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Skimming the Surface: Hot 100 Roundup—1/26/13

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013

One thing that the new singles dominated market is starting to do is destroy the old release schedule paradigm. Last year’s summer lull was barely a lull at all, and here in mid-January the big guns are putting singles out when the memory of Christmas has barely faded, with the surprise release of Justin Timberlake’s first new music in six years leading off. The Taylor Swift single is something of a surprise as well, not just in terms of quality (poor), but in its being released at all. I imagine it was forced by popular demand—why else put out a Target-exclusive bonus track as a single just a couple of months after the album?

Blake Shelton—“Sure Be Cool If You Did”
#44

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Shelton has found the perfect groove, and it’s called Seduction. He’s charming, relaxed, has a good sense of humor even if he’s never witty, and honest about his desires without ever being heavy-handed or appearing lecherous. His boyishness has it’s limits, though. He appears to live in a world where he has no responsibilities other than satisfying women as well as he can, and making sure they have a good time before and after. His universe is the singles bar, and the world outside either doesn’t exist or can be easily shrugged off. People who appreciate that sort of fantasy should lap this up, because “Sure Be Cool If You Did” is the best job Shelton has done in this style yet. Though it’s hardly a compliment to say that Shelton is good at being shallow.

Taylor Swift—“The Moment I Knew”
#64

It’s easy to understand why “The Moment I Knew” wasn’t included on Red. For all the emotional relationship shifting Swift does on the album, she never resorts to pouting, breaking down in tears, or acting like a spoiled brat (entitled, maybe, but never spoiled). She does all that on “The Moment I Knew”. She’s never sounded more unappealing, and all the songwriting craft in the world—and right now she’s the best—isn’t going to make things any better. I don’t want to jump to conclusions here, but let’s face it: if you have a couple of bad relationships, there’s no telling what the cause might be, so you can just soldier on without worrying about it; but if you’re working on numbers three, four, five, or whatever, it’s time to check your own head and not be putting all the blame on others. Something is wrong, and it’s not just them.

OneRepublic—“If I Lose Myself”
#74

Can we assume that EDM is over now that OneRepublic has embraced it? “If I Lose Myself” is EDM-lite, to be sure, but it’s still EDM. Gone are the clattering, over-miked but at least human-sounding drums that have marked almost every Ryan Tedder production until now. Instead we get a smooth machine beat and looping synths reminiscent of Phillip Glass or Terry Riley in service to another of Tedder’s bland but oh-so-sincere love lyrics. It reminds me of when Steve Winwood went disco in the softest possible way. Goodbye, EDM, it was nice knowing you.

Justin Timberlake featuring Jay-Z—“Suit & Tie”
#84

Timberlake is too serious a talent to write off, but “Suit & Tie” is too shallow a record to take seriously. The Timbaland beat is great (and I’m sorry to say that that’s a surprise), and Timberlake has never sung better, but this is a song about dressing up to go out with a woman with a great ass, and nothing more. If anything, the quality of the music is too high, and when it gets deflated by the lyric it almost hurts. Retro-sophistication will only take you so far if all it does is swim on the surface. As for Jay-Z, I suspect he was brought in in consideration of his sartorial habits, not because his rap fits the song.

B.o.B. featuring T.I. & Juicy J—“We Still In This Bitch”
#95

This isn’t unlistenable, and everyone involved raps well, but I find it almost impossible to pay attention. The title tells you what they’re going to say, and they don’t dare swerve from the script. “We Still In This Bitch” is as pro forma in its way as B.o.B.’s pop records, and without the benefit of a decent hook.

Imagine Dragons—“Demons”
#99

The things guys will say to get laid. Geez.

Kendrick Lamar—“Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe”
#100

It’s a muddled comparison, I know, but Kendrick Lamar is essentially Drake if Drake were capable of deep thought (as opposed to giving it lip service). Here, he even chooses a theme close to one of Drake’s own: how his friends have changed since he became famous. Lamar admits that he’s taken advantage of his fame even while complaining about those who are trying to take advantage of him, which isn’t far from Drake’s own admissions. Drake always sounds angry, though, and shrugs others off with barely a thought. Lamar doesn’t do that. He doesn’t sound angry or even irritated. Mostly he sounds disappointed, and his disappointment isn’t directed only at others. Since Lamar talks to himself so much on his tracks, I wouldn’t be surprised if the “bitch” who’s killing his vibe isn’t sometimes himself.

