Just not This is The World We Live In please
K.
#4
This Is The World We Live In
Average:
9.315
Highest:
11 x 2 (
@Remorque,
@Untouchable Ace);
10 x 7 (
@Ana Raquel,
@DJHazey,
@Hudweiser,
@iheartpoptarts,
@mrdonut,
@ssa,
@TrueBeliever)
Lowest:
7 x 2 (
@abael,
@Eric)
Let’s hear a fun story from a Tess Merkel fan site (of course she has one, how dare you think she does not!): Apparently the band knew from the jump that “This Is The World We Live In” was a hit, but they ran into some snags while clearing the sample. In particular, Miss Ross was not a happy camper. It seems that, in the original demo, you could still hear her voice singing “I say…”(I’m presuming as in “I say upside down, you’re turning me”…)
“Maybe she had a bad day, but she said totally no to the project. Nevertheless, the songwriters (the Chic guys - surprise surprise...) gave the track [their] blessing, so the production team… had to re-make the sample as close to the original as possible. The final work was incredible, and you can’t hear the difference between Miss Ross’ and the Alcazar loop. In the end, this meant that instead of cashing in some royalties, Miss Ross won’t get a nickel. Too bad. Those divas...”
Here are some additional comments about “This Is The World We Live In” that I found on Freaky Trigger:
There are a lot of things I can use music for – catharsis, communication, comfort, profundity, scratching a technophile itch, a hundred others. In my life music has done some of these things well, some poorly. But what are the things that only music can do to me? One is make me dance – not that I do enough of that, these days. The other is to give me what this gives me, a joyful moment of self-erasing, transporting intensity. Almost nothing else – and certainly no other artform – can provide that wide-eyed feeling, which comes without effort, cost or consequence. The feeling isn’t always ‘happy’ but it’s always linked with excitement, like something’s heating up my spirit. The feeling isn’t often transferable and you can’t talk someone into it: I might get it from a stitch-up of Diana Ross and Genesis, you might be repelled. It can come and go, which is why I don’t often stand by lists. I can enjoy and admire and discuss music that doesn’t give me the feeling, in fact for the sake of conversation I prefer to leave it implied (pretend you never read this post). Sometimes everything on the radio can give me it a little; sometimes nothing can, and the songs which sent me to heaven yesterday can leave me vaguely satisfied tomorrow. But that clean hit on the pleasure centres is the irreplacable and highest truth of music for me: almost everything else is justification.
In the beginning was the word, and the word was POP! Alcazar turn the book of Genesis upside down, and welcome you to the world God forgot to create. This is discotopia: entry free, dress smart casual (no indie-scruff here, please), soundtrack Abba, Janet Jackson, George Michael and Metallica (Tess’s favourite band). Impeccable pop classicists Alcazar have filled the Steps-shaped hole in my heart, and they can do the same for you, you and all of you.
They pillage, they plunder, they triumph. It really doesn’t matter who Alcazar’s latest sampling casualties are as long as they keep making bouncy and chirpy Europop as enjoyably brain-dead as this. Phil Collins come back, you never sounded so good. The lyrics may seem to be a sequel to Jacko’s “Heal The World,” but perhaps there are deeper things at hand. To me, the way that Genesis and Diana Ross are rudely appropriated for Alcazar’s personal gain is akin to the way an average person brazenly manipulates another for their own advancement. When Alcazar sing “This is the world we live in / Let’s make it a place worth living,” the implicit context is all skillful exploitation of Genesis’ melody, while the explicit context is all about people bonding together for the well-being of the world. Contradiction city! Both contexts are pitted against each other as the song plays, and in the end, I have to say goodbye to the betterment of the world – because I’d rather be moving on up with Alcazar!
@Hudweiser (10): Great sampling once again and it did quite well in the UK (#15), which was a pleasant surprise, but again, they didn’t bother following up.
@VivaForever (9.5): This score is for the Almighty mix. But also for the audacity to mash up a Diana Ross song with a Genesis song and actually having it work.
@ssa (10): Story time. I heard this on a German channel I managed to receive while living in Italy for some reason. The signal disappeared mid-song but it stuck with me without me knowing how to find it (Alcazar CDs were hard to find in rural Italy). Fast forward 3 years and a classmate plays a CD-R at her place, which starts with This Is The World We Live In. A whole 15 seconds of it, and then it starts cracking. I manage to import the mp3 (a staggering 10-minute mashup of snippets of song and violent cluttering noise). When we finally got the Internet where I lived I remember it being the first thing I Googled and downloaded.
@iheartpoptarts (10): Awwww, I remember when this came out. It was early in my days of turning to the internet for Eurobops and it was such a moment.
@Empty Shoebox (9): This was the very first Alcazar song I ever heard. It had a stint of being reasonably popular on UK radio back in 2004 and I had a sequence of reasonably long car journeys that year, so I heard it a lot, and I liked it. Not sure if I like it more or less than the Genesis song though. On that note - Invisible Touch is a great album.
@mrdonut (10): Remains a supreme slice of Euro pop with an absolutely brilliant handling of samples/interpolations. The video is great too. I was probably never happier than when dancing to this with mates at Wig Out in the mid-00s.
@berserkboi (9.3): This is better than I remember! Well done!!
@TrueBeliever (10): Andreas and Magnus’s harmony is incredible on this. Brilliant mash up of Diana Ross and Genesis, with the Alcazar flair!
@Untouchable Ace (11): The song that thankfully was supported by radio and gave me the chance to pay attention to them again. This is so exquisite and addictively good pop.
