Techno Takeover: Trendy Sounds

** I reviewed this around May of 2012, I know the popularity of this song might have faded by now, but it'll be a while before I review anything new**

In The Dark – Dev

Mini Review

Hello wonderful people

I have two questions: 
1: has anyone else noticed how the popular songs have similar sounds or instruments in them? 
2: Does anyone remember the song “Like a G6,” if so do you remember that random girl from the song? 

If don't remember, her name is Dev, and she has a song called “In the Dark,” and I should hate the song but it has an infectious sax solo that I absolutely love and it’s always in my head. I do love the riff, as well as two other songs that blew up a few summers ago and not only is the saxophone popping up in random genres of music on mainstream radio, another artist I reviewed a while back, introduced a handful of people to the amazing sound of the accordion, if you weren't already a Weird Al fan and had never really heard an accordion before, you might have heard it from a song called Stereo Love, I know that was the song that made me love the accordion. I'll touch on that a in part two of my trendy song reviews.

This song is on her 2011 album ‘The Night the Sun came up…’ it’s her debut album. Is it good? I don’t know, probably not because I find her voice to be blander than plain yogurt. Dev claims to have made the song because ‘she wanted to make a sexy song to show she’s a grown woman.’ You don’t need to release a sexy song to prove how mature you are. There’s plenty of other ways to prove you’re mature this just seems like the default theme to go to when people think they need to mature themselves.

There’s a music video and it has absolutely nothing going on other than a bunch of hands holding her naked body at random times. Dev said, “I wanted the video to be sexy as well. I wanted it to reflect all the dark aspects of the song, and initially we went in thinking that we'd have an Alice in Wonderland/Tim Burton type of feel.”

Well I can safely say the video she put out doesn’t look like Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland at all. In fact, the two couldn’t be farther apart from each other.

The lyrics are boring, her sing-talk style isn’t interesting and there’s not much to comment about the music video. I’ve been negative long enough, here’s why I like it. Someone working on this song knows how to make a semi-interesting beat. Not just the saxophone riff on the chorus, but the verses while they are bland, are slightly interesting. You have to build up to the drop and yes, I just said it was bland but it works. Overall, the verses are obviously not the important part of the song, the chorus drives it and once you’ve heard it, at some point in time it will be stuck in your head. One might say it’s great to hear a saxophone in an electronic song, she’s smart for using variety, well I say do your research because other artists have done this before. For example, Calabria by Enur and for the people who never heard Calabria, Katy Perry’s ‘Last Friday Night,’ and “Edge of Glory,” by Lady Gaga all have Saxophones in them.

Dev, aka Devin Star Tailes, wanted to write a sexy song, and indeed, she wrote a sexy song. A boring one but it still exists with the only thing standing out in the song being a ‘current’ music trend “In the Dark” won’t last long despite how well it did. It has over 44 million views on YouTube and it peaked at 11 in the US charts. Dev has two strikes against her, the first one being “Like a G6,” the bland and boring sound of “In the dark,” is number two. I hope she can work with her production company, known as the Cataracts, that’s why she always says something about Cataracts in her songs, to produce something amazing. Right now, I don’t have much faith in her although their ability to capitalize on a trendy sound and put it in a place not often heard was a smart idea.

Somehow, despite the fact I should hate the song, I can’t get over the awesome saxophone. It saves the song and gives it some good points in my book.

~Pugsly~ 

If you're wondering, I know two songs that are sexy songs done ten times better than "In The Dark"

Cold- VNV Nation:

Shut Up And Sleep With Me - Sin With Sebastian

Okay this song isn't that great but it's hilarious.