Duermo con la luz abierta: A review of the Blinding Lights Remix ft. Rosalía (re-post)
(this entry is a repost as blogger had issues with the previous link)
Hi! Hope you're doing amazing in this trying times, I know it's been a long year but the celebrations are already here so I wish you happy holidays. Now, let's talk about this song.
To be completely honest I kinda disliked the song without even hearing it, because Rosalía was in it and I don’t like her music. I’m not saying she’s a bad singer, I just don’t like her, but I thought to myself: “No dude, you’re biased, if you want to find out whether you like or dislike the song you have to listen to it”. And so I did. And I didn’t hate it, but for sure I didn’t like it.
So I decided to make a review of the song in general, both from a
musical and from a marketing point of view.
Here's the song so you can listen to it:
Let’s talk music.
Song kept the same Synth Pop style, so good for that. Vocal opens with Rosalía. First thing I noticed is that the way she was singing was weird, I listened at least 3 or 4 times and I couldn’t figure out some words until I read the lyrics, and you know I’m a native Spanish speaker, so definitely something was off.
I also feel
like she was supposed to sing only in Spanish but there was too much Spanglish
instead, and it kinda misses the point. After that, but just before The Weeknd starts to
sing she ends up with “bebé”, and misses the rhyme so it feels wrong, maybe
that’s my OCD but… yeah, no, it was wrong.
Her voice (and this is something related to production and recording) sounds weird, you can notice something is out of place. I cannot figure out if it is the reverb, the EQ or the compression but it sounds like there was an instrumental without some parts of the vocal and Rosalía was just added on top of it, like a really bad home-made recording.
Then we have another part of Rosalía’s Lyrics and singing at
around 2:58 that sound strange.
First lyrics. She says “duermo con la luz abierta”, which is
literally “I sleep with the lights OPENED”. Opened? I think she meant
“encendidas” (lights turned on) and it would’ve even matched the aesthetic of
the song that slightly nods to making love with your couple. but lights opened?
What?
Now, about the singing. I understand she sings flamenco, and she’s really great at it actually, she’s really good, but the type of singing just didn’t match the song, this time not only the mastering was off but also the singing style.
On the bright side, the harmonies that you can hear with their
voices are really nice, they sound really light but also powerful and they’re good written. I think the audio file for The Weeknd was the same as on the original track so
that EQ and mastering was fine. As I said, I don’t like Rosalía, but I have to
admit her voice is powerful, she’s a great singer. 🤷🏻♂️
Now
let’s talk marketing.
CNN Chile said the following:
The polemic remix of “Blinding Lights”
who pairs up Rosalía and The Weeknd:
The Catalan artist and the Canadian guy premiered their version
of the 2019’s hit, which is still trending in 2020. Anyway, their followers
were left unsatisfied with the result.
In social media, opinions have been divided. Some people are
happy with the collab while other say “the song is like 2020”
These are some tweets people posted:
https://www.cnnchile.com/cultura/polemico-remix-blinding-lights-rosalia-the-weeknd_20201204/
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timeout.es said the following:
It shows the music industry squeezer:
[…] this collab is a “remix” that could work for the dancefloor
in a world with working clubs (not like right now when everything’s closed), but it looks like a marketing strategy made to make algorithms explode. After
two remixes of the same song (Chromatics and Major Lazer), this is just another
way to squeeze the juice out of the golden eggs goose. Let’s remember that The
Weeknd and Rosalía as well as the producer Max Martin are part of the show-biz.
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Finally La Vanguardia said this: (Not a
translation, more like a TL;DR)
Stupefaction in social media because of The Weeknd and Rosalía
collab: “A kick on the face would’ve hurt less”:
Rosalía sings in spanish with a tone higher than the usual and
using filler words like “bebé” that don’t quite rhyme. Bridge and chorus
harmonies sound fine anyway. There’s also the fact that spanglish is used to
force the rhymes more than for the lyrics to make sense.
General opinion is that the collab was forced, and it made the
song sound worse. By the way there’s a phrase that made the fans go nuts:
“Duermo con la luz abierta”. It seems like in Rosalía’s native language,
Catalan, the word use is correct. (But again, she was singing in Spanish. Also,
isn’t there anyone that checks the lyrics prior to recording?)
Lastly, some people point out that it may be a marketing
maneuver as we approach Super Bowl LV (55) in 2021. Will Rosalía be one of the
artists to get up on stage? For now we can just wait some months to know, a
period of time that could make Rosalía’s fans like the song a little bit more
than they do now.
These are some other tweets:
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In conclusion, most of the discomfort with this remix goes towards
Rosalía, but we have to remember that sometimes this collaborations are, as
mentioned before, arranged by managers firstly, not artists themselves.
The Weeknd and Rosalía seemed very happy working together. Let’s
just hope that if they make another song together it works better than this
one.
Thanks for reading me again. As always, the video is here:
Have a nice night. keep dnzng!
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