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[Without You - Kid Laroi] Pile-on
#1
Agreed on all points about this "song"... and two things I noticed!


"You cut out a piece of me, and now I bleed internally" seems a desperate bid to capitalize on the lyrical imagery that worked so well for Shawn Mendes in "Stiches," namely "I thought that I've been hurt before / But no one's ever left me quite this sore / Your words cut deeper than a knife." Such well-trodden ground and yet... Kid Laroi trods on.


And I'd be remiss not to mention the music video, as it's linked on the post... those darn salt flats find their way into a music video (or car advert) every other week. But the formless, lazily-shot "B roll" footage of poor interchangeable brunettes left me scratching my head about that thing we sometimes call plot.
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#2
(01-04-2021, 06:20 PM)glossangeles Wrote: "You cut out a piece of me, and now I bleed internally" seems a desperate bid to capitalize on the lyrical imagery that worked so well for Shawn Mendes in "Stiches," namely "I thought that I've been hurt before / But no one's ever left me quite this sore / Your words cut deeper than a knife." Such well-trodden ground and yet... Kid Laroi trods on.

Honestly, you pick at almost anything and it instantly unravel... oof!

Quote:And I'd be remiss not to mention the music video, as it's linked on the post... those darn salt flats find their way into a music video (or car advert) every other week. But the formless, lazily-shot "B roll" footage of poor interchangeable brunettes left me scratching my head about that thing we sometimes call plot.

This is the point at which we get accused of being old and not understanding. But I totally agree. They're young, and they don't understand... Smile
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#3
I'm still catching up with my own, back-catalogue mix reviews (I've just finished reviewing "Do Wah Diddy Diddy Dum Diddy Do"), but I agree, they don't write lyrics like they used to.

I liked the way the guitar seemed panned left and right. It would have sounded very lonely with just the guitar and vocal in centre position. I get the impression that it is not one of Mike Senior's techniques, but that the left guitar sound has top boost and the right sound is low to mid-band, only. The vocal seems heavily compressed to bring out the characteristics of his voice and auto-tuned just below the point of obviousness.

The swearing  doesn't seem so bad: he almost seems like a whining teenager growed up enough for his first relationship.

I agree with all your comments except my ears are not well enough attuned yet to detect a retune at 1:45. All I found was a strangulated vibrato a few seconds later which I took to be a problem with the singer. That part of the vocal should have been re-tracked.

The backing vocals appear to be, in part, a vocal group singing the chords of the song, a vocal harmony and solo interjections which seem to be slightly delayed with respect to the song. Those interjections do help to fill out an otherwise spare arrangement, but perhaps they should have been offset from the vocal by a quarter or eighth of a note in the manner of a delay FX.

I do agree that there is no attempt at arrangement other than to extend the repetitive tune with non-verbal lead vocalisations. The bass lines, harmonies and backing chorus are just there to add weight and colour to an otherwise thin arrangement. There is no melodic counterpoint nor meaningful response to the lead vocal by the backing vocals.

I was surprised that you did not mention the only thing that stood out for me at the first listen through. Just after the ghostly backing singer sings a final (out of time) "OhNoNow" there is a gentle slap of the hand on the guitar strings followed by a couple of extraneous other sounds.

The guitar slap could, just about, be a part of the production to, neatly, end the final guitar chord, although it sounds oddly dry after the wait for the backing singer reverberations to die away, but the following sounds just strike me as lazy editing.

Or, perhaps, it is the sound of the guitarist leaning across to stop the cassette tape.
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