Swedish House Mafia Featuring Pharrell - One (Your Name)

August 01, 2012 Critic Jonni 0 Comments

Swedish House Mafia is becoming quite frequent on my blog, I bet it will die down soon enough. They are a band consisting of 3 DJs called Axwell, Steve Angello and Sebastian Ingrosso, they have recently announced that they will split up fairly soon and that they are on their last tour, but I very much doubt this is the last we'll hear of them, they tend to collaborate a lot with one another on their own songs so this is definitely not the end. The vocals are provided by Pharrell, real name Pharrell Williams, people might know him from the band N.E.R.D. but his own name might ring a few bells as he has released a lot of songs and have charted quite high with a lot of them. He is one of these artists you hear of every now and again, he pops up here, there and everywhere, but he isn't instantly recognisable, if that makes sense. He's not right in the spotlight, which is quite admiring to be honest.

"One (Your Name)" was originally just called "One" which was released in Sweden, but Swedish House Mafia decided to link Pharrell's vocals to this song. Pharrell wrote the lyrics of the song, where the members of Swedish House Mafia wrote the song. The vocals were initially for a totally different song, and so Pharrell had already provided the vocals, but I don't think they worked as well as they first thought, and after a few changes they realised it fit better with this song, and it sure does as you can't help but sing-a-long.

This music video is weird, that's the only word I can come up with. I have to admit I've skipped over it on the music channels so many times. I've seen the start and thought it wasn't something I'd be into. I never realised that video was for this song, as you never quite expect the start to mount into this catchy song. I like the references in this video, along with the use of an instrument I've never heard of let alone seen before.

The instrument is an OP-1 created by Teenage Engineering and combines a synthesizer, a sampler and a controller, it was created in Sweden. It kind of reminds me of a very small version of a DJ deck. And they've used it in a similar way, giving the song to a party. I like the eye and how the words of the lyrics appear in it; it kind of reminds me of the Big Brother eye.

There are loads of things going on in the video, and this what you kind of expect, except you don't expect the start at all. I like the ending when someone steals the OP-1... People have said that it resembles David Guetta as apparently his song "50 degrees" has a similar sound. And yeah I agree they do sound very similar, but if you look at music generally every song will sound similar to another song, it's just bound to happen, and this is exactly why law suits appear.

Overall this song is embedded into my head to day, I can't stop typing to the sound and singing the song. The video is different and interesting, there's no performance but there isn't really a narrative, however it's good to watch, it resembles house music, and is much more than what you expect, especially at the very start. If I see it again on the music channels, I will definitely be watching rather than skipping.