3 Great Songs from 2013 From Unexpected Places

There were some great songs in 2013. I have spent so much money on my iTunes account that I seriously have to be a bit more select when it comes to choosing songs. The songs I want to talk about today are the ones I definitely did not expect to be any good. If you asked me at the start of 2013 to pick bands that were going to impress me the most, I would not have hand-picked the three I had below. But the three songs below are the ones I have probably listened to more than any others (except for Blurred Lines, but it is impossible to escape that song.)

That is not to say that the bands below are bad bands. In fact, they have always been so talented. Maybe they have been missing for a while, slowly working on that new album that has blown us away so far. Maybe they’ve simply not been at their peak for a while. For whatever reason, I had little expectations for them in 2013 and they used that to their advantage to make me look at them in a new light, excited for the next step.

3 – ARCTIC MONKEYS – WHY’D YOU ONLY CALL ME WHEN YOU’RE HIGH

I have always liked the Arctic Monkeys and I am in no way saying that I think they are a bad band. Their first album is one of the greatest selections of music around. ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’ is a classic to this very day. While I do not know much about guitars, my brother is a bass guitar player and he insists that Arctic Monkeys know what they are doing. They are his favourite band and my brother only likes about three bands (“four, but then Metallica sold out, man!”), so that’s saying something. But I know enough about music as a whole to admit that they’ve being going downhill for a while. From the looks of my brother’s album, I think that the Arctic Monkeys have lost that spark that made them such an engaging band when they first arrived on the music scene.

So that is why I am very impressed with their latest load of songs. Each one seems to be cementing their place as talented musicians more and more. I love ‘Why’d you only Call me when you’re High’ so much. It is such a great piece of music, with a great sound and it has the plus of being catchy (something that hasn’t happened with an Arctic Monkey’s song for some time now). It also has so many layers, with some clever lyrics. I like how we are unsure who the villain is in the song. The lyrics suggest that this is about a girl that won’t give the boy in the song the time of the day. However, standing back, especially when put with the amazingly well directed music video, we realise that maybe the bloke in the song is actually not the best person to be dating. It is clever, different from other songs out there and a true return to form in a band that the music industry has sorely missed.

2 – FALLOUT BOY – ALONE TOGETHER

Fallout Boy are a band that disappeared for ages. I am a massive fan of the band and love almost every one of their songs. However, ever since getting into internet writing, I learned that a load of people hate this band. They have accidentally become the go-to band for emos everywhere and they have been attacked by a lot of people for that. Personally, I have never thought of them as that type of band and I do not understand why they are so hated. But hated they were and when they disappeared from the music scene, I wasn’t too surprised that they quietly bowed out, before things got nasty.

But no, they returned and what an album! The song in this article is the best one in the album in my books, but I feel like I am talking about the album as a whole, rather than a single song that impressed me. Fallout Boy are back and stronger than ever. I hope they stick around a little longer this time, because I love the emotion running through their songs. Alone Together is such a powerful piece of music and I want to see more of what this band has to offer in the charts.

1 – ONE REPUBLIC – COUNTING STARS

Where the hell did this come from? One Republic were never my kind of band. The only song I can really remember was ‘Apologise’, which I didn’t get along too well with. The vocals did nothing for me and the lyrics were mediocre. I wrote them off as a one-hit wonder and listened to some more Britney Spears. Looking back, I might not have been that good a judge of music.

When Counting Stars first came out, I didn’t get around to watching it for a long while. I just wasn’t interested in the band. But then, I caught my brother, Liam, (not the Arctic Monkeys brother, the one that films me drinking heavily at quizzes), listening to this amazing song. I hung around the room, just to listen to it. When it was done, I had to ask him, what it was. He replied “It’s the new One Republic that everyone has been going crazy about”. I was blown away. They sound so different. The vocals are powerful and commanding. The beat is infectious. The lyrics are clever. I ate my hat right there and then.