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Bending the Cliché: Hot 100 Roundup—1/19/13

Thursday, January 17th, 2013

Another slow week, with yet more tracks from Les Miserables and Pitch Perfect, neither worth bothering with unless you have a liking for bland ballads and clunky medleys. But the three non-souvenirs are each fascinating in their way, reworking familiar clichés and calling up more questions than they answer. None of them are brilliant, and they’re all, technically, from last year, but they point in some interesting ways toward the future. It’s going to be a weird year.

Rihanna—“Pour It Up”
#90

Aside from the music, which is stunning, what stands out about this record is the gender bending. “Pour It Up” could easily be sung by a man without changing a single word of the lyric. The message—”look guys, I can parade my stacks and my grill and watch strippers just like you”—is partly parody, partly whatever in Rihanna’s mind passes for feminism. Money makes her equal, even if she never has to spend any of it. That’s fine as far as it goes, but the remaining problem is one that male rapper’s have been trying to solve for years with little success: once you’ve reached this exalted position, then what? Kanye West and Jay-Z answer the question with art and business, respectively, but I don’t think Rihanna is thinking that far ahead yet. It’s a puzzle, no matter what your gender, but I suspect it’s more complicated for women. I hope she figures it out.

Lee Brice—“I Drive Your Truck”
#91

Over the last few years, southern truck culture has become so swamped in cliché, sentimentality, and jingoism that’s it’s difficult for those who live outside of it to take it seriously, to understand that it’s rooted in something other than macho arrogance, redneck pride, or right-wing paranoia. That an object that, in rural communities, is seen as a necessity should become an object of veneration shouldn’t be considered unusual. At least, no more unusual than urbanites’ veneration of, say, Apple products, or their favorite coffeeshop. If your brother died, wouldn’t you have the same feelings about his favorite hangout or his laptop, or even his car that Lee Brice has about his brother’s truck in “I Drive Your Truck”? The clichés are firmly in place—driving with the windows down, cranking up the radio, tearing up fallow fields, raising a lot of dust—but Brice makes them register, connects them with emotions and communities and lives. It’s not a great record—the music is stolid, the arrangement unimaginative and much too loud—but Brice sings very well, especially on the first verse, and the heart of the message gets across. I don’t think he totally succeeds in breaking the bounds of cliché, but he comes close.

The Barden Bellas—“Riff Off: Mickey/Like A Virgin/Hit Me With Your Best Shot/S&M/Let’s Talk About Sex/I’ll Make Love To You/Feels Like The First Time/No Diggity”
#93

Samantha Barks—“On My Own”
#97

fun.—“Carry On”
#100

Whenever anyone writes this sort of brainless uplift marching song they’re always in danger of appearing ridiculous, so I can’t totally fault fun. for coming up with one of the dumbest lines I’ve ever heard: “But my legs are fine/After all, they are mine”. The problem is the form, not the execution. “Carry On” is as skillful and enjoyable as this sort of song can be, and catchier than most, but after the more personal and idiosyncratic, if uneven, pleasures of “We Are Young” and “Some Nights”, it comes across as too easy in its uplift, almost cheap. Like those records, though, it has its oddly endearing moments of confusion (he says he never said that we are all shining stars, and then says exactly that over and over again in the chorus). These moments are intended, I think, to suggest self-doubt and maybe even deep thought, or maybe to reflect the realities of conversation amongst people who aren’t sure what anything they say means. All I hear this time around, though, is a guy who contradicts himself because he can’t remember what he said thirty seconds ago.

