Acapella

“Used to be a baby, used to be a lady
Thought you were the perfect lover
All the harmony went falling out of key, so
Now you gotta find another
Now you’re talking crazy saying that you made me
Like I was your Cinderella
You and me are through, though, watch me hit it solo
I’mma do it acapella”

Acapella – Karmin

I spend a lot of time listening to music and thinking beyond what I’m simply hearing. I love messages in songs. I like the way they challenge society and encourage us to change. And I like metaphors which run through whole songs and tell you a message without being explicit.

I really like the message in Acapella. I think the metaphor is relatively clever: a girl decides she doesn’t need this shitty guy so she’s going solo and doing her thing without him in the background. Lines like “all the harmony went falling out of key” and “watch me hit it solo” and the bit in the middle where Amy actually goes acapella before she brings the beat back all bring together that musical theme. The metaphor ties music in with music in a smart way and does not leave the listener at all confused with the message. I like it a lot.

Therefore, it’s such a shame this song sounds worse than fingernails down a chalkboard and cats screeching in the middle of the night mixed together. I cringe when I listen to and resented having to listen a through a few times while writing this. I don’t quite get what she is doing with her voice, and indeed, quite how she manages to get her voice to make such strange noises i.e. those falsetto bits. And there is actually a lyric which says “totes believe”. TOTES BELIEVE. This should only be used by teenage girls, or in full irony.

My point is this: Acapella started with such promise and on paper it looks fantastic and clever, but it’s execution into a product is poor. Ideas are great. Ideas are what make us think of new products and how to improve lives. But making these ideas a reality is much harder and often the final product is nothing near what we originally imagined it would be. You’ve most likely had this happen to you and it’s frustrating; I know I’ve tried to convince people I know exactly what I mean in my head but can’t properly convey it into something physical.

This is the part of my blog where I would usually wrap up with something positive. But today I am stumped. I started writing this post a few weeks ago and had to leave it unfinished for a while because I couldn’t figure out how to end it. And I still can’t. I have no advice on this matter – I think the sad truth might just be there are simply going to be times when no one else will see the full potential of our ideas.