#44

#44. Disclosure (feat Eliza Doolittle) - You & Me (Flume Remix) (#63, 2013)

7th of 2013

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If there's a major regret I've had over the years, it's not keeping enough tallies. They're a great way to cut out speculation and the bias of clustered memories. Really though, their best utility is keeping track of things you couldn't possibly manage yourself, especially if you're counting multiple things at once. The one that interests me the most, is to take note of how many times I've heard a phrase equivalent to 'That's a book that everyone had to read in high school'. It's happened so many times that I feel I need to take people up on it, as it's gotten quite impractical I imagine. Maybe I'm the problem as someone who bailed out of English class as soon as possible (only missed a year, but still), or it's just the not-so-robust curriculum standards outside of the big cities. In any case, if I did list off every book whose reading was a mandatory part of my studies and not just an individual project, I'm not sure I'd even crack 20. Furthermore, with a possible enforced quota of Australian learning materials, that small count includes so many novels I've never seen discussed outside of the single classroom. You're not getting "A New Kind Of Dreaming" by Anthony Eaton on any trivia games I suspect.

As a result, I do feel a little lacking in the department of literary knowledge. There are just so many of the most famous novels ever written that I've not touched, and only a handful I've gotten to of my own volition as I've gotten older. It's a feeling of inadequacy, but it does have the occasional advantage, where I've not cast my net so wide as to retain nothing. The result of labouring over some of them for so long, and my own tendency to zero in on curiosities means that I've occasionally retained arcane knowledge of these books. At the very least, more than enough to get by. Sometimes it's hard to realise this, and I might be a little off base on this one, but when I first heard about Eliza Doolittle, the British pop singer, my mind went straight to George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion". It's a book that left enough of an effect on me that I bizarrely cited Henry Higgins as a hero when I made a MySpace page. It's not the only time that this has happened though, because not long before Eliza Doolittle emerged, so did another singer who shared their name with a minor character in The Great Gatsby. They'll also appear on this list some day and I really wish I was keeping a tally of how many times I've said that about this particular artist now.

Eliza Doolittle's appearance on this song does quite a bit to put a time frame on this entry. She still makes music now, but her dallying with the mainstream pretty firmly starts and ends in the early 2010s. It also coincides with a re-branding as ELIZA. The hits she managed back then are a certain brand of quaint that feels like a precursor to the career of Meghan Trainor, though recently she's pivoted to a Pop/R&B hybrid that still suits her pretty well. It's a strange curiosity that she's managed to get her name attached to one of Disclosure & Flume's most popular songs. I don't know if it was a business decision (she and Disclosure weren't on the same label) or just a well-considered scoping out for talent. I have to wonder also if the success of this song contributed to her career pivot, proof that she had serious vocal chops that weren't necessarily the focus in her bouncier tunes. 

The 2013 context that might also be lost is that this was a pretty notable hit for Disclosure at the time, only I'm just talking about the original version. It reached the UK top 10 on debut and hung around for a decent while. A bit of a comedown after "White Noise" (#251) got to #2, but considering that Disclosure only have three top 10 hits ("Latch" peaked at #11, the other one is "Talk" (#917)), you have to admire the hit streak after the fact. That's not what we're talking about though. It got here via the more triple j approved fashion of Flume remixing it. A largely Australian curiosity at the time, though one that's taken the world by storm in hindsight. I wasn't joking when I said that it's one of both Disclosure & Flume's biggest hits, and they both only have one or two songs each that comfortably beats it. Yet another huge multi-platinum success during an extended period of not being in the spotlight.

The original version of the song has received very little kickback as a result of this and largely faded into the background. If you haven't gone back to it in a while and largely listen to the remixes, you might be surprised to find out that the song's verses and chorus have been largely left out and might sound unrecognisable now. Flume's arrangement decisions seem to have dictated what "You & Me" really means to the world. It's to the point that the song's other famous remix by Rivo, which came out a few years back, is largely working with the same structure as Flume's. Rivo is young enough that I might almost suggest that he doesn't even know the original. Both of the remixes largely focus on the background transitional vocals and pushing them to the front alongside the title drop portion of the chorus.

The result is incredibly effective. It manages to lift some extra gravitas out of the performance and accompany them with some fresh musical ideas as well. You'll mostly remember this remix for two things: The healthy dosage of violins, and what I'm dubbing the release spark on the chorus. We're still pretty early in the Flume journey here and you can tell he's just figuring out what makes a reaction. It's one I've been smitten by since I first heard it. The way it all locks up and disarms you. I can't help but freeze in place whenever it happens. The idea is good and the execution is incredibly clean. I just love how it all sounds together. Giving more of a starring role to the background vocals has an interesting effect where they just sound haunted. It makes for a remix that's more than good enough to stand on its own.