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The Zutons - 'What's Your Problem?'

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Vicki Vicki | 09:27 UK time, Thursday, 4 September 2008

The ZutonsPoor the Zutons. It's got to suck at least a little bit when people think that one of your best and most successful songs . That sort of gives the lie to the idea that any attention is good attention, doesn't it?

'What's Your Problem' doesn't get off to the most auspicious of starts, with the lyrically uninspired "What's your problem? / What's your problem? / I don't get what your problem is." Okay, so we've established that you're having some difficulty in determining the precise nature of this person's problem. Can we move on now?

Fortunately, they do precisely that rather than continuing in the same synonymous vein, but a reluctance to deviate from the pre-established structure is a bit of a handicap for this song, since the verses stick to the same rhythmic and tonal structure as the first three lines, which isn't necessarily a bad idea, but here it just makes it all feel slightly samey and forgettable. I can't help thinking that they'd have done themselves a favour with just a bit of variation in it somewhere - a change in the tempo here and there, or a bit of artistic licence being taken with the melody.

The chorus does provide a bit of a welcome break, and is probably the most successful part of the song, with a kind of waterwheel, perpetual motion thing going on within it - very measured and very determined. Ultimately, though, it just doesn't feel like there's enough going on here - it's a pleasant song to listen to, but I really struggled to recall much of it beyond the chorus and the opening refrain after it had finished. It just feels like the sort of song which would be more fondly remembered as an unreleased album track than a single - a song that has moments of brilliance, but doesn't quite manage the necessary sense of "shazam" or whatever that mysterious quality is to be properly radio-friendly.

Three starsCD Released: September 8th

(Steve Perkins)

PS sum up the Zutons video rather nicely...

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