With the swelling opener to What Is Love?, “Symphony,” Clean Bandit seems to say, “Don’t worry, we’ve returned.” For yes, it’s somehow been four years since their debut, New Eyes, was released–though, like MØ, who waited a similarly long period to release her sophomore effort, the band has managed to stay in the spotlight with singles that have made their listeners feel as though they’ve never left.
The Zara Larsson-featuring “Symphony” sets a certain mood with, “I just want to be part of your symphony,” seeming to emphasize what Clean Bandit has been for their audience these past four years, even with the bowing out of former band member Neil Amin-Smith just before the City High emulative single, “Rockabye,” was released in late 2016. The album then segues into one of the more recent singles, “Baby,” featuring Marina and Luis Fonsi, which takes on the classic combination Clean Bandit has become known for, in terms of blending a tragic tale with a danceable backbeat.
On this note of having already heard “Baby” well before the record’s release, it must be said that though it is a new album, there are a few “freebies” on it, including one of Summer 2018’s anthems, “Solo” featuring Demi Lovato, the video for which seeks to repurpose the real meaning behind the word “bitch.” Remaining true to their brand of dancing through the pain, Lovato laments wanting to fuck, but being too broken-hearted over the same damn person to do so.
Followed with “Rockabye,” it suddenly feels as though Clean Bandit is trying to get all of these “old” songs out of the way so as to bring us material we haven’t heard, like “Mama” featuring Ellie Goulding. With a whimsical xylophone intro, Goulding speaks of the germinal phases of falling in love, and the simultaneous nervousness and liberation that comes with it as she revels, “Don’t know what this is/What do I do now, do now, do now/Do with all of this?/All of these new emotions, I let them out in the open.” It’s something Selena Gomez also experienced on “Hands to Myself” (a way nicer song about The Weeknd than anything he ever wrote about her).
Reteaming with Anne-Marie on “Should’ve Known Better,” Clean Bandit stays committed to painting a bleak portrait of wasted time in relationships doomed to fail. Even so, they’re unable recreate the same magic they shared on “Rockabye,” which shouldn’t be surprising considering how hit or miss Anne-Marie’s collaborations can be. Taking on a decidedly “I Will Survive” bent, Anne-Marie decries of her now ex, “Should’ve known better than to let you break my heart/I should’ve known better, I believed you from the start/I should’ve known better, and now we wasted all this time/I should’ve known better, so I’m taking back my life.”
Speaking somewhat to this notion of taking back said life, “Out at Night” featuring KYLE and Big Boi of Outkast just vaguely hints at the rhythm of “Careless Whisper” as KYLE tells the tale of a girl who “only comes out at night” with regard to allowing her true personality to “come to life” in a way that she can’t at the workplace (because yes, everyone who works corporate remains a close-minded snore–which is why they think women are whores). Something of a foil to Madonna’s “Bad Girl,” the song is the ultimate anthem to any working girl still forced by society to compartmentalize the “virgin/whore” aspects of her personality in a “professional” setting. Because she must present a button-down version of herself at work in order to be taken seriously, this suppression, in turn, manifests an alter ego in the few precious hours when she doesn’t have to put on a mask. Making her natural need to address more base desires more than somewhat uncomfortable, Big Boi raps, “Fruitful and fertile thoughts/But us gon’ take it slow like the way a turtle walks/Or speed it up if she want that pussy outlined in chalk.” Get it? Because of semen residue?
Reggae-tinged “Last Goodbye” featuring Tove Styrke (they clearly love collaborating with Swedes) and British Nicki Minaj type Stefflon Don continues to offer us a rhythmic beat as consolation for a bittersweet tale of a toxic relationship as Styrke explains, “We’re no good for each other/Lying in bed, miles apart/We’re side by side and alone in the dark.” And yet, she posits, “If this really is the end/Then why don’t you please come back to bed/And let’s say our last goodbye.” But then again, knowing this type of couple, it’s probably not the end. And this is one thing that can be said for the concept behind What Is Love?: Clean Bandit certainly addresses all the iterations of love and its various stages.
