Every now and then, a song comes along that just gets everywhere. It’s all over the radio, it’s on every TV show’s climactic final moments, and it soundtracks every advert. ‘How To Save A Life’ was one of these tracks. Often, this sort of ubiquity is woefully undeserved, but just occasionally, you can live with it. ‘How To Save A Life’ was a good track. Listening back to it, it’s hard to say why.
I’m not trying to be over-critical, but what is it that makes this song work? It’s not the musical structure – the melody in the verse is all over the place, and when it drifts into the chorus (with no noticeable transition) it continues in much the same vein. The lyrics aren’t the key to its success – they’re not saying anything too profound, and at various points you can barely make out what they are as they’re drawled so indistinctly. The arrangement is quite good – the piano bounces along quite nicely, there are some fairly effective (if simple) harmonies towards the end, and the drum outro is a nice touch, but these things do not a great song make. Yet, somehow, the song succeeds in becoming much more than the sum of its parts – it sweeps you in, even though you know it shouldn’t, even now, four years after it was everywhere. Extraordinary.
For the sake of completion, I should point out that this album contains a further twelve songs. I won’t bore you with the details – suffice to say, they’re pleasant enough, but the world wouldn’t miss them if they weren’t there.
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