Every pop music lover knows Abba & Bee Gees. Long careers, huge success, big hits, etc.
You don’t need to be a big connaisseur to notice something special about them. Behind the good music and arrangements, you can feel some melancholy. It’s maybe their secret after all ?
And sometimes some sickness too. Some nastiness maybe ? (I wanted to say “meaniness” but it does not seem to be english…).
I like to find a lever pushed a little too far in this kind of mainstream pop-music. A quiet-disturbing element, a new harsh sound, a instrumental bridge… weirdly made.
Take the first 20 seconds of Abba’s Gimme Gimme Gimme, listen loud, and admit you’ve never heard that :
If you go from 02:50 to 3:40 in the same track, you realise that you have a mean bizarre robotic synthetic loop, before a feverish orchestra and some haunted voices… Not that common in pop music !
Bee Gee’s Liar is similar… Every line is like weirdoed by strange harmonies, risky notes, and so within a clear disco structure you’ve got a… sick piece of song, like a dark ill version of their music.
Lever : How could we call it ? You have a project, a painting, a music, a concept, and you think you’re lost, too comfortable. Take a lever, push it too far. Go 130%. Go mean, tensed, unappropriate, whatever. Add too much pepper in your soup. OK, let’s call it Lever-130.
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