It Took Seconds

Three minutes and forty-two seconds: What seems to have happened here is that Hayzi Fantayzee have said “We want to make amazing pop records” and then realised they have no particular method or knowledge of how to go about doing so. It was 1983; there was a lot of it about. So “Shiny Shiny” takes a chassis from “The Clapping Song” and whoops and hollers and plays the spoons over the top of it, adding a playground chant for a chorus. It takes its own inventiveness quite for granted - unless it actually IS just a fuck up on my MP3 there’s a bit where they make the song jerk about like the backing is skipping and then kick it to get back to the tune; it’s the kind of idea which in another time and place might have been made the point of the song and placed so you’d hear it and think “Yes. Innovative.” But here it just… happens, and you don’t think about it at all. (Well, you do now, because I’ve pointed it out to you.) Oh, and it’s supposedly “about” the apocalypse but really it’s about a song having a “most early 80s lyric ever” competition with itself. “I’m a hot retard / Marquis de Sade” looked a certainty until “The child spoke - we ain’t got a hope / Press the button press the button it’s all remote” turned up. Those meddling kids.

What would your 3’42” track be?