Bibliography

Abbott, M. (2025). Forever Howlong. [online] Undertheradarmag.com. Available at: https://undertheradarmag.com/reviews/forever_howlong_black_country_new_road [Accessed 27 Dec. 2025].

Beres, S. (2025). Black Country, New Record: Or, How to Reinvent a cult-classic Band. [online] The Michigan Daily. Available at: https://www.michigandaily.com/arts/music/black-country-new-record-or-how-to-reinvent-a-cult-classic-band/ [Accessed 3 Jan. 2026].

Bradesca, M. (2025). Single Review: Black Country, New Road – Besties. [online] ACRN.COM. Available at: https://acrn.com/2025/02/12/single-review-black-country-new-road-besties/ [Accessed 15 Dec. 2025].

Cohen, I. (2025). Black Country, New Road Head Into the Unknown. [online] Pitchfork. Available at: https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/black-country-new-road-album-forever-howlong/ [Accessed 1 Jan. 2026].

Genius. (2025). Black Country, New Road – Besties. [online] Available at: https://genius.com/Black-country-new-road-besties-lyrics [Accessed 15 Dec. 2025].

Morris, D. (2023). One to watch: James Ellis Ford. [online] The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/apr/01/one-to-watch-james-ellis-ford-the-hum-simian-mobile-disco [Accessed 1 Jan. 2026].

Musescore (2025). Besties. [online] Musescore.com. Available at: https://musescore.com/user/27344333/scores/23062849.

pizom (2025). BCNR – Live Q&A (30/01/25, After Besties Premiere). [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md6KDq9oTaY [Accessed 15 Dec. 2025].

Wikipedia Contributors (2025). James Ford production discography. Wikipedia.

Script

Here I will be analysing the song ‘Besties’ by Black Country New Road through lyrics, production and rhythm. It came off of their latest album ‘Forever Howlong’ and featured a major change in their sound. In a review for the album on Under the Radar in April 2025, Marc Abott said, quote “Forever Howlong melds alt-rock, jazz, 1970s M.O.R, prog, folk, baroque, and chamber pop into a demonstrably slower-paced record than the band’s previous releases, damn near creating a genre all its own.” end quote. The band’s wide array of instrumentalists within the six members allows them to create a unique soundscape, mixing both old and new themes together in instrumentation and lyrics.

Lyrics

The song ‘besties’ is the opening track off of the album, and notably explores the theme of unrequited love in a platonic relationship. This relationship is between the narrator/singer/protagonist, and her ‘bestie’ which is how she will be referred to from now on, and the lyrics can be read mainly as a monologue by the singer, apart from a couple of lines that could be a potential response from the bestie later in the song, at 1 minute and 52 seconds in, accentuated by the use of caesura in the line, working as an interruption. This is led up to by the narrator’s musing’s, which all have an air of unrequited love, as she says, quote “I wanna be anywhere other than this, I wanna see my best friend waving at me, I wanna be living with you,” end quote.

The word “This” could mean the current state she is in, and that she doesn’t want to be in the turmoil in which she currently finds herself, which is why the monologue works so well, because the narrator is constantly battling her own feelings. In the chorus, beginning at 1 minute 13 seconds, we see this as she wants, quote “just enough, fill my cup” end quote, enough to allow her to keep feeling this way, but without going any further, so as not to potentially jeopardise the relationship.

The narrator still acts in the role of the best friend, chastising the bestie in the line, quote,”remember when I said he shouldn’t treat you that way,” end quote, which could also allude to the idea that the bestie is already in a romantic relationship, albeit a potentially negative one, which heightens the feeling of unrequited love, as there is another reason the protagonist feels separated romantically from her.

At the follow up to the rhetorical question, quote “in fact, don’t answer that” end quote at 1 minute 45, the line afterwards, “wouldn’t want it any other way” is deliberately ambiguous, as it lacks a pronoun, which adds conflict to the lyrics, as if the line began with the word ‘I’, it could suggest that the protagonist doesn’t want to know the bestie’s feelings on the relationship, deepening the sentiment of the song, and feeling of longing. However if the line started with you, it could be seen as accusatory, that the bestie is aware and is keeping them apart. This is why the interruption in the following line works so well, because of the previous line’s ambiguity. The singer is told to quote ‘take it back now, what you feel is a hole in your life’, end quote, and this is backed up as being from the ‘besties’ view afterwards when the singer says that ‘she’s’ probably right.

