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'Under You' by Nick Jonas is as good as you want it to be, take the rest of the week off

jonas

It's THREE QUARTERS OF A YEAR since we published a blog post entitled RED ALERT: The next Nick Jonas single might be better than Jealous (Tinashe remix).

Nick had performed a song called 'Under You' at some private radio showcase or other; fifteen seconds of the per­form­ance then made their way online. And what a fifteen seconds.

Well, 'the next Nick Jonas single' actually turned out to be Close with Tove Lo on it. The single was a sparse and moody electro‑R&B ballad because it's 2016 and there are sparse and moody electro‑R&B ballad quotas to fill. It was a good song and its video shoot gave the world this arresting image.

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But where was 'Under You', the song that was obviously destined for first-five-songs placing on all Triumphant Midtempobangers playlists until the end of time? Maybe that would be the second single from 'Last Year Was Complicated'?

NO.

Instead Nick did a video for 'Chainsaw'.

'Chainsaw' was a perfectly fine song about cutting up a three piece suite with a powertool. But it wasn't the song the world needed, and rep­res­en­ted bad news for those of us hoping for the lib­er­a­tion of 'Under You'. Doubts began to form. Would 'Under You' ever be released? Was 'Under You' actually any good? Perhaps those fifteen seconds were mis­lead­ing. Perhaps pinning hopes on this song would only ever have resulted in disappointment.

But there was hope: Nick had been per­form­ing the song live.

WELL we've now heard the full actual three-minutes-sixteen-seconds studio version of the song which does exist and is on the album and we're pleased to report the following:

  • Yes, it abso­lutely delivers on the promise of the fifteen second clip.
  • Yes, sonically it's basically Nick Jonas doing Taylor Swift's 'Style': an elegant and pensive mid-tempo electro subtlebanger.
  • Yes, it does the music-drops-out, drum-crash thing before the first chorus.
  • Yes, it does even more of a music-drops-out, drum-crash thing before coming out of the middle eight.
  • Yes, its chorus "I'll never get over not getting under you" probably is a nod to mis­sion­ary-related regret.
  • Yes, it rhymes "so foolish" with "stupid shit".
  • Yes, it's the best song on 'Last Year Was Complicated' but yes, in keeping with current trends, it finds itself near the end of the album which makes you think it might not be a single, and no, to be fair 'Style' wasn't as big a hit for Swifto as it could have been so perhaps it should only ever exist as an album track but YES 'Under You' is a triumph and YES it should be cherished for its beauty and splendour.

So there you go: a happy ending. It's nice when that happens.