https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3triLkS0nq4&list=RD3triLkS0nq4&start_radio=1
What to make of this song, that has now been UK Number 1 for, all told, a record-breaking 19 weeks? I have seen some talk that its vast success is baffling, and exemplifies how little crossover there is between chart success and universal recognition these days, but I'm not sure that's true.
Firstly, I like the song. It's easier, obviously, to understand why something is popular if you yourself like it. When Drake's One Dance was Number 1 for 15 weeks a decade ago, there was no part of me that could understand that, even though I knew Drake was, at that point, the most popular artist in the world, known for his gift for a hook. But it sounded like drab shit to me, so my bafflement remained.
But, even if I didn't like it, the massive UK success of Rein Me In makes, to me, a very specific, and heartwarming, sense - a happy accident of timing and the culmination of certain trends in recent chart music.
At least, something of an accident, in that the collaboration was mooted before Dean's second album went massive - far more massive than anyone could have anticipated. At the time, Sam Fender was the bigger star, with three hit albums behind him.
I'm not a huge Sam Fender fan - he happened to play early in the afternoon when Bob Dylan and Neil Young played Hyde Park in 2019, and I was impressed but not exactly enamoured. His sound is big, his voice is exceptionally strong. In the past, he'd have been positioned as the frontman of an indie band - not one I'd have loved - but bands don't have hits these days. Even before Olivia Dean's contribution, Rein Me In was one of his better songs. He seems pretty nice, and that certainly is part of his appeal.
They both come from somewhat "indie" or "authentic" backgrounds - indie soul and indie rock, while both are now pop stars. Dean is a very adaptable singer, I think - I don't imagine there's many markets, age-groups, that will feel too embarrassed about liking her. They're both pretty easily charming, lowkey, endearingly English - one South Shields, one South London - the viral success of Rein Me In seems to have been solidified by big gigs in Fender's team's football stadium, St James' Park, and Dean's, the London Stadium. That's where it seems like a bit of a masterplan. Two readybaked fanbases, some sense of a united, groundroots England. The England that gets behind the football, that sings the same song.
I've heard the song around a lot - of course, not as much as one used to hear Wannabe or Wonderwall, but enough, in different contexts, without seeking it out at all. And it just makes sense that this nice song by two nice, different but similar English artists, this nostalgic duet of a love song, has become quietly massive. Most of the big pop songs these days are nice to listen to - more in the tradition of classic AOR than youth-orientated dance music. I suspect that's the long tail of the Taylor Swift effect. Punks and contrarians would call these songs bland as hell, but I'm not a punk, and I much prefer them to the litany of awful cack that was topping the charts in the 2000s and 2010s.
So, anyway, there it is, Number 1 forever and a nice little song. What's not to like.
