In honour of it being Naughty Boy’s birthday on 1st January 2025, I decided to review one of my favourite tracks of the last 25 years. Yes, I have a loose top 20 of favourite tracks of the current century.
Strange?
Maybe.
Anyway, this is a collaboration with Emeli Sandé and they go next levels with this song – it starts off with a bell, and Emeli’s vocals come in giving it the James Bond vibe – John Barry would be proud of this. Emeli switches between jazzy vocals to all out soulful, she does it effortlessly, over the backdrop of strings, and a heavy hitting drum beat – This is what caught my attention with this song when I first heard it, the way the drums hit hard, and how everything is built around it, I don’t want to presume but I suspect that this was the North Star the point to which it needs to draw everyone to… the build for this is INSANE.
Lyrically you’d think this is a love song, but it’s not it’s a piece of advice for a friend, it’s never really stated what the “it” is in the chorus:
“Put it in your pocket, don’t tell anyone I gave you
It will be the one you run to, the one that saves you
It could be your daddy daddy, if you take it gladly gladly
Daddy daddy”
That’s open for interpretation, but the way it conjures images. I like the ambiguity of the lyrics.
This is one of my favourite songs from Emeli’s album “Our Version Of Events” and the production for me is just spot on – Naughty Boy’s touch is felt here on this with the high production value, and both of them shine so much on this.
