Taio Cruz - 'I Can Be'
God it took me AGES to figure out what this song reminded me of. I had this massive long analogy about what would happen if Seal - the early '90s rave/soul singer - had ingested a tankful of helium. I even had a pun - and I do love a pun - which was laid out like a mathematical equation. Seal + helium = Sealium. Amazing, eh?
All of which would have been perfectly fine if this song did actually sound like Seal, but in the dying moments of one of many repeated listens, a synth noise which is part bubbles in water and part birdsong popped up, and that's when I finally got it. It's 'Pure Shores' by All Saints.
It's all there is the endlessly uplifting spiral of chords, which circle around and around until the song just pierces the upper atmosphere. It lacks the glassy Saint harmonies, sadly, but Taio's honeyed purr nearly makes up for it.
Trouble is, once you've made a musical connection in your head, it becomes hard to hear the new song without feeling a little let down that it isn't the old one. And 'Pure Shores' is such an astonishing tune that any attempt to piggyback on it can only end in diminishing returns.
And the more times you hear the new song, the more blatant and obvious the nods to the old one become, and if you're not careful, you can find yourself getting a bit heated about the whole thing. "Oh my God!", you inwardly mutter, "he's stolen the ENTIRE SONG, and those bubbly noises are just his way of telling us that he knows that we know! What a cheek! What sauce! The scoundrel!"
Well, you would possibly mutter something like that if we were in the '50s.
To sum up, then, boo! to the obvious song-theft, yay! to the singing. Which gives us a final mark of...
Download: Out now
CD Released: May 26th
(Fraser McAlpine)
Comment number 1.
At 21st May 2008, katstevens wrote:Spot on - Taio hasn't even Shaznay and W.Orbit a snifter of a writing credit on this.
In happier news though, Seal's last single 'The Right Life' has been given an awesome Tiesto remix which I can't stop listening to. It's proper hands-in-the-air Underworld house!
Complain about this comment (Comment number 1)
Comment number 2.
At 22nd May 2008, Kat wrote:Heh, saying that it was All Saints has indeed ruined it for me only half way through the first listen. Which is a shame as it's quite pretty in a 'lion king music meets real world' type way
Complain about this comment (Comment number 2)
Comment number 3.
At 23rd May 2008, pronking_springbok wrote:Sorry.... but the chorus of this song always reminds me of certain dodgy emails I keep having to delete....
Complain about this comment (Comment number 3)
Comment number 4.
At 26th May 2008, RedDevilsGal wrote:Ahh i love this song, but now thanks to pronking_springbok im never gona be able to listen to it the same way! :-|
Complain about this comment (Comment number 4)