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My Favorite Rap of the Year…

Tuesday, December 18th, 2012

…is barely a rap at all. It appears on Rick Ross’s “3 Kings” with Dr. Dre and Jay-Z. Ross, as usual, brags about money. Dre, as usual, promotes his headphones. And Jay-Z? Jay-Z doesn’t give a shit, and he steals the record. His rap is a mess. He starts lines, forgets what he was going to say, then starts them again. He tells the engineer to erase the track because it’s only a freestyle. He talks about buying clothes at T.J. Maxx in ’83 and then admits that he doesn’t even know if the chain existed then. Mostly, though, he talks about his daughter, how other rappers aren’t fit to wear her socks, and urges her to spray on them, conjuring the hilarious image of him holding Blue Ivy up while she pees on everybody he doesn’t like. Then, at the very end, he half apologizes for being distracted: “It’s just different now.” Has anyone ever come up with a better representation of the elation and confusion of fatherhood? Certainly not in rap. Intentional or not, it’s brilliant, and it’s the only reason to listen to this damn thing.

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Attempted Comeback Week
Hot 100 Roundup—8/4/12

Wednesday, August 8th, 2012

Jason Aldean—“Take A Little Ride”
#12
If it weren’t for Brantley Gilbert, Aldean would be the king of country overkill, so it’s nice to hear him tone it down a notch (half a notch, anyway) on this ode to driving around in a pickup with his girl and watching the (ahem) corn grow. I was irritated at first by the news that he had altered the lyrics to match his new endorsement contract with Coors, but aside from setting a lousy precedent I’m not sure it matters. For one thing, Aldean doesn’t have much in the way of artistic credibility to lose. Second, this song is more of an an advertisement for Chevy trucks and the stereotypical rural lifestyle than it is for Coors. The beer is nothing but set decoration. I do wonder, though, what kind of deal he has with Chevrolet.

No Doubt—“Settle Down”
#34
Even if you assume that the subdued Bollywood string section at the beginning and the dub section at the end will be cut for radio airplay, this is still a weird comeback record. In some ways, such as the obvious influence of M.I.A. and the occasional reggae tinges, it tries to be forward looking and a continuation of Gwen Stefani’s cut and paste solo work. But it also sounds laid-back, soft where Stefani’s stuff was all hard edges and in your face. She talks tough, but the music doesn’t back her up. Is that the band’s fault, or does Stefani not care anymore? Or did the explosion of weirdly dressed, brash pop divas that appeared in the wake of “Hollaback Girl” make her try too hard to keep up? Whatever the case, this feels more like an organized retreat than a comeback.

T.I.—“Go Get It”
#77
Is there anything more boring than a successful rapper bragging about how rich and comfortable he is? At least when Jay-Z and Kanye West do it you get the feeling that they’re aware of the illusory nature of it all. They wonder why they made it and others didn’t, wonder about the racial and cultural implications, and sometimes sound defensive about it (especially West), well aware that luck was a major element in their elevation. Rappers like T.I., though, take it for granted, or don’t think about it at all. T.I. worked hard. (Right?) He paid his dues. (Uh-huh) Now he does a reality show (what?), and lives the easy life. The fact that his dues consisted of doing time for illegally buying all the crap he brags about owning on this record is an irony that either escapes him or he doesn’t consider important. He still has his talent, still has the flow and the gift of wordplay, but it all comes so easy to him now that he doesn’t take the time to think through what he’s saying or do anything that would challenge him or his audience. This is the street rapper’s version of easy listening, if such a thing is possible.

The Killers—“Runaways”
#78
After a few listens, the Springsteen influence seems to fade (though of course it never completely goes away), and you realize this is a real Killers song: anthemic, with a good beat, and Brandon Flowers trying his damnedest to convince you that what he’s singing about is important. That’s the problem. Flowers’s sense of the importance of what he’s doing creates a barrier between him and whatever he’s singing about. You never once get the feeling that he knows or understands anything about the struggles of working class kids with children of their own, no matter how hard he tries to empathize with them. Springsteen sings about the working class because that’s where he grew up, and though he avoided the same fate as his characters, he came close to not making it, and knew lots of people who didn’t. Flowers sounds like he chose this subject almost at random, and the difference is like reading a story by an author who has actually lived an experience and one who’s trying to imagine what that experience would be like. In most cases, only geniuses can get away with that. Flowers is talented, and he’s smart. But he isn’t a genius, and he shouldn’t try to be.

