We’ve written about Fenn is cool a couple of times in the past, and both times I think we threw around the term “wacky pop”. Now, I’m not entirely sure if that’s even a genre, but if it is, Fenn is undeniably in a league of its own within the style. Where many other “wacky pop” artists often rely on eccentric musicality or zany production techniques to bury their pop smarts, Fenn Idle seems to do the opposite. His songs come full to the brim with classic pop moves and Fenn makes no attempt to hide this; instead, it’s his “kill-them-with-kindness” attitude that puts him in the wacky category, a happy-go-luckiness that feels so genuinely genuine that it begins to feel surreal.

Where his 2018 debut album The Definition of Cool was entirely written by himself, which explains why the lyric “I am cool” pops up so much, his new single ‘If I Didn’t Have You’ was written with Okin Osan bandmate Rose Chan, which naturally makes the track’s themes more outward-looking. Built around a glowing major key piano progression, the track unravels around a buoyant groove to play as a true celebration of friendship, its swirls of harmony vocals and tangles of melodica, acoustic guitar and saxophone making the experience all the more radiant. Even the video clip bursts with this playfulness, its visuals made up entirely of animal videos that Fenn and Rose have shared with each other over the years, plus some Mark Wahlberg for good measure.

In true Fenn is cool fashion, he doesn’t beat around the bush when talking about the track, telling us “‘If I Didn’t Have You’ is a song about being thankful for the people without whom your life would be significantly worse. We all have worries that we are not living up to our own expectations. In the end though, if you have a friend who brightens your day and is there for you - that’s the most important thing in the world.”