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Hot 100 Roundup—12/24/11

Monday, January 2nd, 2012

Glee Cast
“We Are Young”, #12
“Survivor/I Will Survive”, #51
“Man In the Mirror”, #76
“ABC”, #88
“Red Solo Cup”, #92

T-Pain featuring Lil Wayne—”Bang Bang Pow Pow”
#48
After the failure of two strong singles a year or so ago, it appears T-Pain has decided to go the more obvious route to revive his career: bigtime guests, obvious samples and/or beats, an avoidance of any subtlety or musical games. So we get straightforward gangsta-party music, with lots of sex, lame raps, gunshots, the works (including Lil Wayne, whose rap I can’t recall at the moment). Because it’s T-Pain, he doesn’t sink a low as others might, but it seems damn low for him. I wonder what happened to the album those earlier singles were from. There’s no sign of them on Revolver, not even the deluxe version.

fun. featuring Janelle Monae—”We Are Young”
#53
A problematic generational anthem. The message goes something like this: “The parties over. Sorry I hurt you. I’ll help you home and we’ll get some sleep and tomorrow we’ll change the world.” Fair enough, but I worry whether the scar he gave his ex is metaphorical or actual. Janelle Monae’s presence is negligible, which is just as well in this case. The melody has a certain lift, but the arrangement is too sparse and the overall effect is hollow. I’ll blame that on the band, not on their generation.

Jake Owen—”Alone With You”
#90
I like the feel of this, and Owen sings it well, but it doesn’t get anywhere near as down in the dumps as it should, and Owen doesn’t seem to be putting up much of a fight against this particular femme fatale. She’s got him whipped, and he sounds too weak to even think about resisting. At the same time, he doesn’t sound like he’s all that turned on by her, either, and if she can’t manage that, what possible power could she have over him? Little details like that are what makes songs come alive, and this doesn’t have them.

Keith Urban—”You Gonna Fly”
#91
I’m beginning to think the only difference between Urban and Rascal Flatts is that there’s only one of him. His sound is a little rougher, to be sure, a little more rock and roll, but that’s like saying that shag is a little rougher than fleece. It’s still designed to be warm and cozy and nothing else.

Kelly Clarkson—”I’ll Be Home for Christmas”
#93
It’s been almost a decade since Clarkson won the first season of American Idol, and you would think she’d have shaken the dust off her heels by now, but every once in a while she still sounds like she’s a contestant. This is overdramatized, oversung, and like too many American Idol competitors, Clarkson seems to have no idea what the song is about. She also throws in a change in the lyric, intentional or not I don’t know, that strips away any sense the song might still have made, even with her singing it. Don’t even get me started on the trumpet solo. A mistake in just about every way.

Waka Flocka Flame featuring Drake—”Round of Applause”
#97
This opens with a loud belch. I find it impossible to listen afterwards. Even among rappers (or rap yellers, in this case) there should be such a thing as dignity. Maybe more so.

Edens Edge—”Amen”
#99
Despite the name of the group and the title of the song, this is not Contemporary Christian Country, or Christian anything aside from the way it uses common pentacostal phrases as a lame joke in the chorus. In the who’ll-be-the-next-Lady-Antebellum sweepstakes (formerly the who’ll-be-the-next-Sugarland sweepstakes), these folks are dead last, with a sound designed to be so soft and sweet and nonthreatening it barely exists. Somehow that makes their use of religious terms even more offensive.