Dave Matthews Band—“Mercy”
#95
As someone who has never cared for Matthews’s music, I’m almost afraid to admit how much I enjoy this record. There’s less emphasis on showing off the band’s chops, which for the first time gives you an idea of how good they can be (the percussionist almost steals the entire record). It also sounds like Matthews has been spending some time listening to Curtis Mayfield. The influence isn’t direct—no borrowed melody lines or chord changes—but the atmosphere and overall feel are the same. The lyrics are the usual well-meaning mush, but at least they show some connection to reality. They’re so down to earth in their call to action, in fact, that I wonder if this might be intended as an answer record to John Mayer’s “Waiting On the World to Change” (that was a while ago, I know, but in the slow-moving universe Mayer and Matthews inhabit these things take time). Of course, that could just be me savoring the ridiculous idea of a battle of the bands between the kings of easy listening, blues-tinged pop. Why, they might even have to raise their voices.

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Rage, Real and Imagined
Hot 100 Roundup—7/21/12

Wednesday, July 18th, 2012

P!nk—“Blow Me (One Last Kiss)”
#58
P!nk’s persona, the pop diva with the heart of a riot grrrl, can create interesting tensions in her music, but sometimes it forces her to overplay her hand. This is a step up from songs like her pre-maternity leave self-help ballad “Fuckin’ Perfect”, but she tries too hard. The song is already tough enough without the double entendre title parenthesis or the ear-piercing pitch of the “shit day” section. It’s not that I don’t believe that P!ink has shit days, it’s that the whole section is overkill and seems designed to do nothing more than give her a chance to swear and remind everyone how down-to-earth she is. Without it, despite it’s worrying 90s feel (guitar line courtesy U2, vocal harmonies on the verses courtesy Liz Phair), it would be a much better song. As it is, it’s slightly above-average and nothing more.

Tim McGraw—“Truck Yeah”
#69
Not a great song, but there’s no doubt McGraw is re-energized now that he’s free of Curb Records. Anyone who thinks Emotional Traffic wasn’t pure contractual obligation should listen to how fired up McGraw sounds here. He’ll come up with better material, but as an announcement of liberation this isn’t bad. Also, the image of McGraw rocking out to Lil Wayne is pleasing in all sorts of ways (though I do wonder how you do that).

DJ Khaled featuring Kanye West & Rick Ross—“I Wish You Would”
#78
Having decided that drunken award show ramblings and all-caps Twitter rants are damaging not only to his reputation but his self-respect, West has wisely decided to express his vehemence and air his frustrations on his records instead. The result, so far, has been a succession of singles in which his anger, instead of being diminished by expression, has grown, as if each record was feeding off the one that preceded it. “Mercy”, “Theraflu/Way Too Cold/Cold” (the succession of titles alone gives you an idea of how focused West’s rage has become), and now “I Wish You Would”, are all rants directed at anyone who has ever gotten in West’s way or dared to consider themselves his equal (excepting, of course, his mentor Jay-Z). Each has been more bitter and pointed than the one that came before. The most brilliant part of this campaign has been his using the bombastic, rap brag production of DJ Khaled as his base, taking the already prominent anger of the form and amping it to the breaking point. Rick Ross does his best to keep up, but he’s out of his league, and Khaled’s best contribution, aside from the beat, is a brief interjection expressing amazement at the majestic vehemence of West’s rap. West is working out so much aggression that I fully expect his next album to be full of laid back soul ballads and Chi-Lites samples. Then again, if he keeps up like this, it may end up as an album length equivalent to the intro of “(For God’s Sake) Give More Power To the People”.

Trey Songz featuring T.I.—“2 Reasons”
#97
It’s nice to hear Songz breaking out of the soul ballad niche he’s come close to exhausting and being trapped in, and T.I.’s trying out a new flow and voice is a relief, as well (he’s barely recognizable as his old self). This is nothing but a goof, and suffers from not going far enough into the inanity that drives it, but I like it more every time I hear it, and it may turn out to be a keeper.

