theSundayColors
Forum postThis is my type of song. I like the sound of that lonely guitar. I wish the singing wasn't so muffled!
Berkeley Social Scene
glennny-guitars, vox, production, lyrics
Ken- Lyrics, Shakers, Tambo
Geech- Drums, Notes
Martin- Bass, Vox
Pump the Brakes
You could have been the greatest
Even better than the latest
A viral sensation
A standing ovation
you're not so much a good example
as you are a "terrible warning
Whoah, Pump the brakes
You were quite the flake
The sharks were in your face
They put you in your place
You could've been the greatest
Top of every playlist
Internet famous
you said “they’ll critically acclaim us”
a man alone can be dumb
but you're stupidity had teamwork
Whoah, Pump the brakes
You were quite the flake
The sharks are in your face
They put you in your place
Your shot at number 1
You were so young and dumb
Shot for the top of the charts
Your band is a farce
you're got Ray Charles' eye for art
and Van Gogh's ear for music
Don’t pump the brakes
We are raising the stakes
Put you sharks in your place
No time for sour grapes
Don’t pump the brakes
Don’t pump the brakes
No time for flakes
No time for sour grapes
Etc...
This is my type of song. I like the sound of that lonely guitar. I wish the singing wasn't so muffled!
musically this is one of my favourite BSS songs for a while, the big chords and atmosphere are excellent. Lyrically and vocally I'm not quite as keen, there are some good lines in here (I really like the more complex rhymes in the second verse) but starting off with that greatest / latest rhyme feels a bit lazy. The vocals sound really good in certain places, mostly the more melancholy, restrained sections, but there's some messy layering in other parts that I struggled with.
At first I thought you were going to target James Charles since he’s an internet star who was trending the past few days. But you never named a target, and it clearly wasn’t him. If you had a target in mind I didn’t figure it out, so I assume it was meant to be generic. The lyrics were solid with a few memorable lines, and the music was good enough. Overall it just felt like a weak “diss” track. But I’ve thought the same thing from everyone who didn’t name a specific target.
hmmm... that opening riff is straight out of "Ceremony," but fortunately this goes off into very different territory soon enough that it didn't really bother me. It kind of felt like an awkward speed to me--not quite languid enough to be a slow song and not quite fast enough to be a rocker. The "Ray Charles" verse was great and made me laugh, even though the pedantic part of my mind was like "if you cut off your ear you can still hear stuff!" But the other insults didn't feel too inspired--"you were dumb" is not really going to destroy anyone's ego, you know? I also wish the rhyme scheme were a bit more complex, there were a lot of AAAA (or nearly so) series of rhymes that felt a bit too simple. Good production--I liked those long kind of melancholy guitar leads; and nice use of the prompt as a hook.