Listen on Spotify

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Hot 100 Roundup—12/3/11

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011

Drake
“Take Care” (featuring Rihanna), #9
“The Motto” (featuring Lil Wayne), #18
“Hate Sleeping Alone”, #67
“We’ll Be Fine” (featuring Birdman), #89
“HYFR (Hell Yeah Fucking Right)” (featuring Lil Wayne), #92
“Shot for Me”, #100
It’s strange to think of Drake as being such a divisive figure, but there are few other artists who inspire such praise (Sasha Frere-Jones, in The New Yorker, called Take Care brilliant; Pitchfork gave it an 8.6) and such hatred (many others think Drake is not only terrible but possibly evil). His music is quiet, nonthreatening, and totally insular. The minimalist beats are often excellent—listen to the way the emotional tension subtly and suddenly increases during the break on “Take Care”—but the raps sound like a guy talking to himself in a mirror, or to his girlfriend’s voice mail in the middle of the night, conversational monologues that occasionally slip into a bit of chorus or melody and then slip right back to their solipsistic norm. Not only does he have a limited range of things to talk about, but he has a limited range of ways to say it. There are occasional good lines, but the closest thing to an enlightened thought is the opening of “Take Care”, which is lifted from a fifty-year old Bobby Bland record. His attitudes are somewhat unenlightened, as well: his feelings toward women (and he thinks about women almost as often as he thinks about himself), are only slightly more progressive than, say, Cat Stevens and others of the old, singer/songwriter type, a group who Drake is, in truth, more easily comparable to than most of the rappers who have come before him (I can’t help put wonder if he thinks of himself as following in the tradition of Nick Drake, but that may just be the coincidence of the names putting ideas in my head). It’s unfair to judge him by these scattered tracks, of course, most of which are bonus cuts from the deluxe version of the album that charted only because of the featured artists or for their titles; if you were a devoted Drake fan, wouldn’t you want to hear “Hate Sleeping Alone”? Like his previous singles, all of these probably sound better on the album. Despite all of his charting records, Drake isn’t a singles artist. His albums work far better than his individual tracks, with the songs playing off of and reinforcing each other, though the sameness of the sound is wearing. For now, though, you can file me with the Drake agnostics: not terrible (at least when he isn’t wallowing in self-pity), but not brilliant, either. Different? For sure. Important? I’m afraid so.

Glee Cast
“Rumour Has It/Someone Like You”, #11
“You and I/You and I”, #69
“I Can’t Go for That/You Make My Dreams”, #80
“Hit Me With Your Best Shot/One Way or Another”, #86

Avicii—”Levels”
#66
This uses the Etta James sample better than Flo Rida did (that is, only once, instead of over and over), but you’d still be better off with the original.

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Hot 100 Roundup—10/29/11

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

Snoop Dogg featuring Bruno Mars & Wiz Khalifa—“Young, Wild & Free”
#10
Half good-time dope song, half, thanks to Khalifa, public service message on behalf of marijuana as a mood stabilizer, all charming in its way, but too sleepy and boring in parts. I assume Mars or his pals in The Smeezingtons wrote the hook, though he appears to have buried himself in the mix—a smart move, since Snoop and Khalifa’s rougher, less trained vocals make more sense in this context than Mars’s trademark croon. Hardly a hallmark in any of their careers, but pleasant fluff all the same.

The Fray—“Heartbeat”
#43
It’s a no-brainer that Kings Of Leon would have imitators, but somehow I never expected it to be an already established act. Guess the sloppy vocals and even sloppier ideas seemed like such a perfect fit that The Fray just couldn’t resist. They might have covered their tracks better, though; some of this sounds so much like “Use Somebody” that when it comes up on shuffle I keep thinking it is Kings of Leon. Sometimes I even hit skip before I realize my mistake. Not that I wouldn’t skip it anyway.

Beyonce—“Countdown”
#85
This is as brilliant musically as everyone says it is—even Beyonce’s over-brassiness works in this context—but I’m getting tired of her confusing brand of feminism, which largely consists of the old saw of being a lady in the living room and a whore in the bedroom. Though she would probably phrase it more along the lines of being a powerful woman in public and a skilled lover in private. Whatever the case, her belief in ultimate sublimation to her man, which goes back to her earliest Destiny’s Child days, is unquestioned. She got out from under her father’s domineering hand in her business life, isn’t it time she got out from under his tired old ideas, as well?

Tyga featuring Drake—“Still Got It”
#89
Though he’s more talented as a vocalist, Tyga strikes me as being a lot like Jamie Foxx: whoever he has guesting on his track, that’s who he sounds like. Drake’s hook is far more interesting than anything Tyga has to say, and the track as a whole is mediocre at best.

Roscoe Dash—“Good Good Night”
#91
Dash is basically a second level version of Soulja Boy—less aggressive, less daring, and far less interesting—but every once in a while he comes up with a good hook, and this is one of them. You’ll forget all about it once it’s over, but at least you’ll enjoy it while it’s on.

