As the decades-long Loudness War begins to abate, there are many reasons to applaud artists who decide to master their songs at lower integrated loudness levels in order bring greater dynamic range to their music. This Gigi Perez song, for instance, boasts a loudness range of more than 12dB, well over twice that exhibited by many recent high-profile chart releases – for comparison, none of Beyoncé’s ‘Texas Hold ‘Em’, Sabrina Carpenter’s 'Please Please Please', Boy Genius’s 'Not Strong Enough', or The Beatles’s 'Now And Then' manage a loudness range of even 6dB.

What people don’t often talk about, however, is that by preventing producers from cheaply conjuring musical momentum/energy out of thin air via simple volume increases, the Loudness Wars effectively put more emphasis on delivering a sense of build-up and intensity via other means – more compelling performances, say, or more creative songwriting and arrangement. And this is where ‘Sailor Song’ falls down for me, because it feels like it’s using its dynamic range as a sticking plaster, lending a superficial veneer of excitement to a production that otherwise generates precious little of its own. The harmony certainly provides no musical impetus, ploughing the same three-chord E-G_#m-B furrow for basically the whole song. The acoustic guitars grimly beat their 3/8-3/8-2/8 strumming pattern into submission throughout too, a monotony that’s hardly alleviated by the all-but-featureless sustained synth-bass line and (from 2:26) scarcely more interesting solo electric guitar.

All of which shortcomings might have been more forgiveable had the vocals been genuinely arresting, but once the surface appeal of their Bon Iver-esque indie sonics wears off, there seems to be so much working against their long-term effectiveness here. The melody is tediously repetitive, for a start: not only are the first and second halves of each verse pretty much identical, but the choruses continuously grind out the same four-note melodic contour in every. Single. Bar. The unrelenting vocal layering is also a poor production choice, in my opinion, not only because it makes the melody feel even more pedestrian (by virtue of the fact that several parts are having to conform to each other rhythmically), but also because it emotionally homogenises and distances the lead singer from us as listeners. The homophonic parallel-third backing-vocal harmonies in the second verse feel utterly unimaginative as well – and haven’t we all honestly had enough of rhyming “knees” with “begging…please”?!

This might be good enough for a few seconds on a TikTok video, but I can’t believe I’m the only person who expects more from a full-song listening experience.