I'm Only the Trombone Player

"High Hopes" by Panic! At The Disco

Not my usual cuppa tea, but this was a musically sound presentation, nor do I usually share my critiques of other musicians work with anyone but them. So this is a first more or less.

First off I liked it, an upbeat tune both musically and contextually. The video continued the "hopeful" message with the vocalists walk up the building. It became much less a gimmick to me when he looked back down and then broke the fourth wall with more or less a "Hey I really did that, I wasn't sure it was going to work" look.

This is a great theme and sentiment for the New Year, which always seems to start with "High Hope's. My hope is that everyone has a Happy, Safe and Healthy New Year! Hopefully at least some of our hopes and dream will blossom and bear fruit.

I was amused by the fact that a crowd gather for his walk up the buildings side (not unexpected), but no one reacted to a guy walking down the street singing in full voice, even the "bump pass" drew no reaction from the "crowd".

My impression was that the message here was that sometimes hope can be enough. He hoped he could climb to the top of that building and his faith carried him through. He was surprised and pleased that he made it.

Happily, I didn't detect the affects associated with "auto tune", so either this was a very skill vocal by a more then competent musician or a very fine job by a top notch recording engineer. The backing tracks were well suited to the genre and supported the tune well. The visuals aided and amplified the songs message.

One pet peeve, in the final scene on the roof top. where the band joined the vocalist there were instruments being heard but not seen. That always has a jarring effect on me. I understand the economic of it, basically your paying people to stand around and pretend to play (the tracks were studio recorded, not "live"). But my musical eye wants to see what I hear!

Interestingly this isn't the only song titled "High Hopes", cueing up the way back machine here's Bing Crosby singing a different song with the same title.

https://youtu.be/El4nNaV1P3g