Every week, Consequence'yes The Songs of the Week column looks at great new songs from the last seven days and discusses notable releases. Find our new favorites and more in our Spotify best songs playlist and to see other great songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify new sounds playlist. This week, Charli XCX and Bon Iver’s collaborative reworking of “I Think About It All Time” is even more moving than the Golf club original.
A collaboration between Bon Iver and Charli XCX may not seem intuitive; Charli's overdriven, high-stakes turbo pop, especially on Golf clubis quite different from the more patient, folk-induced majesty of Bon Iver. But they're in the middle for a reworking of “I Think About It All the Time,” the original. Golf clubThe existential peak of and one of his most compelling songs yet.
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As expected with Justin Vernon in the room, the new song blossoms with tenderness. While the production of the original felt almost shockingly immediate, Vernon and producers Easyfun and AG Cook allowed for much more space and reverb to emphasize Charli's internal panic. The synths long, Charli's voice softens, and Vernon acts as a crooning choir, punctuating her musings with her own emotional musings.
“I Think About It All the Time with Bon Iver” is very moving because Charli deepens her initial investigation into motherhood, aging, love and her career. While the original seemed like the direct consequence of a joyful but complicated visit to a friend who had become a new mother, the reworking is much less about “you both know these things that I don't.”
Instead, Charli highlights the urgency and struggles with the idea that, while she has “found love” and “found peace” with her partner (George Daniel, 1975), motherhood seems to be totally antithetical to her life and his career at the moment. . “Gеorge and I sit down and try to plan our future/But there's a lot of guilt when we stop working/Because you're not supposed to stop when things start to work out, no,” he recites in the first verse.
Later, he recalls a line from the original about the aforementioned new parents, but changes it to “And I'm exactly the same, but now I'm older/And I have even more stress on my body.” To develop these ideas further, Charli and Vernon turn to Bonnie Raitt's “Nick of Time,” which follows a similar arc in which Raitt feels safe and blessed to have found love, but unsure of wanting to expand that love to the future. maternity. Raitt’s original line, “Scared to run out of time,” weaves in and out of the track’s charged atmosphere, mirroring Charli’s own urgent questions; Both Raitt and Vernon's voices become soothing and calming ingredients for Charli's anxious internal debate.
When the three appear together on the song's bright bridge, they channel a good-natured warmth not always found in Charli XCX's multi-genre explorations. In fact, this is what Snotty and it's completely different but it's also still snotty. It's about taking strong, already intriguing ideas and building on them, showing that, as an artist, there is always a deeper well.
— Paolo Ragusa
Associate Editor
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