David Guetta - 'Baby When The Light'
I have something of a chequered history with David Guetta, in that I will still happily rant to anyone who sits still for long enough that the brilliance of the first 30 seconds of 'Love Don't Let Me Go' is somewhat devalued by the thorough averageness of the rest of the song. And then 'Love Is Gone' sounded almost exactly the same as its predecessor, which just made me angry all over again. "Grrrrr," I might've said.
The good news is that this track doesn't show you all the good stuff in less time than it takes to boil the kettle, the bad news is that it might, as a result, be a bit too thinly spread.
It's a tricky question, when it comes to the crunch: is it better to have a song that is mind-meltingly amazing for half a minute but then trundles into mediocrity and never recovers, or one that sits solidly on "good", but while it never meanders into "unimpressive", it never crosses over into "oh, that's what I'm talking about" either. I'm inclined to say the latter, if only because it seems more honest to promise little and deliver exactly that, than to promise brilliance and not come up with the goods.
So, here we have a song that is merely "serviceable". It very sensibly saves its best parts for the chorus, but does not skimp on the verses either. It is also uncannily reminiscent of Dannii Minogue's seminal 'All I Wanna Do' from 1997 (but without the awesome guitar meltdown in the middle eight that was the best part of that song, dammit). But I just find it rather hard to get excited about it. At least when I got angry at 'Love Don't Let Me Go', I was feeling something. With this, I just find my mind wandering rather a lot. In fact, when I went to check the Dannii track just to make sure I wasn't imagining the similarities, by the time that song was halfway through I wasn't even sure if I was right because I'd completely forgotten what this sounded like.
That said, a song such as this is clearly not intended for listening to in one's hallway on a cold, wet Sunday in December. It is meant to be heard in a club, as loudly as possible, while you throw shapes on the dancefloor, not caring what you look like but hopefully surrounded by lots of attractive people of whichever gender is your personal preference. And I'm sure in those circumstances it works much, much better. So I can't, in good conscience, slate it. But then, a truly great dance song will transcend this problem and give you the same sense of unbridled joy regardless of the circumstances in which you hear it (cf. 'Ride On Time', 'Call On Me', 'Lola's Theme'), so this has to settle for middle-ranking, and David Guetta and I clearly still need to sit down and have a chat.
Download: Out now
CD Released:December 10th
(Steve Perkins)
Comments
"the brilliance of the first 30 seconds of 'Love Don't Let Me Go' is somewhat devalued by the thorough averageness of the rest of the song. " - are you referring to David Guetta's song, or the "vs The Egg" mix? As the sole one only seems to manage 20s or so before the annoying drum sample kicks in, whereas the mix with The Egg repeats the first 30s at around 1:45. :)
i find sarah cocks very anoying and im sure a lot of people would agree with me!!!!! ??? i have spoken to a lot of my friends and they switch to capital fm when sarah comes on, please could you give chris moyles or scott mills some more shifts and get rid of sarah for good, thanks jiffy.