This whole culture of having chilled out piano instrumentals in front of boom-bap style drums and r&b vocals is still flourishing, it looks like. Even if that isn’t totally accurate, Dimapur’s Meyisanen Lemtur does precisely this on his single ‘Years Gone By’, which is basically all of the aforementioned elements with a guest verse from Youtuber-musician Jpollnd. And hey, who cares about what the culture thinks? This song is popping off right now and preconceived notions of genre aside, it really is quite a fresh and cheerful little track.

It’s all about the delivery and production here, both of which have a brightness and legitimate nice-ness to them. The video is similarly cheery, but the fun is all in the piano and truly fun synth tones. Temsu Clover provides the slightly more sad verse towards the end of the track and her vocals give the choruses a nice layering effect, but it functions as a nice bridge more than anything else. Jpollnd also shows some personality on his verse but keeps his delivery pretty lowkey (one might suppose coming out aggressive and in your face on a song like this might not be ideal). It sounds fairly clean too; there isn’t anything to screw up in the production side of things anyway. The beat’s good, the sounds are clear and Meyisanen doesn’t give his vocals the volume of a megaphone. All that’s left, then, is the song itself, and its sunny disposition makes for a great morning tune. Any three and a half –minute task you have to do now has a nice soundtrack.