Britney Spears—“Criminal”
#92
Though it points in a totally different direction, I enjoy this more than anything Spears has released since “Piece Of Me”. It’s very smart to play down the melodramatic cliché of loving a bad boy with music that sounds not just peaceful, but almost blissful. As “physical” as her love may be (a word that, in this song, covers a lot of emotional ground), it isn’t the rough and tumble that you’d expect, but something more like a day at the spa: both fulfilling and refreshing. Spears may not be the brightest singer in the world, but she does understand sex, which is more than most pop stars can claim.

Katy Perry—“The One That Got Away”
#94
Six singles in, Perry is starting to scrape the ordinary, at least musically. The lyrics, though, are something else. Everyone’s least favorite pop maven presents us with what is essentially an indie-rock romance: they make out to Radiohead and think of themselves as a modern June Carter and Johnny Cash. As it happens, though, she’s the one who’s more forward thinking, which turns her into a pop star while he ends up busking the blues on downtown street corners. Any regrets are nothing more than the usual lip service (Perry is nothing if not a master of formula), but in its way this is more honest than most indie-rock love songs, even if she doesn’t mean a word of it.

Jessie J—“Domino”
#96
A lot of people have been comparing Jessie J to Katy Perry, and not in a good way, but this is the first time the comparison has seemed totally apt. The sound and sensibility is a straight rip-off, but J doesn’t have nearly as much charm as Perry, or as much sense. She doesn’t seem to understand, for example, that being a domino just makes her one of the many women who are lined up to be used by this guy. You have to think about metaphors and similes; you can’t just toss them off because they sound good.

Drake featuring Nicki Minaj—“Make Me Proud”
#97
This isn’t nearly as sexist and condescending as some people have suggested it is, but it is something of a borderline case. The big problem is the title: saying that somebody makes you proud is much more self-directed and self-absorbed than saying that you’re proud of them, which can be a simple compliment. The former suggests that you had something to do with what makes the person so wonderful. But that isn’t the case here. Drake never utters the title line, and instead says “I’m so proud of you”. I’m assuming he changed the title to avoid confusion with The Impressions’ “I’m So Proud” (nobody with any sense dares comparison with Curtis Mayfield). Still, he does go overboard in his praise, to the point where he sounds condescending, and since Minaj is playing it safe—her rap is good but not particularly memorable—he comes off looking something of an ass (what else is new?). I’d be much more forgiving if she had smoked him. But he means well, I’m sure. Also, the music is great, which makes up for a lot.

Evanescence—“Lost In Paradise”
#99
“What You Want” made me hope that Amy Lee was stepping away from the melodramatic bombast that has been her stock in trade from the beginning, but this songs dashes those hopes in grandiose style. It’s all so obvious: from the first notes of the piano you wait for the crash of guitars and orchestra, and though it gets held off longer than usual, it’s exactly like you imagine it, overwrought and dull. And then it goes on for another three minutes.

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Hot 100 Roundup—9/17/11

Monday, October 10th, 2011

Lil Wayne
“Mirror” (featuring Bruno Mars), #16
“Blunt Blowin’”, #33
“MegaMan”, #50
“It’s Good” (featuring Drake & Jadakiss), #79
“How To Hate” (featuring T-Pain), #84
“Nightmares of the Bottom”, #90
“President Carter”, #94
“So Special” (featuring John Legend), #95
A mixture of the competent and the truly terrible (“Mirror” may be the most relentlessly self-pitying piece of gunk I have ever heard), the bright spots on these tracks are so few and far between that they feel like Wayne guest spots on his own album. The problem is not, as some have suggested, that Wayne isn’t trying. He obviously is, as the forced word play and over-stressed puns attest. The problem is that, in reaction to his jail stint, he seems to have changed his working methods, writing his raps instead of working ideas over in his head and spitting them out for the first time in front of a microphone. Putting ideas on paper, as any writer will tell you, allows for all sorts of self-doubt and second guessing, and may result in something being worked over until all signs of life have been drained out of it. The freedom and of-the-moment brilliance of Wayne’s raps has disappeared and been replaced by what I’m sure he considers meaningful and carefully considered but lifeless verbiage. Perhaps he’ll work it out, or maybe his inspiration is truly gone, drained by his pre-prison burst of creativity (there were signs of that even before he was sentenced) or killed by his time in jail. He’ll undoubtedly get a second wind, and maybe the genius will return combined with a growing maturity. But that’s going to take time, and there’s no sign that Wayne is doing anything to make that happen. His infinite sense of confidence may be his greatest weakness right now. I expect to hear great things from him in the future, but I don’t expect them anytime soon.

