Track-By-Track zum Eighties-Pop-Debüt der drei Wahlberliner…
Schon vor einer ganzen Weile erschien die erste EP von BALLET SCHOOL. Hier reichen wir nun endlich die exklusiven, ausführlichen Kommentare nach, die die Band zu den vier Songs von Boys Again für uns verfasst hat…
GHOST
You know that song ‚Boys of Summer‘ by Don Henley? I really love that song. I never liked it much until recently. Basically I was reading about Stevie Nicks‘ affair with Don Henley and that made me want to listen to it. I love the intro and how the beat comes in. And I love how the lyrics fit the metre. It’s stuff like this that really turns me on about pop music. When the words just feel like they eternally belong to that song. That’s good writing. So I was thinking about Stevie being fabulous and dating huge rock stars in her prime and then I was thinking about the Dylan Thomas poem from which the line ‚I see the Boys of Summer in their ruin‘ is taken. Youth on the precipice of experience is one of my biggest themes. I guess I feel sad that we all eventually lose our innocence and some of us lose it in horrific ways. When Dylan Thomas wrote that line he really nailed how it feels to reflect on youth past, and the poignancy of that realisation in the mind of someone older in contrast to the impossibility of it in the mind of someone young. So I wrote Ghost about that realisation.
HEARTBEAT OVERDRIVE
This song is the sound of girls crushing out. I was thinking about Whitney singing ‚How Will I know‘ There is an insane acapella version of that song on youtube where she just slays every last one of your faves with the force of her singing ability. Fifth octave, full voice. Whitney was the best because she not only had the best toned and strongest chest voice in the world, but ALSO the sweetest, clearest head voice. This mix is very rare. Elizabeth Fraser also had it, plus her own utterly unique style. I mean…these women give me serious life. Heartbeat’s production is all about honouring my love of the classic 80’s radio pop I was raised on, plus we did an extended mix. The Extended Mix used to be the damn thing and then it died out with the format revolution of vinyl 12″ single to cd single to mp3. I just wanted to remind everyone that 12″ vinyl pop singles are the coolest thing EVA.
CRUSH
All the songs are written around two years ago – but Crush is really old. It was written in 2008. I was sort of over it but then when Louis joined the band we made an alternative version of it and it came back to life for me then. Everyone else seems to like it but me, which fits perfectly a ‚reluctant pop star‘ archetype which I am at pained vanity to cultivate within myself of course. I really do like the lyrics tho. It’s quite a feat to get the word ‚harridan‘ into a pop song. This is the feminist/morrissey fan busting out of me.
YAOI
I named this song after the Japanese manga/anime Yaoi which some people consider taboo or whatever but considering how sexuality and it’s visibility within culture is totally foregrounded by cis-male tastes and preferences to the point where homosexuality between girls is commonly depicted in top forty radio, I think it’s about time someone repped the other – in particular the sexuality of girls unfettered by the bully of male desire. Like, what do girls like? In their own private thoughts and amongst their own peers? Yaoi is different from slash in that it’s made specifically for teenage girls. Fanfiction, ASMR, tumblr, these are all girl-pastimes that I think are really interesting and healthy and safe. Pre-occupations for daydreamer girls, inhabitants of the vast internal world of the imagination, the kind who live inside their own heads, or as Virginia Woolf would say ‚(girls) in the mood to dissolve into the sky‘. Not a depression, but an escape, a yearning for something more. For a long time I wrote specifically about boys and boyhood and I also wrote about mothers in relation to their sons, but more recently I am writing about how it feels to be a girl and speak the language of girls. This is part of my feminism.
BALLET SCHOOL
Boys Again
(Bella Union / [PIAS] Cooperative)
VÖ: 04.10.2013
Autor: [EMAIL=friedrich.reip@popmonitor.de?Subject=Kontakt von der Website]Friedrich Reip[/EMAIL]
