Everyone remembers the first few CDs they bought. And it’s a fun trip down memory lane to go back and listen to what you once hailed worthy enough to buy. For me, this trip was down Eiffel 65 lane, for I had bought the oddly named foreign dance acts CD, Europop solely for the massive hit Blue (Da Ba Dee). Honestly it doesn’t surprise me that I bought it. Blue was a truly fun tune, granted it was hardly musical genius but what 1st or 2nd grader cares about chord progressions and complex use of metaphors. All I cared was that I could sing along to it and dance.
Fast forward nearly a decade to 2006, its time for me to clean out the closet and re-listen to my first ever CD, Eiffel 65’s one and only
Europop . In this review I will document my listening to experience. And it begins with…
The Hit Single
As far as pop music goes, this is really a great song. Soaring synthesizers, a fairly cool bass line and a great piano loop set over a pulsing dance beat house the vocals that everyone knows (From the radio, MTV or even your school dance [If you’re near my age]).
I’m Blue Da Ba Dee da ba di, If I was green I would die, If I was green I would die-ie . While the vocals (God knows who created them) aren’t great they totally fit the song. Is it hard to fathom why I liked this song enough to buy the CD? No, not really I liked Pokemon for god sakes. This song being the epitome of a good European dance-pop track sets quite a high standard for…
The Rest
The rest is a mix of good dance music and absolute poo. Words cannot describe the bad tracks. I’m going to tell you right here right now, they are a painful listening experience. Blue was bearable, even enjoyable. But this is just stupid. The same beat is essentially rehashed another 13 times with a different piano line and progressively stupider lyrics. Songs like
Too Much of Heaven are about slightly mature topics, for example money dependence but it is (nearly) impossible to take anyone singing
Yeahah over the cheesiest piano line in history seriously.
The good tracks on the other hand just make you want to dance,
Dub in Life despite its awful title houses one of the greatest snyth hooks on the album. The lyrics remain terribly stupid, but amazingly catchy. The producers/writers have an amazing talent of manufacturing some of the greatest pop crap I have ever heard. Like a cheesy 80’s horror flick, these songs have no substance what-so-ever but they are just such good dance tracks. What gets annoying is when Eiffel 65 attempts to make good lyrics, this just becomes a pointless try to add substance to something that really, well doesn’t need it. Maybe if the lyrics were good, but somehow I don’t see
Life in a Bubble’s lyrics winning any awards.
Examples of Eiffel 65’s lyrical ability (Lyrics from Move Your Body, My Console and The Edge, Respectively)
-Move ya Body, C’mon now every body move ya body.
-P-L-A-Y-S-T-A-T-I-O-N-
-From Resident evil to Mega Boost, Play for fun cause we got it going on.
-I’ve been to the edge, I’ve been to the edge.
See what I mean? Those aren’t even remotely good lyrics, but the songs are just fun, fun to dance to, fun to sing along to (well
My Console actually is one of the worst songs I have ever listened to but you get my point).
The only song that seems to have any lyrical value,
Now Is Forever has uplifting lyrics about living in the present and not dwelling on the bad things. The production on the song is quite good as well. Almost evil sounding bass snyths in the verses and great string lines in the choruses, not to mention a halfway decent keyboard solo.
The end in itself perks up, three good danceable songs one after the other after the other,
Silicon World has (pretend to be surprised) cheesy lyrics but great production. Title track,
Europop is also a great song. A very Daft Punk-esque song, it features the best production on the album and incredibly catchy vocals singing lyrics about the band’s genre. This is what every song on the album should have sounded like.
If you take this album as seriously as you would take Radiohead’s Kid A, you will absolutely hate this CD. It’s not substantial music, It’s not good music, It’s just fun (Unless your listening to Too Much of Heaven or Clown or Living in a Bubble etc.).
I’m going to break down each part of the album and rate them, instead of each track.
-Vocals: 2.5/5 The vocals on this CD, are decent for what they are supposed to accomplish. IMO the CD would just be better instrumental (or mostly instrumental, like Daft Punk)
-Production: 3.5/5 The Production on this CD is great. The beats are highly danceable, which is what they are manufactured to do, not exactly creative but certainly the only highlight off this
-Lyrics 0.2/5 The Lyrics on this CD< The S
ihit of a dog. Really, the lyrics drown and they drag the Vocals and Production with them. Eiffel 65 would have been better off making an instrumental album or just have their singer singing nonsense.
If you must, download
Blue (Da Ba Dee)
Dub in Life
Now is Forever
Europop
Don’t touch with a ten foot pole
Clown
Too Much of Heaven
My Console
1.8/5
-Dan