The rest of the song echoes the sentiments especially the last verse, which is full of the protagonist’s perceived awareness of the situation, summed up in the last two lines, quote, “I’m a walking TikTok trend but the colours run out in the end,” end quote. Both of these are referring to the fleetingness of the experience, TikTiok and social media notoriously moving on within days, and the loss of colour potentially working as a metaphor for a loss of feeling, the belief that the feeling couldn’t last. The lyrics are arguably the most interesting part of the song, despite the lush musical backdrop of this relationship drama, because of the interpretations that can be garnered from them.

Production

The album is produced by James Ford, who is known for work with Arctic Monkeys, Foals, and more recently Last Dinner Party, Geese, Fontaines D.C and Blur, displaying a varied career but notably a more ‘art-pop’ focused environment. Damien Morris for the guardian wrote in 2023, quote “As a top-flight music producer, either you stamp your signature sound on to your clients’ music or you help your artist locate and magnify their essential self. James Ellis Ford is brilliant at the latter.” end quote. This fits in well with the period in which black country new road were in before they released the album, as main songwriter and vocalist Isaac Wood had just left the band, only days before they planned to tour it. “The group’s three female members, Hyde, Kershaw, and Ellery, share lead vocals across Forever Howlong, engaging in what the they call a “healthy competition” refereed by producer James Ford, who Ian Cohen from Pitchfork in 2025 called quote “an absolute machine” who worked 16-hour days for three weeks.” end quote. The members of the band notably learned new instruments for the album, like the drummer and guitarist learning recorder. The song itself contains a harpsichord, mandolin, alto saxophone, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, and drums. The harpsichord begins alone and plays initially accelerating broken chords, before at 10 seconds, there is a quote “bursting crescendo of chamber sound: beating drums, a trumpet and some introductory choral “ahhs”” end quote, as described by Siena Beres in a review for the Michigan Daily. This then dies down to just an acoustic guitar as the verse begins, sung by Georgia Ellery in her first solo lead. The saxophone begins again at 44 seconds, but from then it plays short lines either in harmony with the melody, or as a response to certain vocal melodic lines. The music becomes louder at the choruses, with the crescendo of the song being at 2 minutes 30, as all the instruments and vocal harmonies from the burst at the beginning join back into a dense homophony, rather than the sparser one that is in the rest of the song.

The album “Forever Howlong” was inspired musically and ‘completed’ musically after their live performance of some of the songs, which helped them solidify it. In some quotes from a live Q&A after the premier of the Besties single release on 30th January 2025 they said quote “To finish it and make it a coherent thing we knew we had to properly perform it but with a kind of controlled environment” end quote, referring to early album performances in smaller venues, so they could have a live feel but as much pressure of a performance

In the same interview, Lewis Evans of the band said it was quote “another reason why we always do residential album recordings” end quote, as it allowed them to get a more complete idea of how to improve and perform it

Rhythm

‘Besties’ has an ambiguous rhythm, as it is mostly in 3/4 but has the feel of 4/4, as the usual waltzing feel of a 3/4 metre isn’t there, as each beat is played completely straight, without accents. In the harpsichord’s run at the beginning of the song, it has an initial accelerando, which with the shorter demisemiquavers it plays makes the tempo feel much faster, but once the other instruments kick in at 0:10, each beat goes in time with the drums, which identifies the slower overall tempo.

The rhythm is also masked through the broken chords the guitar and harpsichord play, as they use quavers to fill in the off beats, making each bar feel looped and making it slightly harder to place the beats. The chords in verses usually change every two bars in the verse, and in the chorus change to have a harmonic rhythm of one chord per bar. The instances of 4/4 bars occur at the start and end of each chorus, and also at the end of the introduction at 25 seconds. At the lead into the choruses it works to build emotion, as the guitar rhythm speeds up, strumming triplets. As each chorus ends and leads into the next verse, the 4/4 bar does the opposite, with the extra beat in the last bar allowing the bass to play the final descending note, which doesn’t lead into a perfect cadence but an interrupted one, allowing the verse to retain attention. Another instance of triplets occurs in the final run of the harpsichord at the end of the song

I decided to write the assignment as if it was an essay, so this is essentially a script

In BNCRs promotional material for the single on Spotify, the pre-save text read,

Things may get a bit strange (don’t worry if they do),

make sure she knows that you love her!

Don’t expect a present every birthday. – The birthday line of that may reference another song on the album “happy birthday” but if taken within the context of the song “besties” it could reference a tumultuous relationship, but also a continued one