THE FT TOP 100 SONGS
85. Teddybears STHLM ft Mad Cobra – “Cobrastyle”
If I was a real music journalist I would look forward most to the part of the job where you make up new genres! I think I would make up a genre which would include this record, and Junior Senior, and Bigtrack Rockismo (or whatever they’re called), and let’s throw in the Go! Team as well. This genre would be called Bubble Beat – what a rubbish name eh? It’s kind of a tiny bit like Big Beat but with a really brazen pop sensibility and flagrant disregard for the real cultural context of anything it uses. And with no ridiculous ‘po-mo’ ‘manifestos’ either, just a love of stupid fun. “Cobrastyle” for instance marries dancehall to rockabilly with only the most glancing regard for either and ends up as a fabulous pop record and surprisingly not at all insulting. A while ago I called this song the audio equivalent of sequinned Motorhead T-Shirts and I see no reason to back away from that. Incidentally do not buy a Teddybears album, if you want to hear something else by them then “Different Sound” is quite good, though it actually is Big Beat.