#49

#49. Banks - Beggin For Thread (#27, 2014)

6th of 2014

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There was something interesting around the time when streaming was first introduced to the charts because it asked the question of what was more popular in this format but let down by an audience who weren't willing or interested in paying money for the individual tracks. Of course, we can't ignore the possibility that a lot of it was driven by incidental or sampling plays, but it'd be naïve to suggest the demographics and audience wouldn't be at least a little bit different. Early on, when we first got Spotify in Australia, the charts were littered with acts that were popular on triple j. Alpine, Grimes, Clubfeet, Snakadaktal and the like, with Flume showing himself to be a very major player as well. The next year or so would see considerably more people hop onto the platform and slowly nudge these acts out, having it more strongly resemble the sales chart as we knew it. No longer would major hits struggle to match it on streaming because they didn't match demographics, we simply course-corrected enough for it to fit.

Exceptions still emerged of course. One thing that became clear is that hip-hop fans were faster to adopt streaming, and often times were among the least likely to pay for new releases (with exceptions like Drake's often towering sales). There were also very early remnants of what has revealed itself to be a true characterisation of Spotify listeners, which is that they're far more interested in rock & indie adjacent music than the previous generation's music buying public were, or at least the modern, unassuming kind that didn't seem to move the needle much on sales. The most noteworthy example at the time was the early streaming love for Hozier's "Take Me To Church", but there were other small cases as well. It's what I always think about with "Beggin For Thread", a song that seemed to just do quite well on streaming for no particular reason or precedent. It could be that Banks was just one of the first artists to tap into an audience that were young enough to not be in the music buying demographic, or maybe her moody electronica just hit that sweet spot where you want to hear it again, but aren't compelled enough in the artist's journey to buy stock.

I find myself somewhat aligning to this. I've been fascinated by her song "Brain" since I first heard it, but I've still never wanted to download it. The song has a very distinct and powerful hook. Banks' debut album has a very distinct and cool album cover, but it also feels strangely distant. For a long time, Banks was very hesitant to actually engage with her audience on social media. This has tended to be one of the strongest ways that artists cultivate strong bonds (or the feeling of them) that get fans invested, but Banks spent so long not doing that, that she might not have gotten those ride or dies that she could have. Her music is interesting, but also often cold and distant.

With that in mind, I actually had no issues with "Beggin For Thread" there. I couldn't tell you when I first heard it, but I downloaded it pretty quickly and was listening to it multiple times a day. It's very rare that I listen to a song as many times in the space of a month that I did in a single week for this song. This might speak to the song's streaming success, because I think a very underrated component of that is replayability. All those songs that ride high on the first day or week before crashing down to earth? A big part of that is super fans who might continue listening, but are never going to meet the same frequency as they started with. Still, if they weren't replaying the song so heavily, it never would've made that splash, so there's merit to it.

What's the magic sauce with "Beggin For Thread" though? For me, it was the mystery of Banks, and what the focus actually was on with her music. Was it her singing, her lyrics, her production, or some combination of the three? She looks like a conventional pop star (or a model), but the music itself feels like it's going somewhere else. That's where the song continually catches you off guard. Banks can sing in an unassuming way for much of the song and then all of a sudden switch up into a different register, whether it's on the chilling pre-choruses (like that creepy delivery of 'even space', and much of the second verse), or on the song's bridge, where she suddenly sounds much more boisterous. There's a strange twinge to it, when she starts to sing 'better' with conviction, and counters it with some 'woah-oh's as well. It also serves as an interesting contrast to the higher pitched transitions into the chorus previously. The chorus hasn't changed at all, but giving it a sufficient build up makes it sound like a much bigger payoff the last time around. I feel like she's calling me out for ever doubting her when she says 'Don't know what you were getting yourself into. You should have known, secretly, I think you knew'. Banks is just that singer who didn't play with conventions and took me along for the ride anyway.