’t it? Mind you, if you are going to have a brilliant band name that’s designed to attract attention from easily impressed people like me, you really ought to have some decent music to back yourself up. Well done the Dinosaurs then, because that’s just what they’ve done. If you don’t like electronic music this might not be your cup of tea, because the nearest this song’d get to a so-called proper instrument would be if you happened to have a guitar in the room when you listen to it. It’s dark, poppy, it’s got a beat that says "You shouldn’t dance to me but I bet you do anyway" and the singer sounds like he’s bored stiff, not just with the song, but the whole business of pop music altogether. It even sounds a bit retro, but just for a change (thank heavens) it’s nineties retro rather than eighties. All that, and it’s even got a decent tune too. Marvellous stuff.