Single Review: Kodaline – ‘The One’
2 min read
It hasn’t been long since Irish rock band Kodaline dropped their second album Coming Up for Air. Following the lead single Honest back in 2014, The One marks the second single from the album, and the first one for 2015. It’s quite different compared to Honest, too.
The One moves away from rock and instead delivers a mid-tempo full of acoustic guitar, strings, keyboard and light drum beats. It’s a sincere little song mixing lyrics that describe finding a significant other that makes you feel complete—You make it feel like it’s summer/When the rain is pouring down/You make my whole world feel so right when it’s wrong/That’s how I know you are the one—with the romantic undertone of the music to better instil emotion in the listener. It doesn’t exactly stand out on the album, which makes this a good opportunity for the song to try and show itself off.
Unfortunately, when given time to play out, the song manages to fall flat. Over four minutes, there’s no significant changes or quirks to make the song more interesting, and instead stays in that sentimental place for its entire length. While the middle eight shows some attempts to take the song to another level, it never really finds itself reaching that level and instead falls back to where it was before the section started. Even when separated from the album and taken as its own entity, the song fails to redeem itself and remains something of a cliché instead.
What could have been a good, if not great, mid-tempo was unfortunately held back by its own desire not to venture too far from its roots. It lacks any interesting features that make it worth listening to more than once. As a single, The One doesn’t fare very well.
