• Unfair comparison with its predecessor
• Too ambitious
• Good vocal
The wait is over. The long awaited “follow-up” of Apollo has been released, and I’m still as disappointed as I was when I heard it the first time at Tomorrowland 2018. Don’t hate me yet, I have my own reasons to say that.
First of all, I think that the main error here was to compare it with “Apollo”. It’s a nice track, of course, but if you compare it to a legendary one, you feel like “Being Alive” is not that great. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m just saying that, for me, it lacks a bit of that epicness of its predecessor. It received too much pressure, like it happens with soccer players being called “the new Messi” or “the new Cristiano Ronaldo” before doing anything important.
The tune starts with some plucky chords, introducing the typical Hardwell pluck after a few seconds. Here we are already listening to the main melody… well, to the “melody” itself, because it’s the only one in the whole track, without any type of variation. Then we have some big chords like in “Apollo”, but the progression and the melody are way worse than the original ones. We finally reach the drop after a regular build up and a particular pre-drop vocal that, for me, doesn’t fit the overall mood of the tune.
The drop is good, but nothing special. Featuring strong kicks, a gritty bass and a big lead, it follows the standard Hardwell’s scheme when doing this kind of tracks. Talking about the second break, it’s pretty much the same as the first one, but at least JGUAR’s vocals improve it a bit. Lots of people are crazy with this vocal, but although it’s a good one, I still prefer the Amba Sheperd one.
It was too ambitious from Hardwell to try to make a follow up of one of his most iconic tracks ever. Of course, that worked well for increasing the hype, but if you do so you must be really sure that you’ll be able to satisfy the expectation, and that didn’t happen in my case.
What do you think?
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