Beyonce—”Love On Top”
#20
The praise for 4 has been so universal I feel like a curmudgeon for not being more impressed by what I’ve heard, but I’m not. This is one of the better cuts, establishing an excellent late-80s soul groove (with synths that sound like they came off a Wings record), and then building into a joyful chorus that becomes ever more ecstatic through a series of ascending key changes. It’s masterful in almost every way, but somehow, for me at least, it lacks something. My problem is Beyonce’s voice, which is technically perfect but has always struck me as sharp and metallic and too obvious in it’s effects. Listening to her is somewhat like watching Jodie Foster or Meryl Streep act: I’m impressed by the skill and technique, but the way they use them is too transparent—it’s a great performance, and I admire the intelligence behind it, but I never forget for a moment that it is a performance. I appreciate a brilliant facade as much as the next person, but people talk about Beyonce as if she were giving us more than that, and from my perspective she rarely does. There’s no doubt that 4 is a step up from the misguided Sasha Fierce, so much so that people are overrating it—or maybe it’s why I’m underrating it; being better than Sasha Fierce doesn’t seem like much of an accomplishment to me.

David Guetta
“Turn Me On” (featuring Nicki Minaj), #37
“Without You” (featuring Usher), #39
“I just want you to father my young” is a great line, but it’s the only great line Minaj is allowed on “Turn Me On”, which sounds as if it might have been written for Rihanna instead. Meanwhile, “Without You” is an OK song with an oddly happy arrangement on the chorus, which also features one of Usher’s best-ever vocal performances. And so goes the hit-and-miss career of David Guetta, superstar DJ and all-around hack.

Chris Brown featuring Benny Benassi—”Beautiful People”
#43
The music is derivative but great, the lyrics derivative and awful, with Chris Brown lying through his teeth every beat of the way. Brown gets points for being the hip-hop performer who has been most willing to jump with both feet into the Euro-disco whirlpool, but he has done so in service of a personality that is so shallow and hypocritical that he makes world peace and the universality of beauty sound unclean. And when I say hypocritical, I’m not talking about Rihanna—it’s right there in the music and in his voice, in every beat and every breath. This guy cares about nothing but himself, and he’s willing to say or do anything to make you care about him too.

Lady Antebellum—”Dancin’ Away With My Heart”
#50
Another perfectly crafted, mediocre celebration of lost love, which once again focuses nostalgically on the singers’ teen years. Please don’t tell me it’s a concept album.

Young the Giant—”My Body”
#65
Further proof of the power of television, as if anybody needed it. Get a featured spot on the VMAs and you’re guaranteed to make the bottom half of the Hot 100 for a week or two. But even TV couldn’t turn this lame pastiche of Muse and The Killers into a real hit. For that you need something else: talent, novelty, tons of promotion money, anything.

LMFAO—”Sexy and I Know It”
#76
The obvious reference point is Right Said Fred, but I hear some Weird Al in here as well, which is welcome. Now that these guys have finally outed themselves as total comedians (and with a flair for electro at that), maybe some people will realize that their hedonistic shoutouts are at least partly satire and stop accusing them of corrupting our youth. Our youth are already corrupt, LMFAO are just making fun of them for profit. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. And don’t think the youth don’t get the joke; why do you think they’re buying the records?

Flo Rida—”Good Feeling”
#82
The Etta James hook is great, as is the overall sound, but that’s all there is: Rida has nothing to say even if you could understand him, and the hook is repeated so often you get sick of it (you might hold out a bit longer on the dance floor, though). A nice idea, but…

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Hot 100 Roundup—9/3/11

Friday, September 23rd, 2011

Lil Wayne featuring Drake—”She Will”
#3
Not terrible, just boring. Wayne gets off a few good lines, and at least Drake isn’t wallowing in self-pity. But the whole thing is so torpid it’s almost beyond belief. There are pauses where you can almost see Wayne trying to find his place on the lyric sheet, and when he introduces the third go round of Drake’s chorus with a muttered “Ladies and gentlemen, Drizzy” he may as well be saying “Uh, play that bit of tape one more time.” Wake up, guys.

