Cycles in music often produce retread, the sort of recycled songs that top the charts and leave snobs and aficionados shaking their heads. In revisiting the past, however, we get the deeply coveted yet easily overlooked ability to right old wrongs, taking the best parts of our inspiration and leaving the rest to decay on some desolate YouTube page.
London-based producer Digital Farm Animals and electro-soul crooner Ofei use the anthemic template of 80s synth-pop to turn “Adore You,” the lead single off of DFA’s upcoming Bugged Out EP, into something with a bit more warmth and a bit less of the decade’s almost inescapable corniness (an effect which seems, in many instances, to be a product of outdated technology rather than a lack of ideas–or perhaps just one writer’s particular bias). It’s truer to its inspiration than, say, a Bruno Mars song might be to its point of influence, but the heavily effected vocals and depth of production plant one one foot firmly in the past and another in the present, creating a song as vibrant and immediate as it is nostalgic. Give it a listen below.