Pitbull featuring Shakira—“Get It Started”
#99
What a mess. Pitbull’s willingness to try just about anything is one of his greatest strengths, but here he comes out with a start and stop dance track that doesn’t make sense even when it’s banging. Shakira’s presence adds to the mystery. This sounds like two incomplete productions slapped together in the hope that the marquee names on the label will make the accumulated trash a hit anyway.

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100 Roundup—2/4/12

Friday, February 17th, 2012

Glee Cast
“Without You”, #28
“We Found Love”, #56
“Moves Like Jagger/Jumpin’ Jack Flash”, #62
“The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, #70
“Summer Nights”, #88

Tyga—“Faded”
#52
Dirty, dirty boys with lots of dirty thoughts, but not much imagination. Lil Wayne gets off some decent puns, including a bizarre non sequitur that cleverly drags Richard Pryor into the scenario, but Tyga is all flow and no brains.

Mary J. Blige featuing Drake—“Mr. Wrong”
#98
Blige is in as good of voice as ever, and Drake makes sure he doesn’t get in the way as he castigates himself for working too hard, but this is only ordinary even at its most adventurous (i.e. a breakdown that tries to be a slow, soulful version of dubstep—it doesn’t quite work). I don’t think Blige feels this kind of song anymore; her life is too good to be able to access that sort of drama.

George Strait—“Love’s Gonna Make It Alright”
#99
This is Strait on autopilot. Not terrible, but nothing special.

Jay-Z and Kanye West featuring Frank Ocean—“No Church in the Wild”
#100
The opening cut of Watch the Throne, and one of the best, this lays out the basic theme of the album with one of the most daring and intellectual rap brags I’ve ever heard, using Plato’s allegory of the cave to suggest that West and Jay-Z live in a place without illusion (unlike the rest of us suckers), where the only law is that of talent, power, and wealth, and the normal rules of morality don’t apply—desire, and the means to fulfill that desire, are all that matters. West’s reference is oblique (“Human beings in a mine”) and hard to sort out at first, but Jay-Z directly name-checks Socrates and Plato. The obvious suggestion is that the two of them are somewhere beyond the common lot of humanity; not quite gods, but powerful enough that they can ignore whatever gods may exist, or choose not to believe in them at all. And here I used to think Scarface references were grandiose.

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Hot 100 Roundup—1/21/12

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

Jason Mraz—“I Won’t Give Up”
#8
Being the minor talent that he is, I expected Mraz to play it safe with a snappy sound-alike to “I’m Yours” for his next single, but it seems his talent is so minor he doesn’t realize where his best interests lie. This is super-serious, packed thick with sincere clichés that appear to have been lifted at random from self-help books. Each verse ends either with an affirmation or a “deep” question: “I had to learn what I’ve got, and what I’m not, and who I am”; “God knows we’re worth it”; and my favorite, “How old is your soul?” These seem to have no connection to the lines that precede them, or a connection so vague that only those well versed in the jargon could understand them. I’m not sure that group includes Mraz. Just to give him the benefit of the doubt, I’d like to think this is intended as parody, but the music suggests otherwise. Which means that Mraz probably isn’t even a minor talent. He is a cad, though. That I know for sure.

Skrillex featuring Sirah—“Kyoto”
#74
Skrillex is polishing and improving his sound with every record. “Kyoto” adds a guest rap, but otherwise uses the same basic formula as his previous singles: establish a familiar groove with a hyped, bass heavy mix, stop dead with a scream of urgent exclamation, followed by a needle drop and all hell breaking loose, repeat, then end on the original groove. The big difference here is that the shifts are less dramatic, the change in style almost seamless (the fact that he’s working with hip-hop rhythms may have something to do with that). Whatever you may think of him, he’s a talent, and he isn’t stupid, his music is growing and developing. How far that development goes is another question: the clichéd “Japanese” melody here suggests that his musical sensibilities, however broad they may be, aren’t very deep.