Lady Antebellum—”We Owned the Night”
#47
You can actually hear how confident they’ve become, but it’s confidence in the service of lyrical cliches and only slightly interesting music. One near-great song and they think everything they touch is golden.

Mac Miller—”Frick Park Market”
#60
A word of advice: don’t brag about your rhyming skills with a line where you match “hair” and “here”. Just don’t.

Nicole Scherzinger—”Don’t Hold Your Breath”
#86
I’m impressed that Scherzinger keeps trying, but her commercial ambitions are way beyond her talents, possibly because she seems to have no musical ambitions at all. This isn’t horrible, but it’s so blah you barely notice it playing.

AWOLNATION—”Sail”
#89
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 6/18/11

Colbie Caillat—”Brighter Than the Sun”
#90
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 6/11/11

Thompson Square—”I Got You”
#95
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 7/23/11

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Hot 100 Roundup—8/27/11

Thursday, September 22nd, 2011

Drake—”Headlines”
#13
Is this guy capable of doing anything but feel sorry for himself? Fame didn’t turn out to be as much fun as he thought it would be; no one understands him or how hard he works; and there are all these women! Makes you wonder what he got into the business for. It sure wasn’t the music.

Jason DeRulo—”It Girl”
#39
I have mixed feelings about this record, largely because I find myself liking it more than I think I should. Most of DeRulo’s records have been terrible, but this time around he switches up his style, dumping his usual dense, sample based hip-hop for a lighter, more straight-ahead sound. Some say he’s trying to be Bruno Mars, but what I hear is a less desperate, more relaxed version of Chris Brown. In other words, a pleasant, minor talent who doesn’t carry a lot of excess baggage around with him. I doubt he’ll ever do anything great, but at least he isn’t an embarrassment.

Jay-Z & Kanye West
“Who Gon’ Stop Me”, #44
“Niggas In Paris”, #75
I have real difficulties with Watch the Throne. The music is often brilliant, but the lyrics are intentionally paradoxical, full of contradictions and ego-based hyperbole that are hard to work around or excuse. The opening line of “Who Gon Stop Me” is a perfect example: “This is something like the Holocaust/Millions of our people lost”. It’s a powerful statement, and like much of Watch the Throne, it places current events in a deeper historical context. Whether or not that context is fully justified in relation to what most of the tracks are about, however—that is, being rich and living high—is open to question. The overall stance of the album is that the suffering African-Americans have gone through is justification for those who are successful exalting themselves, living as high as they can, and bragging about it as much as possible. It’s hardly a new idea, as they well know; just the title “Niggas in Paris” alone conjures up images of black men and women who were in a position to take advantage of financial independence and the relative racial freedom of Europe and did so to excess: Joe Jackson, Josephine Baker, Sidney Bechet, James Baldwin, and many others. What gets left out of the story are the great majority who don’t have anything to brag about; not just African Americans, but Africans, whites, Latinos, Asians, and the Europeans who make their living serving people like Jay-Z and West and satisfying their needs. Like Jay-Z said in “Empire State of Mind”, “Pity half of y’all won’t make it”, with the unuttered followup, “sucker”, implied in his phrasing. It’s a drug dealer’s mentality, and even if they’re aware of it, and unsure of it, and emphasize the irony of it, it still stinks.

David Guetta featuring Sia—”Titanium”
#66
Guetta wisely lightens up his sound before the bombast takes over completely, and though this is nothing special at least it isn’t openly hostile to anyone with sensitive ears or a working brain. If he had found a singer other than Sia, whose lack of enunciation I find even more irritating here than on her own records, it might have been even better.

Miranda Lambert—”Baggage Claim”
#67
After Revolution I was afraid that Lambert was softening up, and that the woman who had made Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was gone for good. Going by this and the Pistol Annies album, though, that judgement was premature. “Baggage Claim” isn’t a great record: rhythmically it’s a little stiff, and the metaphor gets stretched almost to the breaking point, but it brings back the take-no-prisoners stance that made Lambert famous, with only the slightest lessening of intensity. She may not be as brash as she used to be, but she makes up for it with a sense of confidence that may be even more impressive. She knows what she wants, she knows how to get it, and she knows that she can. My only worry is that she’ll try so hard to make a perfect record that she’ll mistrust her best instincts and stiffen up. That’s was Revolution’s greatest weakness, and you can hear some of that on this record. Still, this sounds like a step in the right direction.

