Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s 2001 hit, “Murder on the Dancefloor,” has made a resounding comeback, thanks in part to Emerald Fennell’s 2023 gothic and glorious film, ‘Saltburn‘ .The film, featuring Barry Keoghan and Jacob Elordi, has propelled the colourful track back to the number 8 position, over two decades after it reached number 2 upon its initial release.
The groovy track, “Murder on the Dancefloor,” delves into the themes of tumult, jealousy and doing what you can to set the groove with similar semantics being discussed in ‘Saltburn’ it is fitting that this song would soundtrack its final scene. Depicting a disturbing dialogue about desire, deceit and the class divide ‘Saltburn’ has quickly become a cult classic with Gen Z and millennials coming together to show their love for both the film and the track in a slew of viral TikTok’s.
“Saltburn”-themed videos featuring the track have amassed an impressive 4 billion views on the app. The track also experienced a significant surge in streams on New Year’s Eve 2023, with 1.5 million streams in a single day. Furthermore, in the first week of January, “Murder on the Dancefloor” claimed the top trending spot on The Hot 100, marking its first appearance on the list.
Perhaps this musical miracle holds a motto we should carry into 2024: we may plant seeds in the day that will only grow at night- Bextor herself put it poetically in a Newsnight interview earlier this month “You have to be open to the unexpected, and you can’t plan what happens next”.
Get to know the band of brothers a bit better whilst enjoying their latest track.
Dubinski
Dubinski are back with their latest track, Downtown Operation. After releasing their debut album ‘Dubinski’ in 2022 the brand of brothers have recently released another energetic track to add to their ever intriguing repetroire.
Downtown Operation Dubinski 2023
Downtown Operation, fast paced and free feeling, this song boasts an optimistic edge that makes you feel as though you are soaring away from everything, getting out without missing a breathe. Estatic, you escape adversity with a smile on your face. With its electronic feel, you imagine yourself plugging into something surreal, full of synthetic sounds and digital beats, this track feels futuristic whilst still being familiar but that is just the beauty of their instrumentals whilst the lyrics unveil something deeper, more sinister that would have you running but certainly not with a smile on your face.
Inspired by politicians who are blind to reality, this song offers a satirical edge, a refection of racial profiling, police brutality. It is a forewarning, the sound of despair, a lighthouse to the terrors of the world but no one is turning the torch on, too scared of what they may see.
Lets review the journey that took them to this release; their self-titled debut album, Dubinski, showcased in 2022 is an eclectic audio tour of the band’s buoyant feeling, their ability to discuss darker topics whilst keeping the crowd bouncing with their high energy and altruism.
Dubinski Debut Album Tour:
Track One:Soothsayer.
Soothsayer Dubinski
If you could see the future would you live your life differently to try and change fate? Would this power prevent you from living in the present? Dark spirited and unsettling this song offers a gothic hand through the bands disinticnve indie feel. Arguably seeing the tone for the debut album.
Track Two:Gotta Get Out Of This Place.
We are all trying to get out of ‘this place’ but where are we trying to end up? All the weekends we live for end up the same, stumbling out of the same local and into a different bed, waking up with a banging head being sick at the things you said.
Dubinksi are colour engine of sound and eccentricity, a fusion of creativity and the bizarre. The shape of their sound is massive as they pull us up and over ourselves.
The album focus track ‘Gotta Get Outta This Place’ is rooted in their hard-working studio dynamic, with their producers Mike and Robbie pushing Eugene to record his vocals more than 20 times before the perfect take emerged.
Beyond Me Dubinski 2022
Track Nine: Beyond Me
Upbeat and optimistic this track is evocative of the band’s high energy live performances. A kaleidoscope of better days.Making the most of each moment and living for it. Making the sun shine when your days are full of storms. The opening is very brit pop infused with the riff taking me straight into the foamier hold of Blur’s parklike, making beyond me a sure favourite for the summer festivals.
Dubinski
Track 12: Fall Right In The Grave
Grief, the devastating notion that things will be how they always were, conversations become monologues and potential is frozen, once we were forever fearing change now praying for it this track is all about coming to terms with death but feeling wounded and angered by its inevitability.
Taken as a whole, Dubinski’s debut album is a shattering, cathartic experience. It’s a record fuelled by brotherhood, by loss and by the empowering impact of communal emotion. More than anything else, it’s a launching point, a marker of the sheer will that has dragged Dubinski from the Highlands of Scotland out into the world.
“I sometimes wonder what the hell we would be doing if we didn’t have this band,” drummer Eoin muses. “It’s the umbilical cord that keeps us all together”.
Eoin
Their fast-phased, alt-rock and visceral live sets has landed them an increasing set of accolades including praises from BBC Radio Scotland, Scotland On Sunday and Record Of The Day, a nomination for ‘best newcomers at the Scottish Alternative Music Awardsand they have also performed on some of th biggest stages in the country and the UK including T in the Park, Wide Days and Liverpool Sound City.
They have supported Indie Powerhouse, The Lottery Winners and Iconic alternative punk rockers Everclear, with another large tour starting next year it is no surprise these indie rockers are taking listeners by storm. More information here.
Stick Season, released a year ago, has seen a revival of folk/country music. It’s gripping chorus the backtrack to many viral TikTok posts. But is this all we are listening for?
Noah Kahan September 2021
Stick Season 2022 Spotify Noah Kahan
Around this time of year we reflect, we revisit the walls that broke our hearts and the faces that tried to fix them. We flick through photos to recreate pleasant days and find lost memories. We dream the days away and find that we would rather rest our head in this other worldly plain. There will always be blurred faces in the backs of our mind, always be those nights when you catch those wandering eyes and you question what if it had been more than kiss? What could be worse than this? Falling in love just to feel like you’ve missed. Something you didn’t have, something you didn’t lose, you learn to live with the decisions you choose.
Stick Season 2022 Noah Kahan Youtube
Our family figurines, just people in positions, we have placed them in to protect us from reality. The lives we lost because of something we found out, everything you’re doing all for someone else. People change because they have to, changed minds and changed lives we can live in our memories but we will not survive. There are the miracles of life and the joys of Christmas and summer but there is also the ‘season of the sticks’ a miserable time of year where life drags out the dirt you have tried to bury.
Noah Kahan June 2023
This song is evocative of campfire nights, of some distant life I am yet to have experienced but I am only really inspired by it’s chorus. There is talent and there is poetry but it feels lost to the rushed tempo, a racing mind too scared to settle on the thoughts that make it run, so it is clever in that sense but it feels undone, taking away the motional impact that a broken heart has, there is no time to settle with the pain, there is just the feeling of running away.
However, I am impressed and amused by the rhyming of sticks with exist and the verse:
‘ So I thought that if I piled something good on all my bad That I could cancel out the darkness I inherited from dad No and I’m no longer funny but I miss the way you laugh’
Covered by Olivia Rodrigo on BBC Radio One’s Live Lounge this song has truly got people talking, crying into the cuffs of their sleeves, singing along on drives through the country back to see old friends and family. There is so much pain in poetry but it can be beautifully to listen to as it unites us, an audible force in the face of adversity.
Emotionally intricate but rushed through, maybe we need to be braver and spend a little more time in the ‘Season of the Sticks’ to truly appreciate the warmth of summer.
Evolve Music 