Song of the Day #28 - Kelly Clarkson - Since U been gone

I really admire a very good production of a pop song where you can hear that the producer has used all the tricks in the book to lure the listener inn, keeping them entertained and bring them to new ecstatic heights. For me it's quite normal to get this excited and I had forgotten that it's not like this for everyone else when I mentioned it at work the other day... hehe.. My colleagues are usually a very open group, but this time they all stared at me in an intrigued but surprised fashion. Maybe I can open your ears to this brilliance?

I know a few pop songs that are so good that they literately can make me cry and get chills. The best one though, is Since U been gone with Kelly Clarkson. I have written about this before in the blog, and I don't think I can explain it better a second time, so here, I have to quote myself. The original blogpost.

The first vers is a perfect build up... The sound is quite tight. The drums are very mechanic and a bit muffled, and the sound is almost a bit electronic. Then the second guitar enters and promises that something is gonna happen and keeps the groove going. As a final sparkly touch there is this third guitar that is very high and single notes. And then come the moment that gives me shivers and brings tears to my eyes. All the other instruments than Kelly's voice is cut away as a moment of quiet before the storm, and then booom... the music foldes out and uses the whole spectrum. Kelly is one of those girls that sings like she would die if she wasn't allowed to sing on this song. And that really gets to me. Then on the second verse is a bit more rocked up version of the first one. But the second vocals are added on, that's a really cool effect all through the song that I really like too; almost all of it is done with a double vocal of Kelly, either just similar or with a slight second melody. Makes the sound deeper and fuller. Then for the second chorus that again gives me shivers... and now the bridge that is also quite brilliant... It just takes of and flyes og and just when it's boring almost everything is cut away for a few beats which makes it interessting, Then it quiets down and the the electronica drums from the beginning are back with one distant guitar. Before a great build up and just doing all that is possible to make the last vers explode, before ending almost where it started.

And oh... The producer is not surprisingly Max Martin, the pop mad man behind all pop sensations:

he crafted a string of worldwide hits for pop artists like the clean-cut boy bands The Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC, Britney Spears, P!nk, Swedish starlet Robyn and the Swedish eurodance star E-Type among many others, in the mid/late '90s to mid 2000s.

Wikipedia

But even though he is knowen as the ultimate teen pop commercialized producer but he is very very good at what he do in that genre and makes a lot of really perfect choices, I think.
More on the song

Just read there about the song being very similar to The Strokes song Last Night.
And that is actually quite true... at least when it comes to the rhythm. Love The Strokes song even more though :)