Evanescence—”What You Want”
#68
Keeping up with the times, Amy Lee and her new band mates toss a little Paramore-style melody into their mix, along with an easy to chant along with hook. I like this more than any Evanescence I’ve heard before, and for metal-edged pop (or is that pop-edged metal) this is high caliber. If the whole album sounds like this it could be another Superunknown (which should give you an idea of how much metal I listen to).

T.I. featuring B.o.B.—”We Don’t Get Down Like Y’all”
#78
The change in style—less fuzzy synths, more hard beats—is appreciated, but it’s also a step backwards towards a style he moved beyond years ago. What is new, at least to me, is the blatant homophobia. If people have a problem with Odd Future, what are they going to think of “Listen up, fag bait/them hot pants bad for your prostate.” Maybe he is just a jerk.

Luke Bryan—”Drunk On Love”
#79
Yet another song about a country girl shakin’ it for her man. In rap, women work the pole; in country, the tailgate. Bryan even steals an image from the blues: “Honey drips on the moneymaker”. Country radio programmers must know what that means, but I bet they’ll play it anyway. Pretty slow for yet another version of “Whole Lot of Shakin’”, though. I imagine Bryan intended this as a sexy grind, but since he doesn’t know sexy from a rusty pickup truck, all he gets is the grind.

The Script—”Nothing”
#89
You said it.

Mindless Behavior featuring Diggy—”Mrs. Right”
#97
There have been a lot of good teen rap groups the last couple of years, but this record is so insane, with both the vocals and the beats run through an autotune turned up to 11, that the damn thing never touches the ground. By the end of the first verse you’ve lost your bearings: just where did they expect this to end up? Good for a laugh, but that’s about it.

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Hot 100 Roundup—8/6/11

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011

Red Hot Chili Peppers—”The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie”
#38
Not that it means much, but their craftsmanship is impressive: the grooves have become tighter, the song construction less erratic, the playing and singing expert. None of which changes the fact that this is the alt-rock version of mellow, smooth and meaningless. They wanted to be Parliament/Funkadelic, and turned into Tom Petty. It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for them.

Jay-Z & Kanye West featuring Otis Redding—”Otis”
#47
The idea that this somehow demeans Redding is ridiculous. If anything, the way the sample is used emphasizes his vocal strengths and puts them in a framework younger listeners can appreciate. Besides, the song isn’t called “Otis” for nothing. It may be hubris for Jay-Z and West to see themselves as part of that tradition, but they’re not claiming to be more talented than Redding, just richer. Not that they don’t twist the meaning of his song. What “makes it easier to bear” in their case isn’t tenderness, it’s money, and all the style and beauty and high-powered toys it can buy them. Which doesn’t mean they’re not aware of the ironies of their situation, either: “Sophisticated ignorance” may be the greatest self-description West has ever come up with, only they’re not ignorant by a long shot. There are so may intellectual and emotional twists and turns in this record that it’s almost impossible to keep up with, and then James Brown get thrown into the mix and things jump to still another level. A great one.

Drake—”Marvin’s Room”
#68
Like all late night drunken phone calls, this starts out interesting but quickly becomes repetitive and boring. I appreciate what Drake is trying to do, but the relentless self-pity has become unbearable. He needs a new approach.

50 Cent—”Outlaw”
#87
This is easily 50 Cent’s best record since 2005 or so, maybe even longer. But he’s achieved it by going back to 2005, where he will no doubt be stuck for the rest of his career, such as it is. If you feel like reminiscing, I’d give this a listen.

Big Sean featuring Kanye West & Roscoe Dash—”Marvin & Chardonnay”
#88
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 7/30/11

Miguel—”Quickie”
#95
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 7/23/11

DJ Drama featuring Fabolous, Roscoe Dash & Wiz Khalifa—”Oh My”
#100
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 7/30/11

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Hot 100 Roundup—6/18/11

Tuesday, July 5th, 2011

Coldplay—”Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall”
#29
Producer Brian Eno continues to toughen them up musically, but the lyrics are as self-obsessed as ever. This one posits romantic revolution for record nerds, where sitting in your room and listening to daring and difficult music is a rebellious act that ends in you raising your fist against something or other somewhere out in the real world. And then you feel sorry for yourself. Not even Eno can ring the sentimentality out of crap as earnest and determined as this.

