Today's "Best Song Ever"

"Heartbeats"

I have chosen not to choose between the two versions of this song that I listened to one after the other for roughly an hour and twelve minutes last night (with a ten minute smoke break).

There must be something in Swedish water to create such amazing melodies on such a regular basis. All the best teen pop of the last decade has come from Sweden ("Baby One More Time", "I Want It That Way", "Bye Bye Bye", "Since U Been Gone"), Abba is from Sweden, Jens Lekman is from Sweden and so too are The Knife. The Knife created the amazing melody that is "Heartbeats" and set it up with squishing synths and party hardy beats galore. José Gonzalez (also from Sweden, who knew they had hispanic people in Sweden?!) covers the song with a sort of Nick Drake like stillness.

Both versions have their merits but the major catch of the song is it's amazing melody and emotionally transience. The Knife version work the song up into an ode to love as freeing force, which is I s'pose the natural way for a song like this to go when placed into a dance setting.

Gonzalez on the other hand makes it wistful and bittersweat. Love he knows is too complicated to be freeing. This disparity has nothing to do with lyrical change. It's entirely tonal.

This is Today's Best Song Ever because it's important to remember that sometimes (in fact most of the time) it's the singer and not the song.

Download, Listen, Discuss. (The Knife version is currently on my page)

Come to Martini Red tonight for the DJ stylings of Russell "DJ Complicated" Berry and myself!!! 10ish!!!! Martini Red is located at 372 Van Duzer Avenue in Staten Island.