Gwen Stefani - '4 In The Morning'
Perspective's an odd little thing. The qualities which make a person most attractive to us as a pop star are exactly NOT the qualities we'd look for in a best friend, say (pop stars are pretty ruthless and self-serving), or a boy/girlfriend (they also talk a good snog, but possibly aren't THAT amazing in a lip-to-lip situation, unless there's a mirror involved and no you). We want our popsters to be aloof, amazing, startlingly original and totally special people, but we also want them to sing to us about our feelings and our lives, lives which, by and large, are not amazing, startlingly original, or totally special (except to us, obv). Paradoxical, eh?
So when Gwen Stefani puts together a mash-up of sky-quake beats and the goat song out of the Sound Of Music, while shouting "Whiny DERRRRP!" over and over again, respect must be paid to the madness of her ideas, the scale of her ambition, and the fact that she is not afraid of people thinking that she is perhaps a little crazy. And not crazy like a fox, unless it's a fox which also happens to suffer from a mental health problem...like one of the ones which leads to a confusion of imagination with reality...a fox with delusions of grandeur, basically. That's our Gwennie.
But the problem with fantastical, pantomime Gwen is that she doesn't really speak to our inner souls all that much. It's hard to love a an astonishing glass-and-fairy-dust figurine in the same way that you love your favourite sweater, or a nice snuggly quilt when you're poorly.
So, for every 'Wind It Up', she needs to put out a song like this to try and prove that she really is a normal human being under all the layers of artifice and flounce. This is Gwen attempting to appeal to the lives and feelings of normal folks by nailing a dark moment in her lovelife and attempting to reach everyone who's been in the same boat for a kind of musical group hug. You can't scare people all the time, you see. They get fed up.
The strange thing, then, is just how mechanical and formulaic Gwen's music sounds, right at the moment when she is attempting to show her warmest human feelings. The verses are straight out of Nelly Furtado's 'All Good Things (Come To An End)', and the chorus...well the chorus is kind of old school Kylie Minogue. Like 1989 old school. Which, for those of you who are still AT school, was before any of you were born, right?
Luckily, Nelly F and '80s Kylie are worthy of an idea filch or two here and there, so it's not a bad song as such. It's just strange when Gwen finally drops her "I'm CRACKERS, ME!" mask that she should reveal another one underneath, and the first one looks more like her actual face than the second.
Lord alone knows whose face us under the second one, mind...David Blaine, perhaps?
Download: Out now
CD Released: June 25th
(Fraser McAlpine)
Comments
You do talk some utter crap sometimes on this blog lol.
This song is awesome, and btw I still am 'AT school', I know that there was still music in the 70s lol.
So yeah, I don't know what you are on about with this article, I see Gwen's music more as an art form rather than chatting about 'our lives', she doesn't live our lives, that is quite clear from her videos.
Anyway, oh well.
Everyone just listen to the song, it's amazing, and possibly one of the best on the albums.
[No she doesn't live our lives, but music is about communication, so she does have to make some effort to reach people where they are, don't you think? I usually think Gwen's love songs are her best work, even though her mad songs are astonishing too. No Doubt's 'Underneath It All' is my favourite song by that band by a long chalk. And this song IS good, it's just not as good as the Nelly Furtado song it sounds a lot like. Oh, and the old school thing was just a joke about the term 'old school', in comparison to people who're at school, that's all. I know ChartBlog readers know their music.. - Fraser]
i don't like your song they are boring
Boooooooo.
You're quite right about the qualities that make a person attractive as a pop star. However, you're quite wrong about the song itself.
This song is miles above Nelly Furtado's guitarry nonsense, and doesn't sound very similar, apart from them both being wistful songs. While Nelly's song meanders along its woe-is-meism the entire time, Gwen's soars into epic heights at the chorus as the lyrics show her mustering her courage. That's right, EPIC HEIGHTS. Try listening to this song in a bit of a sad moment, and not getting that 'oh this is all horrible but I must find a way through' feeling sweep over you.
A bit of a shame about the video though, it gives the whole song a rather pedestrian feel that belies this intensity, even if Gwen looks great.
And a lot of shame about the review!! (EPIC HEIGHTS, I TELL YOU)