Gloria

Dance With Somebody got on my nerves almost immediately. I know I’m probably alone in this, but that song just wouldn’t let up. Then again, I caught Mando Diao at Rock im Park back in 2007 and they were genuinely good, so there’s that.

Gloria came along and I actually wanted to listen. The hook works—there’s something about the way they shout the name in time with the melody that gets stuck. The video doesn’t feel like a calculation either. There’s a model who looks great in it, and the whole thing feels intentional instead of just mercenary.

The problem is what happens next. MTV and NRJ Berlin will find this. They’ll play it into the ground like everything else. That’s the real destroyer—not just overplaying a song, but playing it until you actively hate it, until you change the channel the moment it comes on. Radio saturation doesn’t fade a track, it kills it.

So right now, Gloria works. I give it three weeks before I’m reaching for the dial.