The way that pop music has evolved in recent years, incorporating elements of rock, new wave, and EDM. It’s this evolution that has given rise to bands such as The Too Late, and their surprisingly refreshing style.
With a mixture of a dance music style beat, a pop music hook, and rock elements, there’s something here that acts as a natural conclusion of where popular music is at right now.
To start off, there’s a strong, simple beat that’s brought in by a drum machine. A beat that’s easy to stick to, but one that’s also powerful and easy to build off of. With more intricate mixed in beats layered on top, One Hit Love nails the dance music element of its influence in one clear swoop.
The guitar also adds a nice element to the song. It offsets the drum beat nicely, giving it some edge and a more classic feel when paired with the drum machine. And it really comes into its own during a solo later on, where it briefly becomes the real shining moment of the track.
Next up is the general pop sensibilities, which is most apparent in the lyrics. The usual love song that’s just familiar enough to be relatable, yet just generic enough to be personal to almost every person listening stands out clear as day. It’s something that will absolutely cause some contention, due to how music has hit a point where the formula has been perfected. Namely, you can sing a song that’s about love, one that’s easy to relate to, but vague so as it’s not overly personal.
It’s the one point where One Hit Love falls down quite frankly. In the moments where it becomes a very by the numbers song that’s just lacking soul. It feels as though it was manufactured to be something popular.
Whilst One Hit Love is refreshing in some ways, namely, it’s merging of a lot of different influences into one perfectly distilled song that takes the best of so many genres. But it also lacks the vital x-factor within itself that could have shot it to the moon. Namely within overdone lyrical content, it falls hard. But it absolutely shot for the moon, but in its failure to hit, it still landed amongst the stars.