This indie electronic band’s On Hold is still hot on Y101’s Weekly Top 20.
The xx finally entered the Y101’s Weekly Top 20, after more than ten years of being undetectable in the radio radar.
The xx released their third studio album I See You in the first half of January. Their lead single, On Hold, which first came out in November last year, became an unexpected radio hit, considering the band’s non-mainstream approach to pop music.
{youtube}1_oA9UmRd4I{/youtube}
The English indie pop, electronic, dream pop group first gained critical success in 2009, when they released their debut album xx. The melancholic songs on xx featured minimalist arrangements and were built around Jamie Smith's beats, Oliver Sim's basslines, and sparse guitar figures played by Baria Qureshi and Romy Madley Croft, who employed reverb in her lead guitar parts. Most of them were sung as low-key duets by Croft and Sim, both of whom wrote emotional lyrics about love, intimacy, loss, and desire.
Late last year, the band released On Hold, a Y101 favorite. The song is famous for its instrumental samples and interpolation remix of "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)" by Hall & Oates.
With its retro pastiche sound, The xx, along with bands like The 1975, is bringing a revival of 80’s flavor into the 2010’s. A new new wave type of music for this generation. If The xx can manage to put out more songs into the Top 10’s, they might as well change the course of pop music for the next years. Their soft, minimal, and somber sound could create a new shift in popular music, away from the upbeat dancey and cheery pop songs of 2009 and 2010.
{youtube}PElhV8z7I60{/youtube}
#rhythmofthecity #y101fm #alwaysfirst #artistoftheweek