My biggest gripe with doing music reviews is that a lot of the time, what needs to be said about an album has already been said. But what if nothing’s been said about an album because no one has ever heard it before? That’s the concept behind this new series of reviews I’m calling Forgotify’s Finest. My secret weapon here is Forgotify, a website that randomly selects one of the millions of tracks on Spotify that has literally never been played (That’s right, I said millions. I could do this series forever). But since Forgotify’s algorithm is completely random, I had to impose a few ground rules:
The track must be music. I’m not going to be reviewing any sound effects or voice memos or whatever else might be sitting on some dusty virtual shelf in Spotify’s massive library.
The track must be SOMEWHAT professional-sounding. I’m also not going to roast some kid who uploaded a homemade cover of his or her favorite song. That seems too mean-spirited.
The track must be attached to a full project, so I have more material to work with.
Luckily, the very first thing I landed on met all my criteria. The song is “I Want To Be The One,” off an album released in 2002 called N Ster Vir My (A Star For Me) by an artist called Ice. Oh, what’s that? Who is Ice? Believe me, I wish I knew. I’m assuming Ice is the woman on the cover of this album, but I can’t even say that with any authority. This particular album isn’t even listed under the correct artist named Ice on Spotify. Google was also not helpful in my research aside from confirming that the title of this album is in Afrikaans. So, let’s move forward with the assumption that Ice is a woman from South Africa. Now buckle up, because things are about to get weird.
The first thing I have to mention is the skips, because it’s most likely the first thing you’ll notice. Every single song on N Ster Vir My sounds like it’s being played on a broken record player. At first I wondered if this might be an intentional artistic choice, but the album is a pretty conventional pop record otherwise. It wouldn’t make much sense to me to play things so straightforward but get all experimental in this one weird aspect. So is it some sort of demo? An accidental upload? A vivid auditory hallucination I had while trying to think of article ideas? All are possible, but none quite make sense. Skips aside, the production as a whole doesn’t feel very finished. But if this is just a rough draft then where is the final product?
Let’s talk about the tracklist. The first song, “Een+ Een,” didn’t really raise any red flags from me besides the skips mentioned above. The second track, “Under Attack,” was where things got interesting. On “Een+ Een” I had noticed that while the production was rough, the vocals weren’t terrible. Actually, they had sort of a classic 80s pop aesthetic to them. “Under Attack” took that to another level. The vocals were damn near ABBA-esque, and I started to wonder if a more polished version of this album might actually be pretty decent. It wasn’t until a few songs later that I realized why “Under Attack” reminded me so much of ABBA. It’s a damn ABBA song. Of course, the second I put two and two together, I started Googling every song title on the tracklist. I didn’t have much luck with the titles in Afrikaans, but I could find enough of the English titles to confirm my suspicions: this is a cover album. “Do You Wanna Make Something Of It” is by Jo Dee Messina. “One Night A Day” is by Garth Brooks. “I Want To Be The One,” the song that brought me here, is by Lonestar. What’s interesting to me is that most of these are country songs, but not all of them are. For instance, “To Earn The Glory” appears to be a cover of a song by Fredi Nest, another South African musician. So it’s not really a country covers album, but it’s not NOT a country covers album. I guess inconsistency is just about the only thing that’s consistent when it comes to N Ster Vir My.
In all seriousness, it’s hard to criticize this album too much. It clearly wasn’t intended to be listened to in this state, and if it was, it’s operating at a level of genius beyond my comprehension. Is it worth your time to listen to? Probably not, unless you want to check out a song or two to get some context for this article. Personally, my biggest takeaway from N Ster Vir My is intense curiosity. I’d love to know more about Ice, as well as some of the songs on here that may or may not be covers. And who is the mysterious Trio Records responsible for putting out this strange album? I may never find the answers to these questions. But I’m just one man. If anyone out there recognizes this artist or any of these songs, please reach out and let me know. Because frankly I’m worried I won’t be able to sleep again as long as these mysteries haunt me.
I’m not sure if this edition of Forgotify’s Finest was a success or a failure, but I’m looking forward to doing it again. One of these days I’m going to find a diamond in the rough. And when that happens, it’ll all have been worth it.
Lyle B.