Parade of Lights Isn’t Golden

Parade+of+Lights+Isnt+Golden

Adelaide Risberg

If you’re throwing a dance party with flashing lights and bad food, Parade of Lights has got your music covered. Their new album, Golden, has four memorable songs that will be stuck in your head all week long. And not necessarily in a good way. The songs include: “Golden,” “Burn,” “The Island,” and “We’re the Kids.”

“Golden” is by far the most popular song and for good reason. It has a decent beat that is totally toe-tap-alicious. The lyrics are simple without being dull and catchy without being obnoxious, though there are better songs out there. Any sort of humdrum task becomes fun listening to this song, but you can only stand listening to it for so long. It sounds familiar at first, like other familiar pop songs, but then Parade of Lights gets creative and adds in sounds, beats, and lyrics that make it unique. Compared to all of their other garbage, Parade of Lights has definitely outdone themselves with this one.

“Burn” is also an acceptable song, though not as super fantastic as “Golden.” It also has a heavy beat you could dance to. “Burn” is very different from “Golden,” though. It isn’t entirely horrible, but it’s hard to listen to more than a few times. The lead singer, Ryan Daly, sounds like he just came from One Direction. His voice has a whiney sound that makes it seem like he’s moaning half the lyrics. I hope you don’t plan on singing along to this or any of the following songs, because just understanding what they are saying is practically impossible.

The next song, “The Island,” is a little better, but more than half the lyrics are completely indistinguishable. It’s slower than the last two songs, and seems to drag on forever. It has a different feel from the other songs, sounding less like One Direction and more like Kidz Bop. No one would listen to this song unless they were at some sort of dance party, and even then you can’t listen to it more than once; it would be unbearable.

“We’re the Kids” is, somehow, second to “Golden” when it comes to popularity. Parade of Lights made this song drastically different from the others. It sounds like a dying cat is playing a high-pitched kazoo. On top of that, Daly moans half the lyrics, again. As if that wasn’t bad enough, 16 lines of their 30 lines of lyrics are “We’re the kids now” and a significant number of those left over are just “We are.” What does that even mean? We’re the kids now? Some people suggest that these lyrics talk about being young and free. I think someone was scraping the bottom of the barrel to add a song to their already pitiful album. Most songs have lyrics that don’t make total sense, but this is a whole new level of confusion. This song drags on and on until you can’t stand it anymore. And then it keeps going. I don’t know what Parade of Lights was trying to achieve with this song, but it certainly wasn’t any kind of music. They sound like they’re trying to be edgy like Bastille while having the vocals of One Direction, and listening to this song is pure torture.

Overall, the only song worth listening to from the album Golden is the song “Golden.” “Burn” and “The Island” are okay, but “We’re the Kids” is a disgrace to humanity. Stay away from it. Since Parade of Lights is a relatively new band, hopefully their songs will improve as they play around with their sound. Or maybe they will do us all a favor and just stop playing music all together.