Get out your poppers! It’s uplifting, yet earnestly nonsensical, dance pop o’clock!
[Video][Website]
[6.18]
Iain Mew: There’s something going on in UK chart pop at the moment – the rules have changed, as William Swygart notes. Disclosure and Bastille somehow having #2 hits is the headline indicator, but the success of Sub Focus and Zedd, featuring singers without hits to their names themselves, also feels like a big change from a couple of years ago. “Clarity” almost sounds like a Calvin Harris track, yes, but there’s a lot of space in that ‘almost’. The cavernous backing vocals are given as much space as the cheap build-ups, those give out with a satisfying clap-clap of drums, and it feels a lot less pummelling, helped by Foxes doing a fine job in investing muddled material with feeling. Zedd was half of the production team behind “Beauty and a Beat” and is producing (much of?) the new Lady Gaga album so it may be that these variations will be obnoxiously standard soon enough, but for now it sounds refreshing.
[7]
Rebecca A. Gowns: Holy balls this song owns.
[10]
Crystal Leww: The vocal here from Foxes is lovely, but it feels as though her vocals are a little too slow. Zedd’s production is mostly just okay; overall, it doesn’t really match up to how great Foxes’s vocal is, and the chorus in particular is anti-climactic, completely lacking in the catharsis the song demands. Both of these problems are remedied in the Aylen remix of the song, which is heartbreaking even if it’s maybe a little obvious. (Related: Oh.)
[5]
Patrick St. Michel: My headphones broke on the flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles this weekend, so I had to rush over to Best Buy to get a new pair. I saw a listening station for Beats By Dre headphones and decided to give it a listen because I’ve actually never used ’em before. This Zedd song was used as the demo, and in the context of trying to sell consumers on the noise branded headphones, it works wonders. The drop is loud, and the vocals from Foxes sound dramatic (this applies even coming out the cheap Sony wrap-arounds I bought). This gets an extra point for the background voices, which make this sound even bigger. That said, “Clarity” leans closer to conventional EDM, unlike Zedd’s “Spectrum,” which added intrigue by working in some Yasutaka-Nakata-inspired wonkiness.
[7]
Ian Mathers: The answer to the two questions posed by the chorus is simple: because you’re still a teenager, or at least essentially adolescent in your approach to relationships. You can find someone who is your “remedy” and “clarity” without participating in a relationship that is a “tragedy” and “insanity.” It’s a shame the chorus production is better than a lot of this kind of dance pop we’ve been reviewing here, because romanticizing that bullshit isn’t helping anyone.
[2]
Will Adams: Things really get good when Foxes begins Paramoring on the pre-chorus, and the octave-leaping synth line is quite nice. But the canned stadium chant is a major misstep. First, because it inspires claustrophobia; I imagine I’m surrounded by a crowd of burly, fist-bumping bros. Second, because it muddies the chorus’ melody, robbing it of its loveliness and, funnily enough, its clarity.
[6]
Brad Shoup: Shouldn’t Hayley Williams have scored some trance work by now? I love the idea of this: the combination of diary-rock with slowly-winding bosh. Again, it’s that crazy/beautiful shit, but impeccably rendered: people believe this kind of thing, and this is my infrequent remembrance of that fact. And, of course, I’m a sucker for mass male vocals. Right now, they sound like a chorus of bros suggesting Foxes chill for a sec. No chance.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: If this lyric talks tragedy, why the Roget’s parody? If this song’s called “Clarity,” why the grandiosity?
[4]
Anthony Easton: Like an update of Bonnie Tyler’s worst excesses, but with a bit more edge. Extra points for the sped-up bosh near the end.
[6]
Scott Mildenhall: If “EDM” has any use as a term it can only be as a shaky categorisation for songs like this, that Porter Robinson single, and going further back, Filo & Peri’s “Anthem“. The sort of thing that sounds totally suitable for an event called “Electric Daisy Carnival”; reaching for euphoria with the reaching all that’s apparent. “Clarity” is nice, but not very exciting at all.
[6]
Edward Okulicz: I dislike songs which put in gratuitous crowd shouting or noise, but Foxes’ chorus is pretty, forceful and (yes) inane enough to nearly justify it — that, and I have a corresponding weakness for long-“i” sounds. The bleepy bits in the chorus are the same as some other dance pop song of the last five years I can’t name (either that, or a 16-bit video game I played last weekend but forgot), but it’s a trick that has a long half-life for me. The charts need a good blast of drop-free and strongly melodic EDM and “Clarity” delivers just that.
[8]