Upholding the pattern of semi-pained nostalgia on “We Were Just Kids” featuring Craig David and Kirsten Joy, the beat is, again, somewhat misleading as it is a more downtempo one than most of the others, yet tells a more jubilant story of two longtime friends. The Dawson and Joey kind, one gets the sense. Or Monica and Quincy kind, if that’s a less white reference. Somewhat similar from a sonic standpoint, “Nowhere” featuring Rita Ora and KYLE (back for more) addresses the same issue present on “Should’ve Known Better”: squandered youth in a relationship clearly going, that’s right, nowhere. As Ora breaks it down, “You let my love go to waste/You’re not gonna change/No, you won’t/Staying up at night and I pray it gets better/Waiting on a change in the weather/But I ain’t gonna wait here forever/No, I won’t.” Because a woman can only wait so long in her both self- and societally-imposed race against time to find “the perfect match” before dried fruit aesthetics prevent it.
Less pragmatic about the age factor in love, “I Miss You” featuring Julia Michaels is about the one-sided mourning of an unwanted breakup, and all the twenty-first century knife-digging potential that comes with it. For example, “So I saved all the texts/All of the best over the years/Just to remind myself of how good it is/Or was.” Pitiful yes, but we’ve all done it.
Tempered by the more hopeful “In Us I Believe” featuring ALMA, Clean Bandit incorporates, for the umpteenth time, the pattern of being incapable of cutting someone loose when 1) you’ve invested so much time in them and 2) you’re actually still cursed with being in l’amour despite knowing it’s wrong. But more so reason number one, because no one likes to put all their chips on the table only to cash out with nothing, as evidenced by ALMA’s lyrics, “In us I believe/You’re my heart and soul, I can’t let you go/You mean too much to me/This fire inside, set it alight/No way, no/We’ve been through too much to just throw it all way.”
In their varied exploration of all the various forms and shapes that love can take, Clean Bandit also speaks to the happenstance of its development. “24 Hours” featuring Yasmin Green discusses the often cruel tendencies of fate in introducing us to the person we might never have met were it not for the universe’s fickle sense of humor–therefore the person we might never have had our heart broken by. To quote Green after she randomly decides to go to a party and then enter a bar afterward, “24 hours ago/Baby I didn’t know that I can’t live without you/I wasn’t looking for this/Never thought that one kiss could change all that I know.”
Another single released ahead of the album, “Playboy Style” ups the ante on ruefulness regarding love as the stylings of Charli XCX and Bhad Bhabie come together to unload the unfortunateness of falling for a fuckboy–or worse, a softboy. Both varieties of which possess the playboy style that will decimate your heart once you’ve fallen for their yarn.
Bringing back the xylophone, “Beautiful” featuring DaVido and Love Ssega explores that rare occurrence in pop songs: the male motivation in buying women things with not the expectation of sex necessarily, so much as love. So they expound, “If she tells you that she loves you, oh (she loves you, loves you, loves you)/And she’ll never let you go (never let you go)/If she tells you that she loves you, oh (she loves you, loves you, loves you)/I can make it beautiful, ay.” Yes, it rather rips off The Beatles, but the point is, these men are willing to admit that their kryptonite when it comes to making purchases of interest to a woman stem from, in some ways, wanting the appreciativeness and associated control that might make her love him.
Not one to be out-Quavo’d, it’s true that, yes, Clean Bandit always features additional artists on What Is Love?, wrapping it up with another “old” single, 2016’s “Tears” featuring Louisa Johnson. Once more conjuring the spirit of “I Will Survive,” the empowering coda triumphantly declares, “Tears on the ground, tears on my pillow/You won’t bring me down/And I’ll get over you/These tears will get me through/And I’ll get over you.” In essence, once we go through the process of feeling our heart being ripped from its strings by another, it can mend. Though I’m not saying it will. But it can. Coming to terms with the unrequitedness of her emotions, Johnson has the epiphany, “I tried hard to make you want me/But we’re not supposed to be/And the truth will always haunt me/Even though it set me free.” And maybe, by the end of this album, whatever truth you’ve found from it can set you free as well. At least on the dance floor, if nothing else.
If Clean Bandit has managed to answer the question of What Is Love? by the finale of the record, it’s safe to say that they–and their listeners–have reconciled that it will inevitably result in heartache and anguish. Not that anyone with a frontal lobe wasn’t well-aware of that already (see also: Buzzcocks).
