All Kings And Queens’ “Voodoo” Is The Best Song You’ll Hear All Day/Week/Month/Maybe Longer

Just last week, in our latest Silent Shout alt-pop roundup, I wrote about how the ’80s will never die. Even as mainstream stars litter songs with ’80s flourishes, emerging and alternative artists are still finding novel uses for the brash sounds of that decade. And new duo All Kings And Queens have just stumbled upon yet another iteration of ’80s fetishism on their new song “Voodoo.”

The London-based brother-sister duo of Jospeph and Gabriella essentially took some of the most enjoyably over-the-top elements of the ’80s — Pat Benatar power pop, Jeffrey Osborne slap-bass funk, neon New Romanticism, hair metal’s polished pyrotechnics — and Reebok Pumped them into Stay Puft Marshmallow Man proportions. This is the type of shit you’d sit around with your finger on the boombox’s record button just waiting for your local radio station to play so you could drop it onto a new mixtape (literally a tape). This is the type of shit that’ll make you buy acid wash jeans and put in one — but only one! — dangly earring. This is the type of shit that would be playing during a movie montage when a band of kids plan the big offensive to drive off the evil monster that’s been terrorizing their town.

Silent Shout:: New music from pop's fringes

There was no subtlety in ’80s pop and there’s no subtlety in 2010s pop, when every song is an arms race to stack hooks on hooks and syncopated melodies and fill every space with huge, expensive-sounding electro bursts. “Voodoo” marries those sensibilities and shows how liberating goon pop can be. Who needs nuance when you can create a high-kicking Frankenstein monster with feathered hair and leg warmers?

I could write about this all afternoon — I haven’t even mentioned that it’s AKAQ’s first-ever song and that they produced it themselves — but I’ll shut up now so that you can listen to this beast of a track.