Review Summary: Take That's new single These Days, from their album III is the end of the road.
Take That have been around long enough now to know the dos and don’ts of music. Unfortunately, this clearly escaped their minds when they were recording These Days. The track could possibly have been acceptable back in the 90s part of their careers, when cheese was all anyone wanted or even expected from a boy band. When Gary Barlow opens with “Oh I can see the future” in an over auto tuned cringe-worthy fake American accent, you know you’ve hit the point of no return. Then, in steps Mark Owen singing a repetitive monotonous number of lines in an attempt to add a modern twist to this already pointless track. The only issue here being that the Take That guys fail to realise they’re not actually boys anymore; in fact it’s been a good while since they could class themselves as the youth. The tricks they are trying to pull off in this song, could be expected of bands like One Direction and The Vamps, the artists that typically attract a female audience between the ages of five and twelve… I don’t think that’s the kind of attention a group of 40 year old men should be attracting.
In hindsight, Take That are one of those bands that, no matter how awful they are, will continue to have a religious following of middle aged women that were with them from the start. The tedious bunch that are some poor person’s embarrassing mother who scream uncontrollably and throw their underwear on stage.
If it wasn’t for these dedicated fans, it’s doubtful that the music scene would be tainted with tracks like These Days. With all the decent music that is on the market now, what new fans are they likely to gain?
Throughout These Days, we’re graced with a continuous clapping and a tambourine thrown in for good measure. To completely oppose this, they have a synthesiser tune that builds up to the chorus, giving the false hope that potentially the song will get better. The hope is lost with the realisation that all we’re getting is “tonight I’m gona live for these days” which not only makes no sense at all, but is paired with the tambourine riff you usually hear in a country track. The track ends in typical cheesy boy band style, with the repetition of Gary’s monotonous auto tuned ‘oh’s, N-Sync style.
In all honesty, some of the instrumental elements of the track aren’t really that bad. If teamed with the right artist the music could have potential, unfortunately it has been paired with Gary and Mark killing the lyrics throughout the entire thing.
The only possible explanation is that they have all hit the point of a midlife crisis and in an attempt to regain their youth they’ve released an awful attempt at a song. It’s almost guaranteed that the majority of the public would agree that Take That should have stayed put in the 90s.
