The Very Best/Those Dancing Days

The Very Best (Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit) – Boyz
The Very Best - Boyz


The Very Best released one of the very few albums that I listened to in its entirety in 2k8, because I just don't listen to full albums anymore. So I can say without prejudice that it's absolutely one of the best albums I've heard in 2k8. I admittedly only listened to it because it's available for free on myspace, and after hearing one song how can you not wanna listen to the whole thing? The gimmick involves production team Radioclit joining up with Malawian bro Esau Mwamwaya to remix popular songs that blogs like. What resulted is a bunch of songs that are so purely enjoyable and danceable that you'll never want to hear the boring originals again.

They took a fantastic MIA song and made it so I never want to listen to it again. It's amazing what a giant bass drum can do to a song. Esau's Akonbro vocals are beautiful, and the song just SOARS. I try listening to the original but it just sounds dead and flaccid by comparison. SHIT MAKES U DANCE + PRETEND UR FROM MALAWI (is that a real place)


Those Dancing Days – Run Run
Those Dancing Days – Run Run

1. Those Dancing Days are from Sweden.
2. They sound like they're from Portland.
3. Lead singer Linnea Jönsson sounds way too much like Fiona Apple for me not to have originally thought this was a Fiona Apple song.
4. Fiona is great!
5. THAT CHORUS.
6. I have no idea what is IN the chorus. I don't know what those sounds are or how they're made. It sounds like there's a million synth melodies piled on top of each other and for the life of me I cannot figure out what any of them would sound like separated. The threads are all so intertwined with each other that it's just this beautiful mess of sound.
7. I love a band that knows its strengths. They repeat the boring verse twice, and at the 2:00 mark they just kind of give up trying find something else to stand up to the chorus. So there's a dinky, lazy, completely ignorable diddling guitar solo that separates the choruses. Because that's the cheapest thing they can stick in there.
8. The lead singer has much better hair than Fiona Apple.