Taking Back Sunday - Faith (When I Let You Down) (Single Review)
Monday, 27 June 2011
Written by James Ball
This song has been released over and over and over again for the last ten years by a whole ream of bands who all sound exactly like this. New Found Glory wrote ‘My Friends Over You’, then Bowling For Soup wrote ‘Girl all the Bad Guys Want’ and then Sum 41 wrote ‘Fat Lip’ and then all of a sudden every snotty kid in America just had to be in an angsty pop-punk band. Well, that’s what we called it back then; except the only thing “punk” about this is that you start to hope that Ashton Kutcher is about to pop out from behind your wardrobe with a camera crew telling you it’s all a joke.
Sadly, it’s not.
A tinny, heavily pedalled guitar opens for a few seconds, before a strange chorus-like “Whoooaahhhh”, before inexplicably getting quiet for a Killers-esque mini-verse before getting loud and poppy again and oh my God my head’s spinning. I can’t take this. This song doesn’t know if it’s upbeat, downbeat, happy, sad, ironic, meaningful, parody or outright daft. Thankfully, after a number of ear-numbing listens, I have come up with the one word that does describe it:
Shit.
It’s by no means the worst song in the world ever. Far from it. In fact it’s not the worst song ever to feature the word “Faith” is it, Limp Bizkit? On a musical level I can see why fans would be drawn to it. I can also see that it’s musically accomplished in that it manages to jump around the whole planet of different moods without putting a note wrong, but despite that it’s still outright awful. The same generic Prozac-punk that’s been regurgitated for ten years by bands, many of whom have done it better.
Oh, while the A-side was poor, the B-Side “El Paso” is really surprisingly good. Crunching, imaginative, punchy and with a sense of urgency without feeling rushed, it’s a more adult song, more mature and filled with new ideas. It should have been the lead. Channelling some of the greatest hard rock bands of the 80s mixed in with a more My Chemical Romance like attitude and a snarling lead vocal, El Paso is a huge margin better than its floundering, ADHD sufferer of a big brother.
It’s still not enough to recommend this single though. A lot of damage had to be patched up after that, and there probably wasn’t any saving it. I lost the faith, so to speak.
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Sadly, it’s not.
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