The original, produced by Brian Eno and lodged permanently in the DNA of anyone who came of age in the post-Madchester wilderness years, was always stranger than radio play suggested. Tim Booth wrote it as a roiling, uncomfortable thing \u2014 tender and chaotic, funny and unsettling, its gender politics considerably more radical than the lad-rock context in which it was frequently consumed. The indie kids who wore it out on their Sunday supplement samplers largely heard the melody. Wills heard the subtext. The difference between those two listeners is, essentially, this record.<\/p>
Working with Wigan producer Sholz-Y \u2014 a craftsman whose r\u00e9sum\u00e9 spans Idol winners and Label Radar competitions, and whose instinct for a room-filling bass frequency is frankly enviable \u2014 Wills has performed what can only be described as a surgical genre transplant. The patient goes in as Britpop and comes out as something ready for a 2am slot at a venue where the walls sweat and nobody goes home before sunrise. The hypnotic synth work that underpins the track doesn’t so much replace Booth’s original guitar shimmer as recontextualise it: you can feel the ghost of the 90s pressing through the 2026 production like light through frosted glass.<\/p>
Wills’ vocal performance deserves particular attention. He doesn’t attempt to imitate or compete with Booth’s original delivery \u2014 a wise decision, since Booth’s was the voice of a man who seemed permanently on the verge of either revelation or nervous collapse. Instead, Wills finds his own emotional register: cleaner, more assured, but carrying its own weight. When he reaches *”messed around with gender roles, line my eyes and call me pretty,”* the line lands differently than it did in 1993. Not because the words have changed, but because the dancefloor context amplifies their intent. On a Pride main stage \u2014 where Wills has already demonstrated he knows how to hold an audience of 40,000 \u2014 that couplet becomes something close to a communal statement. Out of a bedroom speaker, it still has a quiet power.<\/span><\/p> The production choices throughout are confident without being flashy. Sholz-Y resists the temptation to pile on \u2014 no gratuitous drops, no cynical breakdown designed to trend on social media. The driving bass moves the track forward with purpose, and the soaring vocal arrangement in the final third earns its uplift through accumulation rather than cheap release. This is house music that understands that restraint is a tool, not a limitation.<\/span><\/p> Where the single falls just short of perfection is in its middle section, which flattens slightly before regaining momentum. A track this committed to its emotional argument deserves a more turbulent centre \u2014 the original, after all, was never comfortable. A little more productive instability might have pushed this from very good to genuinely essential.<\/span><\/p> That said, what Tom Wills has accomplished here is rarer than it sounds. He has taken a song already beloved and found new meaning inside it \u2014 not by distorting it, but by shining a different light through it. The queer-coded energy that was always present in *Laid*, acknowledged but rarely centred, has been moved from the margins to the floor. Manchester reimagining Manchester, 33 years on, and finding the song was always waiting to be danced to.<\/span><\/p> *Laid* is released on The Dance Division. Stream it. Then play it again.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\nhttps:\/\/www.tom-wills.com\/<\/a>\n\n\n\n\n
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