3OH!3—“Set You Free”
#84
Another couple of minor talents who aren’t as smart as they think they are. I’m not saying that electro-clash can’t be used to transmit a “serious” message, but it does tend to take the “clash” out of it, which means it’s missing all the fun and most of reason for its existence. I like the line “I don’t live in bed no more”, but otherwise this is boring, pretentious, and self-pitying. They don’t even sound like themselves, they sound like Weezer fans with sequencers. Ke$ha should heed the warning: this is where taking yourself seriously gets you.

Gotye featuring Kimbra—“Somebody That I Used to Know”
#91
Imported from Belgium, this sounds like it could become the sort of sleeper hit that “Pumped Up Kicks” was, only without the pretentious seriousness. The mid-sixties Latin groove (courtesy of Luiz Bonfa’s “Seville”) gives it the feel of a Nancy Sinatra-Lee Hazlewood track, minus the camp value of Hazlewood’s singing. And the woman’s part, which starts with the best line in the song, “Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over”, carries echoes of Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me”. In other words, this contains references to enough pop landmarks, without any of them being obvious on first listen, to make it sound both familiar and out of the ordinary.

Montgomery Gentry—“Where I Come From”
#94
For the most part, I don’t mind country songs praising small town life—two of my favorite records of the last few years are Miranda Lambert’s “Famous In a Small Town” and Ashton Shepard’s “More Cows Than People”—but this is so aggressive, and so defensive, that it comes close to a kind or rural fascism. Their examples of small town life are bizarre, especially the lines about two guys fighting in a parking lot: “Nobody’s gonna call the cops”. So that’s what’s wrong with big cities; it’s not that people fight in the streets, it’s that people insist on summoning the authorities when they do. Better yet is the old man sitting on the porch who can “buy your fancy car with hundred dollar bills”. What is he, a rapper? A meth dealer? Whatever the case, I bet he drives an old beat-up pickup truck covered in mud when he takes his mother to church on Sunday morning. They always do.

Jay-Z Kanye West—“Gotta Have It”
#98
Is this actually being promoted as a single? If it is, it’s an odd choice. For starters, it isn’t even two and a half minutes long, which means it won’t fit on any existing radio formats. Second, though the James Brown sample provides a great hook, it isn’t up there with “Niggas In Paris” in sing- or hum-along terms. It does, however, continue in a more obvious way the theme of racial politics and black history that “Niggas” snuck in between the lines. Have they got some kind of thematic singles campaign going that they’re not telling anyone about? Or are they just being eccentric?

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Hot 100 Roundup—1/7/12

Tuesday, January 17th, 2012

Taylor Swift featuring The Civil Wars—“Safe and Sound”
#30
It’s time, I suppose, for Taylor Swift to tweak her sound, but working with T-Bone Burnett—the man who has ruined more good performers than just about any producer I can think of—wasn’t the direction I was hoping for. This isn’t bad, but it’s just an average alt-folk ballad, a genre placement that should scare anyone who cares about Swift’s career. This is a soundtrack cut, so it may not mean much in terms of Swift’s future direction, but it’s worrying all the same. Even at her worst she’s never sounded so ordinary.

Flo Rida featuring Sia—“Wild Ones”
#57
Why did I never notice that Flo Rida has a lisp? No wonder he raps so fast. As for Sia, she seems willing to degrade herself in any way—first David Guetta, now this—if it means becoming the third-rate Robyn she’s always been destined to be.

Young Jeezy featuring Jay-Z & Andre 3000—“I Do”
#61
Not a great track; no one is in top form, but the difference in approach is interesting. Jeezy holds out the promise of marriage, but it’s just a ploy, because all he really wants is to get laid. Jay-Z, needless to say, takes the subject more seriously, maybe too seriously; he sounds as if he were holding himself back, trying to fictionalize his own situation to make it seem more gangsta. Andre 3000, meanwhile, is semi-serious but sounds like he’s still having fun, even while planning yet more headaches for poor Ms. Jackson.

