We can’t even agree what it sounds like.
[Video]
[4.50]
Brad Shoup: It sounds like 5SOS managed by Al Walser. It sounds like Aviici taking molly with Owl City. It sounds like Seven Lions covering a Punk Goes Pop version of a Seven Lions song. It probably sounds like Fleet Foxes, for all I know.
[4]
Alfred Soto: In recent years only Owl City has fumbled for the words with such sincerity, and because it’s 2015 this means sincerity + dance beats.
[3]
Crystal Leww: Tove Lo and dubstep were better looks for Seven Lions.
[5]
Jonathan Bogart: It was when they rhymed “let me down” with “say so long” that I stopped trying to give them the benefit of the doubt.
[4]
Micha Cavaseno: Well, someone’s really done and made EDM versions of Styx and Journey-type anthem rock. Didn’t take ’em long, really.
[4]
Edward Okulicz: EDM for people who think the best song of all time is “Don’t Stop Believing.” Only this is way better than “Don’t Stop Believing.” Except I fucking hate “Don’t Stop Believing.”
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: Where’s Walter Palmer when you need him? Also, Sombear. Christ. Get Ben Lilly too.
[2]
Thomas Inskeep: Seven Lions proves he’s learned nothing new since “Strangers” — this is button-pushing EDM-pop at its laziest: Here’s the “emotional” breakdown! Here’s the acoustic guitar, finger-picked! Here’s the over-emoting anonymous vocalist!
[2]
Iain Mew: I have no great love for the vocals, but they’re a minor detail anyway, and do well enough at their purpose of setting up an elegiac mood. The real point is the drops, each a series of graceful jumps and tricks strung together like a low gravity skateboard routine.
[7]
Will Adams: Dance music was always my first love. Growing up in the back of a station wagon listening to Top 40 radio when songs like “Waiting For Tonight” got significant airplay encoded my blank brain with an affinity for the 4/4 pulse, the 120-140 BPM range, each rhythmic element that creates the groove: kick, snare, hi hat, cymbal crashes. The iTunes boom coincided with my burgeoning freedoms as a teenager, to be able to sit in my room unattended, trawling through the store’s catalog of maxi singles. I’d have my iPod with me at all times, ready to plug in at a moment’s notice: as I lay on the floor, completing mundane grammar exercises; on the bus to middle school basketball games, opting to pump myself up instead of talking to my teammates. Weekend dances at boarding school showed me how to perform with music, to spot her from across the room, to move with her to the rhythm. I shook my head at the kids who got in trouble for drinking. I prided myself on being able to go crazy with just a strobe light and house music. College came; I attended festivals and concerts. I had loosened up on alcohol; now I shook my head at my friends who spent most of Lollapalooza searching for molly. I vowed that I would never touch that shit. I split from them and watched acts alone. I became sad, again, that I didn’t know anyone who could just appreciate dance music with me for what it was. The social act of music appreciation began to leave me cold. Dance music was still there for me, for the times I lay on my bed wanting to do anything else but move. Around 2012, It came back on radio, but it was less satisfying. Pop stars tried it on with the frivolity of a shopping montage. DJs I loved kowtowed to the loudness war, releasing pounding, oppressive tunes without a hint of passion. Mumford & EDM became a thing. Everything was EDM, whether it fit the category or not. I hated it. I found little use in screaming myself hoarse about the dance music I loved that no one else had heard or cared about. The loneliness returned. In 2015, Seven Lions, whose music I adored whether it was exquisite dubstep or heart-stopping trance, released “A Way to Say Goodbye,” a song that opens with campfire guitar and scratchy alt-rock vocals. I gritted my teeth, fearing the worst, but I was rewarded. The drop arrived, and I felt my entire history with dance music flash before me. The bass thundered, the lead synth coursed through my body like an electric current, Sombear scratched at the sky with a repeated “goodbye.” I found the love again, in the song’s unabashed drama, in Seven Lions’ perfect audio mixing, in dance music. I began to appreciate, even love, the acoustic verses as well, for their counterpart to that avalanche of the drop. I stopped searching for outside validation. I loved “A Way to Say Goodbye,” and that was all that mattered. I vowed to always hold it close to me — on planes, on treadmills, as I lay on the floor wanting nothing more to be still — and just let it play.
[10]