25 October 2007
Insofar as any pop music analysis can be methodologically sound, I remember having a lightbulb moment at a small local gig in November 2007. There, I heard the support act—a hipster guy with a ukulele, naturally—play their version of ‘Bleeding Love’, then number one in the charts. Ironic or condescending cover versions of chart pop hits by indie acts were a notable feature of the ’00s music scene: the male, pale and stale guitar rock hegemony trying to regain some sort of control or relevance during that decade’s chart pop renaissance, as well as serve some rockist snark. In Ireland, there was a compilation series of acoustic rock cover versions of chart pop from Today FM radio sessions with the telling title Even Better Than The Real Thing. We’ll even meet such a rock cover version as an Irish number one in 2008. (It’s not the ukulele hipster.) That night, I realised which side I was on.
What about Leona Lewis’s original—the Real Thing—of ‘Bleeding Love’? Sincerely, it’s great. Most of this is due to Lewis herself. Yes, it may be on the OTT side of Motown-style my-friends-say-he’s-a-bad-‘un-but-I-love-him-anyway melodrama. I’d even say it resembles another sneered-upon popular form, the soap opera, and what are soaps and pop ballads but the vicarious thrill of heightened, catastrophised everyday life? However, Lewis absolutely nails those lyrics with a compelling, convincing performance which finds the sweet spot between Britney’s gulping desolation and Mariah’s vocal extravagance. The key line is the pre-chorus of “I don’t care what they say / I’m in love with you” which Lewis delivers in two different readings: defiance in the first two passes, but at the end a weary, resigned despair. Even the climactic Mariah-esque melisma and money note feel diegetic and warranted: one last keen of heartache, before another resigned sigh for the conclusion. Also, the track’s sparse, percussive arrangement helps keep things from getting too histrionic: it stops short of full ‘Stay With Me’, Lorraine Ellison’s definitive ugly-cry magnum opus, but never degenerates into the worst excesses of ’90s power ballad roaring and shouting. I’m not sure any of Lewis’s contemporaries could have made ‘Bleeding Love’ work so well.
One of the principles of Irish Number Ones is to love chart pop without condescension or irony. So, that lightbulb moment at that gig in 2007 with this song has led me here. To be fair, I think at some level Hipster Ukulele Guy sincerely liked Leona Lewis’s ‘Bleeding Love’ too, even if he had a strange way of showing it. That said, I’ve now also become a leading authority on the works of Shakin’ Stevens, Stock Aitken & Waterman, Dustin and Westlife, so I suppose I can’t talk.
