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Carly Kaye inadvertently returns RF to top of Singles Chart
Disco Album In Dreams was nearly dismissed by critics
Kaliburg, Grand Duchy of Ananto
June 28, 5678


Carly Kaye's surprise summer blockbuster features RF deepcut "Love"

Underground Disco singer Carly Kaye has accidentally scored a number one on the Singles Chart with a deepcut from her new album In Dreams. The song, "Love" was top of the Singles Poll for the second week running after club DJs got ahold of early promotional releases of the record in late May, and began spinning both songs on the album's B-Side, "Love" and "Here" back to back. There is no gap on the LP, and neither song was intended to be released as a single, but club goers began requesting Love on KRTVN's flagship Radio 1, usually reserved for alternative. When the album was finally released on June 20th of this year, record stores across the Empire sold out of the LP almost immediately. KMI now reports that a second pressing is on order, and will be in stores tomorrow.

Meanwhile, "Love" the more popular of the two songs, has had more than 1.3 million streams and is in heavy rotation on Radio 1. The song is so new that KMI rushed a grainy fan made film of Kaye performing a version of the song to M7 to capitalize on the song's popularity. Both the singer and the label said they do not intend to make an actual video for the full length song which is 8 minutes and 2 seconds long, or its disco companion "Here", which is 14 minutes and 45 seconds long on the album. "Well, neither of these two songs were supposed to do anything," said Kaye. "The single the label was supposed to market was the disco track on the A Side, 'Last Chance for Romance Tonight', and that is still going to be released, but these other two songs just caught on first. So..."

Fans say they like the live performance video for "Love" and it is helping to propel more demand for the track itself. "Well, this whole album is very retro feeling," said KRM's Gina Hughes. "The thing that really caught on I think with ('Love') is that it's a dance track, but its also extremely synth driven, which takes it completely out of the category of disco and puts it with RF. And played right after 'Here' which is, let's face it, more or less pornography, even if it is definitely more of a RF Funk or Disco track, and you have yourself an RF classic for the modern age."

Most critics, who were not in touch with the bubbling underground at the time of their reviews, dismissed the album for its production techniques. "You could tell first of all that a lot of these guys, who called the record a 'miss' were not in touch with what was going on in the clubs throughout May and June," said Hughes. "They gave the record really mediocre rankings, called 'Last Chance...' the obvious single on the record and then panned it. What is even more painfully obvious is that, if we had say 10 reviewers, nine and a half of them didn't even bother listening to the B-Side of the LP. 'Love' is clearly a far superior track to anything else on the record, and both the DJs in the RF clubs and the fans know it long before the critics do."

Those who discussed "Love" or "Here" called them either prurient or pedestrian, and only began praising them in hindsight. A retroactive re-evaluation of the Album following its release specifically praised "Here." In revising his initial review, critic Daniel Henry Jones said, "It not only stays true to that base line throughout the entire track, which itself is both funky and infectious, but also it incorporates a lot of the baroque instrumentations we are seeing in the Art Rock movement, so it is both retro, like seriously retro, and also avant garde at the same time, which is a major feat on Kaye's part."

Others have praised Kaye's vocals on "Love". "That is not easy to sing," said Lorin White, professional vocal coach. "I don't know much about the music: none of it is analog at all. It is clearly all synthesized. But that means that Kaye just has to work that much harder to carry the melody. She's doing all the work on this song. She's the only one doing work on this song. And its magnificent, it's like a poem or a weird synthetic impressionistic audio masterpiece."

It is impossible really to talk about "Love" isolated from the song which immediately precedes it, the super funky, and admittedly pornographic "Here." "Yeah, well, I faked it all," said Kaye earlier this month when talking about the song and discussing the buzz around it and "Love." "Sorry guys. I think it was kind of a joke. The lyrics are so tame, if you just listen to them. I'm really a good girl, but you know, we had to spice things up a bit. 'When you're laying so close to me, there's no place I'd rather you be than with me, here...' Yeah, that needs a little sauce if people are gonna get their groove on to the B-Side."

As soon as the LP was released, the songs became eligible for hitting the charts, and hit the charts they did. The RF "Love" hit Number 1 in its first week on the countdown, while "Here" did more modestly: Because it is so long, it received far fewer spins, though had almost as many streams across all platforms, and therefore made it to number 18 on the Singles Chart. The LP itself debuted at Number 20 on the far more prestigious Albums Chart, driven almost exclusively by early popularity of "Love" and "Here".

Its unclear whether the popularity of Kaye's Album In Dreams is the harbinger of a new wave of sexually themed electric music, or if it is a one hit wonder, a Capitaline-driven fluke that doesn't translate outside of this particular moment in history into a longer trend. What is sure though is that Carly Kaye is enjoying her moment in the spotlight. "Yeah, it was sort of an accident. This music isn't what others are doing right now, and and we did go pretty far back for a lot of our sounds, but I have always loved the RF stuff, ever since I was a girl and got a copy of the Bounce RF Compilation. I am thrilled that on my first record, I got to make homage to the RF and RF Funk tracks from back in the day, and those happened to be the ones people loved. I am so grateful to be here, now and doing just this, making just this kind of music."

You can check out the audio for "Here" and the video for "Love" right here, and then pick up In Dreams by Carly Kaye, produced at at your local album Store.

[Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSXwzQPbHVk]

@KalistanRawkMonthly