Pitbull featuring Chris Brown—”International Love”
#59
On the chorus, Chris Brown’s idea of international appears not to extend beyond the continental U.S. The hook is catchy, though, and Pitbull makes up for Brown’s narrowness with an itinerary that starts in Rumania (where a pair of sisters offer themselves to him) and includes Lebanon and most of South America. Compared to his last couple of appearances, Pitbull sounds rejuvenated, especially near the end, when he switches effortlessly between English and Spanish. His voice is his main attraction, but Pitbull doesn’t get near enough credit for his rapping, which is fluid not only linguistically but rhythmically. I find his eurodisco-based beats a bit heavy-handed, but that’s what a club banger is supposed to be.

Beyonce—”Best Thing I Never Had”
#84
Though she tries hard, too hard, to separate herself from the norm, Beyonce fits perfectly into one standard mold: the mid-career pop artist desperate to be taken seriously. Her attempts to break free are, in fact, a symptom of the problem. This is terrible in almost every way: over-arranged, melodramatic, badly sung (when Beyonce wants to sound angry she tends to bellow), with lyrics whose artlessness may be designed to counteract the dramatic production but only succeed in exacerbating the problem. By the time she shouts out “Sucks to be you right now” it’s impossible not to wonder what the hell she was thinking when she recorded this. That she was doing something different and daring, I bet.

Linkin Park—”Iridescent”
#86
I can’t stand these guys, but they are entertaining. This may be the funniest hard rock record since Queensryche’s “Silent Lucidity”, though it doesn’t come close to Queensryche’s preening, pretentious stupidity. It doesn’t even set a record for cliches, since just about any romantic lyricist could beat them in a walk. For sheer boilerplate existential despair, though, no one can touch them, and the first verse, which I feel a duty to quote in full, is a masterpiece:

You were standing in the wake of devastation
And you were waiting on the edge of the unknown
And with the cataclysm raining down
Insides crying “Save me now”
You were there, impossibly alone

It’s even funnier when Mike Shinoda sings it.

Trey Songz featuring Drake—”Unusual”
#90
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 6/4/11

Rodney Atkins—”Take A Back Road”
#92
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 5/21/11

Victorious Cast featuring Victoria Justice—”Best Friend’s Brother”
#93
I love the bridge, like the chorus, but could care less about the verses, which are standard, streamlined punk-pop. All the same, Nickelodeon is getting better at mining the Disney-pop model, and Justice, who has a co-writing credit, may be a real talent. Especially if she wrote that bridge.

Andy Grammer—”Keep Your Head Up”
#94
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 6/11/11

Rej3ctz—”Cat Daddy”
#97
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 4/23/11

Trace Adkins—”Just Fishin’”
#98
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 5/21/11

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Hot 100 Roundup—6/4/11

Monday, June 13th, 2011

Lady GaGa—”Hair”
#12
An odd metaphor coming from a woman who is generally seen either in wigs or with hair coiffed and dyed to within an inch of it’s life; does anyone know what GaGa’s real hair even looks like? But despite the cognitive dissonance and the unfortunate echoes of David Crosby, this is a grand piece of Springsteen-influenced disco, the kind of music that sounds great not just on the dancefloor but out on the open road. I’m particularly fond of the bridge, where GaGa’s phrasing makes her sound appropriately callow and naive. It may be the most human moment she’s ever managed.

Young Jeezy featuring Lil Wayne—”Ballin’”
#57
Jeezy’s voice holds your attention, but he works in a style that was half-dead even when he started out five years ago, and has nothing to add to it. Neither does Lil Wayne.

Glee Cast
“Pure Imagination”, #59
“Back To Black”, #82
“My Man”, #94

Nicole Scherzinger featuring 50 Cent—”Right There”
#77
Not terrible, which is a surprise considering how lazy it sounds. The music isn’t bad, but the rhyme scheme consists of repeating the same word at the end of each line, an effect almost as flattening as 50 Cents’ rap. He long ago said he had no real interest in making music anymore, and this proves it. Scherzinger sounds as anonymous as ever, and you can’t help but wonder if this would even have been released if it wasn’t for her X Factor gig.

