The Chainsmokers Lifted a Great Old Melody for a Bad New Song
Cringe-worthy No. 1 hit “Closer” contains elements of a soft rock gem released eleven years ago
On Monday morning, the entertainment media at large (represented as the microcosm of effectively everyone in my office, people on Twitter, and I assume everyone who passes me on the sidewalk holding an iPhone inches from their faces) had their eyes fixed on the new music video for “Closer,” the chart-topping EDM/pop song from ascendant bros The Chainsmokers and increasingly omnipresent star Halsey. It is not a good video. But that’s not the point.
People care about this because the song is everywhere now—it’s №1 on the Billboard pop chart—but also because just last week, Chainsmoker Drew Taggart (the R.J. Mitte clone who sings co-lead on the song) reportedly tweeted “fuck you bald bitch” at Halsey after an apparent feud about Lady Gaga. This doesn’t seem like the kind of behavior that should happen between two young, attractive singers who spend four minutes rolling around nearly biting each other in a music video with 9.4 million views (as of Wednesday). They should be tweeting lips emojis back and forth or some equally twee shit in order to push this video’s reach even further.
But neither of them have made a peep on Twitter about the video (for the №1 song in the country, no less!), which is frankly odd. This information is all compounded with reports that Halsey has apparently even unfollowed Taggart on Twitter, meaning the tattooed union of millennial love suggested by the video is worth fuck-all. Devastating.
But behind-the-scenes gossip aside, “Closer,” while not a good song, is still an enjoyable listen for one simple reason: It lifted its main melody (you know, the “song” part of the song) from another, better song written and released more than a decade ago. It’s called “Over My Head (Cable Car)” and it’s by Colorado piano-rock band The Fray. I loved this song in high school, and when I got to college, a kid on my floor made fun of me for having it on my iPod. (That same kid recently posted a rambling, drunk Facebook status about politics—sample insight: “It isn’t up to a racist white guy, or a shady, piece of shit white women (Okay, you know who I prefer) it’s up to the people who vote.” So his opinions certainly cannot be trusted.) I adored Counting Crows, too. That kind of dulled emotional impressionism was my jam at age 15.
“Over My Head” was perfectly of its time: a saccharine, piano-led soft rock single with an unbeatable hook that rushed itself across the Hot 100, Adult Contemporary, Alternative and Pop 100 charts simultaneously. The song’s swirling melody — like the work of Fray contemporaries James Blunt, Daniel Powter, and yes, even Plans-era Death Cab For Cutie — was perfect for card shopping at CVS and blasting alone in the car, especially when it redoubles into a melancholic head rush at the end.
This is why it sucks to have the song repurposed into one of its time now in 2016, which is to say an overly simplistic EDM tune with cringe-worthy lyrical specificity. The Fray’s song is equally bad with words but for the opposite reason: It’s purposely vague in the vein of U2’s “Beautiful Day” to allow for maximum emotional skyscraping, which for me, it achieves—but more through its gorgeous piano melody.
That’s the real moneymaker here, which is why when the song blew up, Taggart, Halsey, and their cohort of co-writers had to add two more names to the credits: Isaac Slade and Joe King, songwriters of The Fray. When the news broke, “reps for ASCAP and The Chainsmokers wouldn’t comment,” the AP reported. It seems clear that the melody wasn’t intentionally aped, but it’s a glaring enough lift that they might’ve felt embarrassed once they got called out after the fact. That’s understandable.
The problem, though, is that “Over My Head” is a good song, and “Closer” is a bad song. I know this, and yet I physically cannot prevent myself from singing along to “Closer” when I hear it anywhere, and the guilt I feel about this is immense, because outwardly, this is a show of support for “Closer.” But inside, the lingering memory of “Over My Head” has been jogged, and I’m celebrating that melody, not this new one (even though they’re the same). You see how this pretzel logic has been haunting me for weeks now.
At the VMAs this past summer, Taggart and Halsey sang the song in a cartoonishly sexual performance in the middle of Madison Square Garden, and at that point, “Closer” was only a month old and still finding its footing. The day after, my editor said to me, “I feel like I knew the song when they sang it, but I really don’t think I’d ever heard it before.” Of course, she was completely right, though neither of us knew it then. Taking a familiar melody (perhaps unintentionally) and swapping in new millennial focus-grouped lyrics about Blink-182 and Range Rovers: what a great party trick. Unfortunately, it’s always a bummer when you find out how they do it.
