17 October 2013
Hivemind: can you recall any particular reason—nationwide tour, TV talent show performance, Sunday Game closing montage—why ‘Wings’ by Birdy topped the charts in Ireland? After all, it only reached number eight in her native UK and didn’t go to number one anywhere else either. Or was it simply that a song called ‘Wings’ by an act called Birdy appealed to our native sense of bantz?
If I’d had to guess which Birdy song topped the charts I would have gone for her appealingly plaintive 2011 cover of Cherry Ghost’s ‘People Help The People’, a top ten Birdy hit in my then-domicile of France but not a chart hit in the UK or Ireland, with its dramatic chorus and distinctive rhyme of ‘homesick’ with ‘hold it’. ‘Wings’ is perfectly adequate in its mildly emotional Adele-ish and Florence-y piano balladry but, unless I’m missing out on some particularly bombastic remix accessible to the good people of 2013, nor is there anything dramatic or distinctive. High-flying chart position aside, it just never takes off.
