Singles + EPs

Single Review: Ida Maria

Album: Queen of the World
Label: Waterfall Records

There’s no shortage of quirky female singer-songwriters in pop music. You can’t walk to work nowadays without bumping into Robyn or Amy Winehouse along the way, and if ‘Queen Of The World’ is anything to go by, Norwegian up-and-comer Ida Maria will be taking the seat next to you on the bus very shortly.

The premise is simple enough – take a song about drinking (everyone’s favourite pastime), add some catchy jangly guitars and dance-y drumming (and a tambourine, obviously), whisk together thoroughly and strain it all into a tall glass labelled “generic”. At least, that’s how you’d normally do it, but in Ida Maria’s kitchen things are done a little differently.

Whereas the Kate Nashes and Lily Allens of this world tend to peddle songs that force entry into your skull with annoying repetitive jingles and trite lyrics about Tesco, picnics and pop culture name-dropping, Ida’s lyrics come across as being far more genuine and likeable. It embodies everything light and fun about wanting a good night out to last forever, including the particularly cute and memorable chorus “I’m Queen of the World, I bump into things, I spin round in circles, and I’m singing ‘Why can’t I stay like this?’”

The twangy Kooks-esque acoustica is nothing too special, but there’s something impossible to resist about her upbeat delivery of personal, yet relatable, subject matter – “I need some whiskey please, so bring me consciousness and kill my innocence”, she pleads. As a student the theme of getting drunk and bumping into things is readily identifiable, but there is here an underlying sweetness that puts a positive spin on the topic of wanting to get drunk and party all the time.

The best way I can think to describe the single is to look at a typical Facebook photograph – there’ll generally be a wealth of empty drinking vessels lying about, an ashtray full of cigarette butts, and a group of friends clinging onto each other to stop themselves from falling over and gurning ridiculously at the camera. You know there are hundreds of other photographs like it, but you also know that the people in that particular one are having a fucking great time, and you can’t help but smile when you look at it. May there be many more to come.

For fans of: Imogen Heap, Feist, Frank Turner
Band links = Ida Maria

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Tags: single, cd, ida maria, queen of the world, review

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