Modern Qualifier 26 – Ariana Grande, VV Brown, Will Young, John Grant

Hello. I am here to explain why I nominated ‘Into You’.
I wanted to pick something from 2016, which lost the “next year poll” vote to 2015. This was the single I was most upset we’d miss out on. To be exact, not being able to poll anything from ‘Lemonade’ was slightly more galling. But there are three equally great unpolled singles on that album and one or two (or possibly all three) would have missed out anyway.I think it’s Ariana Grande’s joint-best single, along with ‘no tears left to cry’, which has been polled in number 2s. Now, a 2010s single in a UK no.2s poll is even more “inevitable chum” than 2010s songs usually are 🙂 But this is, I think, a more open poll and a great pop record deserves the very best opportunity.For it is a truly great pop record, far superior to her 20s stuff we’ve polled. In fact, I’ll stick my neck way out and say it’s the greatest thing Max Martin has done this century apart from ‘Blank Space’. Yes, even better than ‘Blinding Lights’ and his other stuff with The Weeknd. And Kelly Clarkson.And why do I love it so? And why is this the perfect time for me to have nominated it? Well… you know I picked the runner-up in the last Twitter poll, ‘Into The Groove’? Each decade of the 21st century has had its own ‘Into The Groove’. For the 00s it’s Rihanna’s ‘Don’t Stop The Music’, and for the 20s it’s Dua Lipa’s ‘Levitating’. This is the Into The Groove of the 2010s, and the closest of all three to the original. That chorus kicking in, and that middle 8/breakdown, are two of the Pop Moments of the Decade.As ever, I want to see how far something I love – that hasn’t come up in much in The Discourse – can go.