Review
Genre and Mood
Her built their sound from soul, hip-hop and electronic music, and On & On puts all three in one track, with guests from Germany and Belgium. It is satirical in subject and reflective in tone: Numéro heard a song that runs down the dictate of social media, set over electro, and called it as ambitious as it is convincing.
Song Summary
On & On is the fifth track of Her, the band’s first album, released by Barclay on 30 March 2018. Its subject, in Numéro’s reading, is social media and the artifice it pushes on people. The credits make it a meeting of three acts: Victor Solf sings and plays keyboards, Simon Carpentier plays guitar and sings, and AnnenMayKantereit, from Cologne, and the Brussels rapper Roméo Elvis add their voices and co-wrote the words. Mathieu Gramoli plays drums, Louis Kuipers guitar and Thomas Clairice bass, with five backing singers.
Musical Breakdown
The Bed
No source describes the song section by section. What Numéro gives is the setting: a backdrop of electro under a full band of keyboards, guitars, bass and drums.
The Guests
The song’s shape comes from its voices. Solf leads; AnnenMayKantereit, whose singer Henning May is known for a distinct, rough voice, and Roméo Elvis join him. Listen for the change each one brings.
Concepts in Focus
A <a href=“https://korczis.github.io/sonic-playground/concept/featured-artist/” class=“concept-link font-medium text-primary-700 underline decoration-dotted underline-offset-4 hover:decoration-solid dark:text-primary-400” data-concept=“featured-artist” title=“A guest performer credited on another artist’s track, usually as “feat.”: a rapper’s verse, a singer’s hook or a second voice. Features bring together different styles and audiences and are central to hip-hop, R&B and dance music.“>featured artist is a guest credited on another artist’s track, and here there are two, from two scenes and two countries. AnnenMayKantereit are a Cologne band who sing mostly in German; Roméo Elvis is a Belgian rapper from a French-speaking family of artists. Both are credited for lyrics as well as vocals, so they shaped what the song says, not only how it sounds.
mixing is the stage where every recorded part is balanced into one finished track. With this many voices and players, it matters: the credits name Michael Declerck, who also co-produced the song with Her, and Maxime Leguil as mixing engineers, and Antoine Thibaudeau for the mastering that followed.
Artistic Context
Her began as the Rennes duo of Simon Carpentier and Victor Solf, heard here in Her – Five Minutes and Her – Her. Carpentier died of cancer on 13 August 2017, aged 27, and Solf carried on as Her alone; the album came out seven months later with both men credited as writers of this song.
Impact and Reception
The collaboration did not chart in Germany, Austria or Switzerland, according to AnnenMayKantereit’s discography. Numéro saw the album as a hybrid style new to France, and Her played the Olympia in Paris that April. On & On is the album’s widest reach, three acts in one song. Play it and count the voices.
