Theresa Rex (or T. Rex as she jokingly refers to herself in her press release) has visited NMC several times and made the 2024 Songs of the Year list. She ranges over many different personal matters in her songs including her desire to have her own voice heard, conversely her decision to disengage from the world when she was being treated for a serious illness and being stabbed in the back by a friend that stole her boyfriend. Ouch.
Even so she usually manages to make them all bubbly and bouncy, as if she doesn’t have a care in the world.
This time she turns her attention, in a single she has released herself, to the subject of anxiety, the overwhelming sensation of chaos many young people feel and how they try to drown it all out by partying like its 1999. (Actually that applies even more to us oldies, Theresa, and we don’t know what day it is, either).
She says she’s experienced anxiety bad enough to think she was having a heart attack and has often turned to the bottle, which only made it worse. (Actually that applies even more to us oldies…oh, never mind).
I used to follow the US artist Little Scream until she went all political and they should dub Theresa ‘Big Scream’. She even does a very convincing one towards the end, right out of Janet Leigh’s shower scene in Psycho.
The song’s vibe is very much of Kim Wilde (think ‘Kids in America’) as it progresses, underscored by a relentless, machine gun-like bass line.
It’s got it all: a strong melody, smart lyrics, and it verges on anthemic and then backs off just at the right moment. The whole nine yards.
And there’s a wonderful short sampling of John Farnham’s ‘You’re the voice’ in the chorus. I don’t know if she meant it but it works beautifully.
Frigging good song. (This is the cleaned-up version of the review!)
And boy, can she sing. That’s how you get 1.5 billion stream on Spotify.
Oh and here’s a thing. This is a genuine pan-Nordic production, with the song written in Iceland by Theresa Rex along with Icelandic writer Hákon Guðony and the Finnish producer Camu Creutz.
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