A View From The Top #58

Clean Bandit have knocked Little Mix off the top spot by knocking themselves up. Or, at least, getting Sean Paul and Anne-Marie to sing about it. I’m going to be completely honest, I don’t know how to feel about this track. Maybe it’s just because I was raised by a single mother but I find it overly sentimental and corny. Bonus points for Sean Paul though, it’s just a shame that he couldn’t carry it in the same way that he carried Cheap Thrills. The lyrics are enough to put me off the song itself, which is a pretty tight bit of dancehall/house fusion. I’m just a little sick of clubbing music giving itself morals. To paraphrase Stormzy, the greatest philosopher of our age, it’s not that deep.

Both Little Mix and Bruno Mars are holding firm in the top five for now, balancing the fact that James Arthur is still there. Shout Out To My Ex (now at number three) and 24K Magic (number five) are unsurprisingly, both excellent. Little Mix have cracked the power girl-group formula, and the song has had enough controversy about it (from scantily clad performances to the fact that it should be titled Shout Out To Zayn Malik), that it’s going to stick around for a while. As for Bruno Mars, since Unorthodox Jukebox he’s been consistently throwing out bangers. I don’t think 24K will hang around and become stale like Uptown Funk (which, yes, is a Mark Ronson song, but let’s be real who do you think of first when you hear it?), and I hope it leaves the charts gracefully. My only real criticism of Bruno Mars is that his songs don’t seem to know when they’re not welcome. I like 24K a lot, but I don’t want to still be seeing it in the charts in eight months’ time.

If you’d like some unidentifiable house music that isn’t overbearingly moralistic, I’d point you towards Sexual by Neiked (I wish I was making that up) featuring Dyo. It’s at number six right now, but has been steadily climbing over the past few weeks. It’s not memorable. At all. It is, perhaps, the very definition of completely forgettable, but I love it. It’s minimal, has pretty girly vocals, and the build is subtle throughout the whole song. Neiked are clever. If this had been released between May and September it would’ve been lost in the swamp of tropical house songs that find their way off Garage Band and into the charts during the summer. But November, now that’s the perfect time to reminisce about getting wrecked in the Balkans and losing your Interrail pass, or nights out in your hometown where tequila is the answer to “how’s uni going?” Listen to it for a week and forget about it, it’s perfect.

Two of the three tracks that have previewed from Drake’s upcoming playlist More Life are hanging around. Sneakin’ (feat. 21 Savage) is shuffling around at number 79, but Fake Love is doing much better, at number 11. It’s been that kind of year for Drake, anything he releases will make the top 100, even if it only lasts a few weeks, which it’s looking like these will. Out of the seven songs featuring Drake that are charting at the moment, I’d keep an eye out on Wanna Know. It’s actually Dave’s track, who might be better known as Santan Dave, but isn’t that well known at all. He’s an 18 year old grime artist from South London, and thanks to Drake’s remix, he’s charted at number 51, and is climbing. Go on Dave. 

Bizarre re-entries of the week that deserve a mention are Take Me To Church and Shut Up And Dance, at number 95 and 99 respectively. No, I have no idea either, but they’re both great songs, and they are helping in the good fight to minimise the amount of Shawn Mendes in the top 100, so they can stay.