Well, this is marvellous.
I woke up this morning thinking I can quickly film a VLOG and have a quiet night before heading off to Scotland tomorrow...and then I end up having to put it off to later due to insufficient time because I overslept, so I start talking about Runrig instead so that I can have something to cover myself while I'm up in the land that forgot the sun.
Then I go to have a contact lenses lesson and go to to my local radio...whereupon I find myself doing an interview at the last minute despite having no interview experience and having not heard of the artist I'm interviewing before then which means I get back home nearly an hour after I should have done.
And then, just when I think I can finally go film my VLOG in peace, I find this and realise that I really have to talk about this before I disappear for a week, as I'm not going to be able to talk about it when I get back and I know that people will want to hear what I have to say about this song.
...Fuck it, I don't need sleep, do I? It's not like I'm doing anything important tomorrow...and I can pack at the last minute if necessary!
Anyway, Sixx:A.M., as you might have guessed from the name, is a band which formed in 2007 and has Nikki Sixx as part of it, in his ever dependable role (and not especially technically demanding) role as bassist. Making up the rest of the members of the band are lead guitarist DJ Ashba (who you're most likely to know for also being part of Guns N Roses at the minute (or Axl Rose's solo project which is pretending to be Guns N Roses, if you want to be completely accurate), although he's also been part of BulletBoys and Beautiful Creatures and is also a solo artist) and rhythm guitarist, vocalist and drum programmer James Michael (who is mostly known for being a record producer and songwriter, although he has done a solo album). There are some sources which say there is a drummer on this track, but I'm in a bit of a hurry at the minute with writing this, so I'm going to assume the drums are programmed for now and apologise to whoever did the drumming on this track for not crediting them and mentioning where they came from if there is an actual drummer on this track. The band originally came together to record the album The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack, which is connected to Nikki Sixx's autobiography titled The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star and is clearly intended to musically represent the same thing that the book covers. You could argue that Motley Crue's 2008 album Saints Of Los Angeles is pretty much a Sixx:A.M. in all but name, as just about every track was written by everyone in Sixx:A.M. (and Marti Frederiksen), but that's probably not the point of what they were going for, so I'm going to move on. Sixx:A.M.'s second album was 2011's This Is Gonna Hurt and the band have since then been rather quiet apart from an acoustic EP, 2011's 7 (presumably because some genius could count and thought it would be clever to name the EP after how many tracks were on it), due to everyone else focusing on their main projects.
So this single being the first new song by the band would be absolutely brilliant news if it weren't for the fact that I've never listened to Sixx:A.M. before now. Just never bothered to hunt their stuff down, sorry!
So, what do I think of this track? Well, let's find out.
If you want to listen to the track, you'll have to stream it from the link below: there's been no official YouTube release of the song yet. There are YouTube videos up with the song, but I think I should stick with official channels due to the fact that those can't be taken down very easily.
http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/sixx-a-m-new-single-gotta-get-it-right-available-for-streaming/
So, my first thoughts can be pretty much summed up as this: "I didn't know fun. had a new single out!"
...Well, OK, that wasn't actually my first thoughts, but you get the point, I'm sure: this sounds like it could have come off of fun.'s 2012 album Some Nights...which, because fun. sound so much like Queen, means that Sixx:A.M. sounds a bit too much like Queen for my liking. It's not so much the vocals (which don't sound like Freddie Mercury, Brian May or Roger Taylor: bizarrely, my best comparison is actually of a lower voiced (and nowhere near as gifted with falsetto) Justin Hawkins), but the music just makes me have to double check that I've not put the wrong band on by mistake. I don't necessarily have a problem with the Queen worship (I actually rather liked fun.'s Some Nights), but I can't say that I would like a lot of bands trying to sound like Queen because, well, Queen had a versatility to their songwriting that I don't think most bands could pull off properly. Sixx:A.M. is pretty much a shining example of why sounding like Queen isn't a sign of quality: the overall music is actually not especially memorable, as the whole song is basically supporting James Michael's (admittedly, very good, for the most part) voice. The melody line that Michael is singing is fairly memorable, but it feels like the only thing in the song that is aiming to be really memorable.
And that's really the big problem. The only performance that is really worth writing home about is the vocals, as nothing is especially complex on the performance front and nothing is especially memorable due to playing support for the vocals. Heck, I'll go further: the only thing that's really worth paying attention to IS the vocals. You could feasibly do this song completely a cappella and I don't think most people would think the song had lost anything through you doing that because there pretty much IS nothing else to the song.
So, after ranting about how this is only supporting the vocals, do I think this is a bad song? Well...not really, no. The performances, despite not being memorable or complex, are at least controlled in this fact: you're not feeling like the members are only playing their instruments to a fairly basic level because they can only play to this level, you feel like they are consciously playing fairly simply because it's what the song calls for and could easily step it up if they wanted to. Personally, I like artists who recognise that a song doesn't need to be complex and let the song be only as complex as it needs to be, so I don't really have a huge problem with the band doing this, but I still can't shake off the feeling that it's a bit TOO simple, even by the standards of letting a song be as complex as it needs to be. I'm not asking for the band to suddenly throw in a Joe Satriani influenced guitar solo or anything like that, but I feel like most songwriters could write a song like this without too much difficulty. The vocal line and the lyrics, maybe not, but the rest of the music is definitely simple enough that I imagine most people who have songwriting experience will be going "I could have written that in my sleep!"
So, overall, what do I think of this song? Well, the big issue for me is the fact that the only thing that's worth paying attention to is the vocals: if there was anything else to the song, I'd be OK with having the vocals be the predominant thing on it, but there's just not enough there for me to really want to give this a free pass. The vocals, to the band's credit, are very good and, if you like a catchy single, this should be fine with you, but I feel that the only thing which had any real effort put into it was the vocal line for the song, with the rest just being what the rest of the members threw together to not do an a cappella track. On that basis alone, I feel like this song is musically pretty weak. It's an enjoyable song, don't get me wrong, but, being critical, there's very, VERY little to it that's really worth bringing up and getting given a whole lot of nothing is just not really acceptable from a bunch of professional musicians. So, while I do like this song, I feel I have to give this song a negative score just because there's so little substance to it. It's definitely not a bad song, but, for the standards of the style of music the band are playing, there's so little to it that I almost feel offended, as a fan of this style of music, that the band think they can get away with releasing something with less substance than a prawn cracker. You can't do that guys, you just can't!
Final Rating: 3 Out Of 10
While definitely an enjoyable song when viewed from a listener's perspective only and with no frame of reference on what Sixx:A.M. usually sound like, so little is on offer here when looked at critically that it's almost insulting. A good vocal line and a strong vocal performance stops this song from being a throwaway, but, for everything else, you might as well not bother.
Also, give Queen their sound back: they need it for their upcoming compilation record thing!
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