PAY TV – “Trendy Discoteque” (aka PopNose4): An object lesson in how context can change my reactions to a song. I was recommended this song on a Europop ILM thread by Edward O. I like a bit of Europop, and also it turned out that this track was one of the rejects for this year’s Swedish Eurovision entry. Cool! There is a shady subculture on P2P servers of people trading Eurovision files – I myself have all the winners from 56 onwards, acquired from an ex-editor of The Wire. But there are deeper levels – people sharing every entry and one lunatic/saint who has painstakingly aquired not only the entrants but the songs that didn’t make it through their countries’ preliminary rounds, including UK wannabes back to 1980! Some of these songs no way got a proper release so will have made the arduous journey from TV recordings to MP3s for a select few to admire and wonder what might have been.
When I heard Pay TV in this context I couldn’t help but smile: bubblegum electroclash on Eurovision! It would totally work! Well, it wouldn’t win neccessarily but it would add hugely to the gaiety of the occasion, like the ranting Austrian last year and the people who sang in an imaginary language a la Magma (musically the similarities were fewer). Unfortunately the Swedes thought better of it and Pay TV (great name!) crashed out in the semis. The bit of the record I liked most wasn’t the faux-jadedness – done much better by Komatrohn on “Mirrors And Chrome” and by a thousand others no doubt – but the “ooh! woo!” bits on the chorus which gave me the charming impression that these people were having Real Fun despite all attempts to the contrary.
Then, digging around for this write-up, I made a terrible discovery – Pay TV is in fact none other than house bod Hakan Lidbo and one Ulrike Lidbo. Now, granted, if I was “one of the world’s most prolific tech-house producers” I’d be tempted to throw it over and write a Europop song too, but there’s a strong suspicion that the people recoiling in the comments box from “Trendy Discoteque”‘s smirky irony are right, damn them. Of course maybe the song’s Lidbo-ness will make people like it more – who knows!
(You can buy “Trendy Discoteque” here.)