The trouble with a lot of modern pop is that it feels designed by committee; engineered for playlists, calibrated for TikTok, as if the only goal of a song is to survive fifteen seconds before being swallowed by the algorithm. That’s why when a song like Ooberfuse’s “Better Than Gold” comes along, it feels a little bit shocking. Not because it reinvents the wheel, but because it has the gall to try something that used to be unfashionable: sincerity.
Ooberfuse, a London-based duo who have spent the better part of a decade playing everywhere from Rio’s favelas to the UK House of Lords are no strangers to performing in contexts where the music needs to mean something. Their new single, “Better Than Gold,” fits right into that lineage. It isn’t just aiming for the charts; it’s aiming for the national mood. You know, the way the Black Eyed Peas once pretended they were asking the entire globe, “Where is the love?”, except here, the love is reconfigured into something sharper, more grounded, and distinctly modern.
The track opens with nu-metal-style bass chugs and gospel-tinged piano chords that immediately set up a tension: weighty, serious subject matter wrapped in a production that still wants to make you move. It’s a neat trick. This isn’t lo-fi protest folk with a man and a guitar yelling at the void. This is pop music; slick, layered, hook-driven, but with its sights set on bigger questions than whether or not it’ll get synced in an advert for bottled water.
Lyrically, “Better Than Gold” goes for the throat by not overcomplicating itself. It doesn’t cloak its message in overwrought metaphors or pseudo-profound platitudes. Instead, it goes conversational; phrases that sound like things you might overhear in a crowded café debate, or half-shouted in a Facebook rant about corruption. That’s the secret weapon here: relatability. Instead of telling you how to feel, it nudges you into recognizing feelings you already had but maybe hadn’t put into words.
You can imagine it at a gig, sure, but also at a rally, a march, or even just in the middle of a classroom where someone plugs in a speaker and suddenly everyone’s belting it out together. That’s the kind of energy “Better Than Gold” taps into: it isn’t content to stay locked in headphones; it wants to spill into public space.
Now, does it lean a little too close to the blueprint laid out by “Where Is the Love?” in places? Maybe. I’d argue the bass notes are overly similar. But honestly, that’s not a flaw so much as a statement of lineage. Protest anthems disguised as pop singles are a rare breed these days, and Ooberfuse manage to take the format and inject it with a distinctly 2020s urgency.
What makes the song work is that Ooberfuse don’t play it safe. They don’t lapse into irony or nihilism, which would be the easy way out. Instead, they double down on conviction. “Better Than Gold” is unabashedly earnest, and in today’s climate, that feels borderline radical. And maybe that’s the point. Pop doesn’t have to be cynical, or disposable. Sometimes, it can try to do something better than gold.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for publications in the US and former lead writer of Atop The Treehouse. Reviews music, film and TV shows for media aggregators.