Skrillex—“Scary Monsters And Nice Sprites”
#69
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 8/20/11

Adam Lambert—“Better Than I Know Myself”
#76
Lambert has real talent, but this is a mess. Not only is the arrangement ridiculous, but when he isn’t hitting impressive high notes Lambert’s voice sounds thin and out of place. He loves flash, but he doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself when he’s closer to the ground. And songs that are all flash are hard to come by.

Nicki Minaj—“Stupid Hoe”
#81
A dis track designed to allow Minaj to show off as many of her voices as possible. It’s impressive, if not quite enjoyable, or even coherent. One question: if this is directed at Lil Kim, why does Minaj do a Rihanna impersonation (which finishes with a horrible flat note) near the end? Is there a separate target for each voice? That would be impressive.

Mac Miller—“Knock Knock”
#88
Miller is an average rapper at best—when he talks about being deeper than the water Michael Phelps is in, he does realize that’s only about eight feet, right? But he has the one gift that all party rappers need: he knows how to put a hook together, and to make it unusual enough to get people’s attention in the first place. In other words, he’s an earworm menace. If he ever managed to get on the radio—for now his records are too quirky and filled with obscenities to qualify—he could be dangerous.

V.I.C.—“Wobble”
#94
This is the sort of bubbly pop-rap I’m a sucker for, but it’s so mechanical it wears quickly, and instead of emphasizing the rhythms as it goes on it seems to downplay them, a mistake on any record that has nothing much to say lyrically. I enjoy its lack of pretension, but it’s still a miss.

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Hot 100 Roundup—12/10/11

Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

Rihanna
“Talk That Talk” (featuring Jay-Z), #31
“Where Have You Been”, #65
Dance music isn’t designed to stick in your memory, and I have the same problem with these that I have with the last couple of Rihanna’s records: I enjoy them when I hear them, but then forget all about them after. She’s so perfect for this sort of music, her slightly unreal buzz of a voice mixing seamlessly with the synths, that I barely notice a word she says, much less remember any afterwords (the same can’t be said of Jay-Z, though, who sounds newly energized, even if he doesn’t say anything special). She still doesn’t have any real personality on record other than sexy tough gal, and these tracks add nothing to that other than a few more hooks.

will.i.am featuring Mick Jagger & Jennifer Lopez—”T.H.E. (The Hardest Ever)”
#36
It takes a certain amount of courage to rap “Oh my goodness/This beat is so hard” when, at the moment at least, there is no beat. And it takes a certain patronizing, disrespectful commercial instinct to end a guest spot by Mick Jagger with a musical quote from “Satisfaction”. Or to put the anonymous Jenifer Lopez on a track at all. With The Black Eyed Peas going on hiatus I thought will.i.am might take some time off to generate new ideas. Turns out he just wanted to milk the old ones without the other three in his way. And let’s face it: Mick Jagger sounds old, old, old.

Chris Brown featuring Kevin McCall—”Strip”
#85
Another step into the past for Brown. This sounds like something he would have recorded five years ago, if the then 16 year-old had been allowed to sing about strip clubs. Is he making up for lost opportunity or something? Or is he just totally out of ideas? He never had many.

Nickelback—”Lullaby”
#89
Not good, but again their subject matter surprises me. This could well serve as their contribution to the It Gets Better Project. Wonder what made them suddenly grow a conscious. Too bad they couldn’t have grown some musical ideas at the same time.

Tyga—”Rack City”
#94
The hook is strong enough to stick in your head whether you want it to or not, and the sparse beat is catchy in its own way, as well. Still not sure whether it’s about actual pimping or just, you know know, pimpin’. I’m not even sure which I would consider worse.

Outasight—”Tonight Is the Night”
#96
Straight from a Pepsi commercial to the charts. It’s not as bad as that makes it sound—I like the high energy touches—but it sure wouldn’t be on the charts otherwise.

Mana featuring Prince Royce—”El Verdadero Amor Perdona”
#100
I don’t know enough about Latin to identify all the cliches, but to my ears this is full of them. It sounds romantic in all the right ways, though, and the way the music and vocals shift mood from line to line is impressive. It just doesn’t sound very original.

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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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