The fact Paolo Nutini's second album Sunny Side Up still resides in the UK top 10 five months after it was first released in June, speaks volumes. It's songs like new single 'Pencil Full Of Lead' that have elevated the Scottish star from unknown singer-songwriter to a surprise household name and hit-maker in the three years since debut These Streets landed. Continuing his love of classic sounds like rock-n-roll, folk, soul and jazz, this time Nutini lends his bluesy vocals, to an uptempo ragtime pop track, littered with harmonicas, trumpets and jaunty percussion. Without fear of sounding overly cheesy, it's a timeless hit-in-the-making that'll still sound as feel-good in 30 years time.
Fraser McAlpine on the BBC Radio 1 Chart Blog wrote:
This is a sentence everyone should carry round with them at all times. It would solve a lot of tedious chat using words like "vintage" and "seminal" and "authentic", or "cutting-edge" and "innovative" and "zeitgeist". There are things which are good, and there are things which are not good, and that once said, is that. There are no guest rappers, no modern production effects on his voice, no lyrics about current TV shows, nothing about sleazy sex in hotel rooms, nothing about alienation, nothing about the state of modern urban youth and no disco stick. He does, however, mention having a pencil full of lead, and if I'm not mistaken, that's a saucy metaphor. Either that or he's been sold a lot of lead-less pencils in his time, and after all, what is a pencil without lead but a stick?
Music video
The music video for the song was added to YouTube on 20 October 2009. The video is set in a television studio and opens with a view from the control room. The performance begins with a coloured clay model of Nutini singing amongst an all-female band of real musicians and dancers. He starts to grope the band members and one of the dancers slaps him across the face, radically deforming his clay features. The music stops and an awkward pause ensues as the production staff assess the situation. One of the dancers flattens his hand under her foot, but escapes and runs away as the girls chase him, hitting a camera and tripping over a wire trap that the girls have set. The video ends with the women playing with the component clay parts of Nutini. The video ends with a mini-model of Nutini springing back to life from her hand, and him trying to hide his naked body from view.
