The One Song, 2011: The Editors

Between us, we Seidler brothers have written about over 1000 songs, at an average of 5-600 words apiece. That rounds out to approximately half a million words about different pieces of music, which doesn’t make this task any easier. However difficult it was for our industry and muso friends, multiply that tenfold. But hey, we set the challenge, so it would be remiss of us not to fulfil our end of the bargain. Two brothers, two editors, two songs. Let’s go.

Jonno Seidler
Tyler, The Creator – ‘Yonkers’

At the core of Yonkers, there are two bass notes. Two. In a year of musical minimalism, where Calvin Harris reduced himself to seven words, LMFAO to three chords and Drake to a few drum sounds, this nineteen year old upstart managed to slay them all – from his bedroom. It doesn’t mater if you saw or heard ‘Yonkers’ first, it was everywhere this year, and with good reason. Coming off like the bastard child of Eminem and The Prodigy’s ‘Breathe’, Tyler’s official entry into the music world was challenging lyrically as it was harmonically stripped bare. “I’m a fucking walking paradox/No I’m not” is but one of many dark gems that the bedroom producer-turned Internet anti-hero fired off, seemingly without even trying.

Hype does not exist in a vacuum. The reason so many kids picked up Tyler and the whole OFWGKTA schtick and ran with it was not because Pitchfork told them to, but because other avenues of music had failed them. There were no bad-ass rock records released this year. Kanye and Jay-Z channeled all their creativity into an album devoted to prospective parenthood and being rich. The star of 2011, at least according to everyone else, was a sort of pudgy folk singer who really liked ’80s ballads. Music, like all forms of art, collapses in on itself when this kind of thing happens. And out of it comes a writhing black kid with oversized lips who writes beats that would seem more at home on a Massive Attack or Portishead release.

Everyone has pointed out the obvious issues with Tyler’s lyricism; his homophobia, his threats to stab Bruno Mars in the oesophagus (easily the best diss of the year) and so on but isolating these elements is like saying Marshall Mathers contributed nothing to the world aside from wanting to murder his ex-wife. If you listen to ‘Yonkers’, like really listen, you’ll hear the whole of 2011 sewn up in its DNA; the angst (‘Here’s the number to my therapist/Tell him all your problems, he’s fuckin’ awesome with listenin’), the abandonment (My mom’s gone, that fuckin’ broad will never understand me), the pressure to conform (‘I’m not gay, I just wanna boogie to some Marvin’) and the self-starting spark that allows Tyler to turn off his filter and turn up the bass.

Though they’re currently working hard to undermine any faith that the world had in them, Tyler’s Odd Future has produced bonafide stars, most notably Frank Ocean, who is now a crooner-for-hire and Hodgy Beats. He’s also brought moshing back to gigs in a way that has escaped all but the metalheads and started a counter-culture movement that has literally taken over the way skinny jeans did when The Strokes dropped. When I walk through Bondi, I see white Jewish kids wearing Supreme hats, buttoned up shirts and Vans with high socks. It’s not a cool look, but it’s everywhere. Where Tyler goes from here is anyone’s guess. But with Kanye West pimping him, Bieber hanging with him and the entire world waiting on his next tweet, 2011 was this Creator’s oyster. #Swag.

David Seidler
Adele – Rolling In The Deep

Despite what year-end round-ups might tell you, lauding the occupy movement, the Arab Spring or the legacy of Steve Jobs, if 2011 was the year of anything, the title belonged to a 21 year-old singer from Tottenham. Adele had made waves back in 2008 when, as part of the new guard of white soul singers, she burst onto the scene alongside Duffy and Amy Winehouse.

But with Winehouse meeting her untimely demise earlier this year and Duffy failing to impress on her sophomore effort, the stage was set for Adele to turn ripples of approval into a tidal wave of popular support and critical acclaim. With 21, an album that skirted heartbreak and independence alternately and showcased a songwriting talent far beyond her years, Adele delivered.

‘Rolling In The Deep’ – although not my favourite from the record (that title might go to the ballsy ‘I’ll Be Waiting’) – was probably not anticipated to take off like it did. It charts similar territory to ‘Someone Like You’ but does it considerably less convincingly than that ballad. If anything, it’s sounds of the South make it the kind of track you might play hand games to, a ditty of sorts.

But while Atlantic mightn’t have had big plans for ‘Rolling’, the rest of the music world certainly did. More than any other song I can recall in recent history, ‘Rolling In The Deep’ was reworked, remixed, rerecorded and freestyled over by acts as diverse as the likes of Childish Gambino, John Legend and, of course, Jamie xx. The bravura ‘We could have had it aaaalllll’ refrain seems to me an apt slogan for the year that was, a year of rebellion and reevaluation of big hopes and dashed dreams.

At core, it’s the tortured tale of a scorned lover but ‘Rolling In The Deep’ is so much more. A sign of the times, musically, emotionally and politically, Adele, 2011′s biggest star, lays that shit bare.