Song 14: With Every Heartbeat

With Every Heartbeat - Robyn & Kleerup

Until fairly recently, I've found phrases along the lines of "It's just a great little pop song" and "Everyone needs a bit of throwaway pop in their lives" intensely irritating. Likewise, supposed "proper" music fans and bands professing their love for something like 'Baby One More Time' (remember the spate of indie bands covering 'Baby One More Time'?).

But, you know what, it's happened to me somewhat. It may be a bad thing, to do with losing one's critical faculties, it may be a good thing, to do with seeing other people's enjoyment and understanding what they enjoy in something you used to think in some way beneath you, but there's a lot of "little throwaway pop songs" I like these days.

In fact, having said at the end of my blog about 'prince Charming' that the pop charts aren't what they used to be, I then went through the Number 1s (only the Number 1s) of the last 10 years, and found almost 50 I found at least some merit in, and quite a few I actually really like.

Just a selection of those

Ignition (Remix) - R Kelly
Crazy in Love - Beyonce ft Jay-Z
Leave Right Now - Will Young
Push the Button - Sugababes
Patience - Take That
Umbrella - Rihanna
Bleeding Love - Leona Lewis
The Promise - Girls aloud
Price Tag - Jessie J
Somebody That I Used to Know - Gotye

Now, some of you might immediately be recoiling in horror, perhaps because I didn't mention The Fear by Lily Allen or Bad Romance by Lady Gaga, or perhaps because you find all those songs to be tinny abhorrences. And fair enough. All I'm saying is that in the last few years my heart has opened a little more than it used to the catchy commercial tune.

One UK Number 1 not on the list above is 'With Every Heartbeat' by Swedish singer Robyn and Swedish producer Kleerup (this appears to be his actual surname, for all that it sounds like a Children's TV cartoon character created to promote tidiness).

That's because it's in a different category for me. It's not a "cracking little pop song", it's a great big monster of a heart-tugging masterpiece! Scando-electro-ballad it may be, but it holds its head up on any playlist I choose to put together.

When I started going to a gym for the first time, in 2009, one of the TV screens was always showing pop videos and the music coming through the speakers of of those videos. I had to make sure my iPod was on extra loud to drown it out (somehow, whenever my iPod fell silent or the battery ran out, it would always be 'Evacuate the Dancefloor' by Cascada), but I'd often see the videos going along in front of me, and one of them was of a blonde woman with funny hair striding towards the camera looking a little bit sad.

Again, there must have been an occasional where my battery ran out and I actually got to listen to the song and I found it strange - there was no discernible chorus, the song broke down for a synth string-filled section halfway through and the extended fade-out refrain was so uneuphoric, both lyrically and musically, it was incredibly striking. "And it hurts with every heartbeat", sung a little staccato, and with each note being not quite what you expect it to be, like it's going on to some other place but won't ever get there.

And really "And-it-hurts-with-ev-ry-heart-beat" is such a wrenching lyric. Like, it hurts ... with every heartbeat. That's a lot of hurt ....

In his wonderful 'Secret Life of the Love Song' lecture (see my previous blog entry on Longing), Nick Cave, amongst other things, disseminated the Kylie Minogue song 'Better the Devil You Know', saying that here was a song which, broken down, had as powerful lyrics of heartache and despair as any from the supposed rock cannon. Well, that's how I feel like about the lyrics to 'With Every Heartbeat'. And in my opinion, it goes one better than 'Better the Devil You Know', as Robyn as a vocalist actually can summon up that sense of loss and hurt in a way that I feel Kylie Minogue can't quite.

I know she's been Nick Cave's muse and I ought to bow to his far superior wisdom, and he certainly brought out a fine vocal from her on 'Where the Wild Roses Grow' and i certainly don't have a problem per se with Kylie -[ in fact, we go way back, in fact so far back that when I see her name written down I still instinctively say "Kylie Minnerg-yew" in my head as, to me, she was a name in the credits of 'Neighbours' I couldn't pronounce right before she was a global pop sensation [isn't it funny how our first recognition of a word or name sticks with us - I don't, for example, think Danni Minnerg-yew, as her name was already known to me by the time of her turn as Emma in 'Home and Away'], no, I don't have a problem with Kylie, I just think she's a limited vocalist, whose two settings, "bubblegum" and, for want of a better word, "slinky" have served her very well. Whenever she goes outside that, I don't think she carries it off. 'Can't Get You Out of My Head' may be a pop masterpiece which has had books written about it, but it's a slinky pop masterpiece. Kylie, she don't got soul. Robyn, it seems to me, got soul.

Despite this being the case, I still only know two Robyn songs, this and the almost equally brilliant 'Dancing On My Own'. You would think, with a 100% hit rate like that, I might investigate the works of Robyn further, especially as she has more than one critically acclaimed album, but I rather think she's a little like my Scando-dance-pop Tom Waits - Tom Waits is kind of like my desert island back up, if i ever run out of new music to investigate, there'll always be the full back catalogue of Tom Waits. I know I like Tom Waits - in fact I do own about 40 Tom Waits songs, but I know there's loads more waiting for me to get my teeth into when I need to. Since Robyn is 2 for 2 so far, if I ever need to hear some heartwrenching electro-pop I know where to go.

There is no shortage of course of marvellous Scandinavian female pop, from ABBA if you're that way inclined, through Ace of Base (surely you're not that way inclined) to the likes of the Concretes, the Cardigans, Lykke Li,  the Raveonettes, even Bjork). There is also an artist called Annie, who in some ways is the proto-Robyn in terms of my experience.

Annie is Norwegian rather than Swedish, and again it was watching pop videos which brought her songs to my attention. When me and my flatmates first got freeview but before I went full Sky Sports, there were pop video channels to watch, and before it got relentlessly tiresome, I heard 'Chewing Gum' by Annie, which I thought was a a tremendous bit of bubblegum pop and a future monster hit.

It was written by Richard X, who was all over a lot of hits at the time, including Rachel Stevens' 'Some Girls' and stuff by the Sugababes. However, his golden touch didn't quite work for Annie, and 'Chewing Gum' stalled in the lower reaches of the Top 20, which puzzled me and still puzzles me.

I even bought her album, 'Anniemal', which was also really really good, and critically acclaimed, but didn't break into the mainstream. Again, there were a couple of songs with real heart on it, including, ironically, one called 'Heartbeat'.

Anyway, it didn't quite work out for Annie, while Robyn, not forgetting the contribution of Kleerup, made it, Ma, to the top of the hit parade.

And while songs as good as that still get to the top of the charts, we don't need to give up hope in the music-buying public just yet.