Review
Genre and Mood
Paloma Faith throws a party on Upside Down, a track that mixes soul, pop and jazz into a retro romp. Its mood is playful, upbeat and wonderfully quirky, like a vintage cabaret number reimagined for a modern pop chart. It sounds like it was made for dressing up and dancing badly with friends.
Song Summary
The song embraces the feeling of having your world turned on its head and decides to enjoy the ride. Faith’s voice, big, theatrical and full of character, swings between cheekiness and full-throated power, and the arrangement backs her with punchy horns, a bouncing rhythm section and a swing that recalls dance halls of decades past. The memorable detail is her delivery: she sings every line as if she is winking at the audience. The production keeps one foot in the past and one in the present, with crisp modern drums under the vintage horns, and that blend gives the song its energy: retro, but never museum-like.
Musical Breakdown
The track moves quickly and confidently, a classic verse-chorus song that keeps adding colour and energy.
Intro
A jaunty rhythm and brassy accents kick off the song, setting a vintage, swinging tone straight away.
Verse 1
Faith enters with a playful, slightly mischievous delivery, her phrasing loose and expressive over the bouncing groove.
Chorus
The hook explodes into a big, singalong melody, horns blaring, her voice soaring as the title phrase becomes a joyful declaration.
Bridge
A brief change of pace lets her show off her range and theatricality before the band launches back into the chorus.
Outro
The final chorus builds to a brassy, triumphant finish, ending with a flourish that feels like a curtain coming down.
Concepts in Focus
The bounce of Upside Down is swing: the off-beats are delayed slightly, so the rhythm lilts instead of marching. It is the feel of pre-rock jazz and dance-hall music, which Digital Spy’s reviewer heard Faith absorbing, and the session players make it real: Matthew Waer on upright bass, Ruthie Phoenix on saxophone and Linden Berelowitz on drums.
Beneath the vintage colour the song is a modern, compact verse-chorus form of about three minutes: playful verses, a big singalong chorus, a short bridge and a final chorus. The old sounds sit inside a pop structure, the same combination that powered Amy Winehouse – You Know I’m No Good a few years earlier.
The music video was directed by Chris Sweeney, who also made the video for the album’s title track; Faith described it as “a kind of Kelis/André 3000 type video”, a deliberately modern frame for a retro song.
Artistic Context
Paloma Faith is a London singer and performer whose background in cabaret and theatre shaped her flamboyant style. “Upside Down”, written by Faith with Andy Love, Jos Jorgensen and Belle Humble and produced by Love and Jorgensen, appears on her 2009 debut album, Do You Want the Truth or Something Beautiful?, and was released by Epic on 15 March 2010 as its fourth single. The album was a record that combined retro soul and jazz influences with pop songwriting and helped establish her as one of the distinctive British voices of that era. She arrived in a wave of British singers reviving classic soul and jazz styles, but her sense of theatre and humour set her apart; she was always as much a performer as a singer.
Impact and Reception
The album went on to strong sales in the UK. “Upside Down” itself peaked only at number 55 on the UK Singles Chart in March 2010, after being Scott Mills’s Record of the Week on BBC Radio 1, but it kept selling and streaming for years and was eventually certified gold by the BPI. It is here because it does not take itself too seriously and is all the better for it. Play it when the day needs a little sparkle and a lot of swing.