DJ Khaled featuring Drake, Rick Ross & Lil Wayne—”I’m On One”
#78
A stylistic changeup from Khaled, which would be interesting if he was capable of making good music, but he isn’t, so we’re left with the lineup. Rick Ross is his usual monotonous self, and Lil Wayne indulges in hit-and-miss word games: good and bad puns (“I’m a made nigga, I should dust something”) with the occasional meaningful line. As for Drake, he may be serious in his doubts about the rap game, and even in his self-criticism, but he lies so consistantly about how hard his life is I find it impossible to trust him even (especially) when he sounds sincere. His hypocrisy is fascinating, though, as is his resistance to flow. Being the snobbish cad that he is, he seems to consider it beneath him.

Rihanna—”California King Bed”
#80
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 4/30/11

Jason DeRulo—”Don’t Wanna Go Home”
#92
Yet another lift from “Day-O”, this one even more obvious than Lil Wayne’s. Otherwise, this is as anonymous as most of DeRulo’s previous records. If it weren’t for that borrowed hook, it would have no melody at all.

Ashton Shepard—”Look It Up”
#95
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 4/2/11

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Hot 100 Roundup—12/26/10

Wednesday, December 29th, 2010

Lil Wayne Featuring Cory Gunz—”6 Foot 7 Foot”
#9
The background provided by Bangladesh is so stupid—and not in a good way—that it almost ruins the record for me. Wayne himself saves it. His gnomic notes to himself—you can almost see him obsessively scrawling them out in his cell—are so full of twists and turns and puns, words and phrases pulled inside out and examined to reveal newer if not always deeper meanings, that even if he isn’t saying much he seems to say it all. Writing down his raps has tightened and intensified his language, revealing more about his character than any of his free-form, off-the-cuff displays, brilliant as they were, ever did. Turns out he’s something of a grammarian, though that should have been obvious a long time ago.

Taio Cruz featuring Travie McCoy—”Higher”
#80
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 12/19/10

Nicki Minaj featuring Drake—”Moment 4 Life”
#82
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 12/5/10

P!nk—”Fuckin’ Perfect”
#86
“Fuck” being the word of the moment (word of the year, really), P!nk, with her usual commercial intuitiveness, tosses it into the title of a song in which the word itself doesn’t appear. I wish it did; it might liven up this otherwise bathetic self-empowerment ballad.

Jerrod Niemann—”What Do You Want”
#90
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 12/12/10

Thompson Square—”Are You Gonna Kiss Me Or Not”
#92
Sugarland as Bon Jovi, just what we’ve been waiting for.

R. Kelly—”When A Woman Loves”
#93
I loved the video for this when it came out a few months ago, but I guess this is just another example of a mediocre record being lifted by it’s accompanying visuals (this is why I don’t watch Glee; I don’t want its horrible music tainted by theatrical quality). What looks loving and soulful in the video turns out to be stiff and lifeless when heard on its own. Kelly isn’t that great a singer, and his soul inflections sound calculated and more often verge toward homage, and even parody, rather than actual emotion. His “Thank you” at the end, which works in the video, sounds like a dumb, knowing wink on the record, as if the whole thing was nothing but a stylistic game.

Fabolous—”You Be Killin’ ‘Em”
#94
Though this eventually turns into one of the most sexist pop songs I’ve heard in some time (“She looks like the best money I ever spent” Fabolous says of his latest acquisition), what really sums it up for me comes in the first 30 seconds. After a brief intro establishes the electric piano riff that drives the song, Fabolous steps up to the mike, and by way of introduction, says “Niiiice”. The first thought that came into my head: “Isn’t it a little late in the day for a Vanilla Ice parody?” Second thought: “This isn’t a parody.”

The Script—”For the First Time”
#97
At first I was willing to give them points for writing about something truly meaningful: the stress economic hard times places on relationships. A lot of songs have been written about that, though (I’m sure there are a couple of hundred songwriters in Nashville working on it right now), and The Script’s tin ear for detail and sentimental musicality guarantees that this is nothing but a sop to those who feel they need a good sorrowful wallow every once in a while to get by. Every human emotion has its exploiter; self-pity, meet The Script.

Mariah Carey—”Oh Santa!”
#100
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 12/19/10

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