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Winding Down
Hot 100 Roundup—12/22/12

Wednesday, December 19th, 2012

Now that the Bruno Mars and Wiz Khalifa albums are out (and Big Boi, too, though his chart presence is not exactly commanding at this point), we can say that the year is truly at an end. There’s still one record I’m hoping will make the chart, though, Kacey Musgraves’s “Merry Go Round”. It’s been number one on Bubbling Under for two weeks, and if it wasn’t for The Voice might have made the leap by now. Here’s hoping. It would make a good finish to the year.

Tamar Braxton—“Love And War”
#57

The production is so weird that it almost makes “Love and War” worth listening to more than once. Huge drums here, lush strings there, a lot of heavy dynamic shifts and soul flourishes. Braxton sings well, too. Not much of a song, though (the mixed metaphors in the lyrics don’t help), and I expect Braxton’s career as a reality star has more to do with it’s appearance than anything else.

Bruno Mars—“When I Was Your Man”
#69

There are a lot of good songs and great moments on Mars’s new album, Unorthodox Jukebox, and “When I Was Your Man” is one of them. The pleasures are largely technical, though. Mars’s command of different styles is impressive, but there’s an airlessness to the music—it’s too perfect, too carefully constructed. There’s isn’t a false moment on “When I Was Your Man”—the lyrics are surprisingly sharp and honest (no one writes enough about Mars’s lyrical skills; he’s one of the best around right now), and Mars sings it beautifully, with phrasing that nods toward both Smokey Robinson and Sam Cooke. But somehow it doesn’t connect as strongly as it should. Mars knows his stuff back to front, but he hasn’t learned how to make it sound natural. He’s too much of a pro. Give him time, though. He’s just getting started.

Maroon 5—“Daylight”
#77

Each successive single from Overexposed has been more tolerable than the last, but that only means Maroon 5 been moving towards mediocrity, not that they’re any better. The only thing about “Daylight” that stands out is Adam Levine’s stilted delivery on the first verse. He sounds like he’s doing an Owl City impersonation. I doubt that was his intention, but whatever the case it does draw you into the record. Too bad there’s nothing to keep you there.

Terry McDermott—“I Want To Know What Love Is”
#84

The Lumineers—“Stubborn Love”
#85

What makes The Lumineers so terrible isn’t their jumping on the Mumford & Sons bandwagon; they would be terrible all on their own, without the support of a trend. The music is, indeed, Mumfordish: skeletal songs beefed up with lots of tempo and dynamic hocus-pocus. But the lyrics are the real kicker. “When we were young, oh oh, we did enough/When it got cold, ooh ooh, we bundled up”. What could those lines possibly mean, and what possible connection do they have to each other? Then there’s this: “The opposite of love’s indifference”. No it isn’t. Indifference is the absence of both love and hate. It means you don’t care about something either way (it originally meant you weren’t biased between two outcomes or sides, but the meaning has changed over the years, until it’s become roughly synonymous with “disinterested”). Example: “I am not indifferent to ‘Stubborn Love’. I hate it.”

Wiz Khalifa featuring Akon—“Let It Go”
#87

I’m not sure what’s most depressing about this record: Akon’s latest attempt at a comeback, or Khalifa’s willingness to provide him a boost. Khalifa’s own career is only two albums old, and he hasn’t had a huge hit since “Black and Yellow” (he hasn’t had a track as good, either). This starts with a banal string arrangement (I keep mistaking it for one of the tracks from The Voice on my playlist), a mediocre hook from Akon, and Khalifa making dumb jokes and laughing at them himself. It then progresses into a self-reliance rap you’ve heard many many many times before. This will do nothing to revive Akon’s career, and it may not help Khalifa’s either.

Nicholas David—“Somewhere Over the Rainbow”
#96

Future—“Neva End”
#99

Is this the new rap sincerity? And if it is how much can we trust it when it’s lathered in electronic vocal effects? The beat is good, but I’m unsure about the effects, which make Future sound as if he’s sobbing, or on the edge of a nervous breakdown, throughout the track. Now that he appears to have found the perfect woman he was searching for on “Turn On the Lights”, why does he sound as broken down as he did before? Future is putting out a lot of interesting music, but it doesn’t always work. This time he’s overdoing it.

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Sometimes the Pop Gods are On Our Side

Wednesday, August 1st, 2012

A couple of months ago I predicted that Maroon 5′s ghastly “Payphone” would keep “Call Me Maybe” from making number one. I was wrong, of course. The exact opposite happened. “Call Me Maybe” has now been number one for eight weeks, while “Payphone”, which has been number two almost all that time, has begun to drop, if only slightly. I’ve never been more pleased by a mistake.

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WTF?
Hot 100 Roundup—7/14/12

Wednesday, July 11th, 2012

Owl City & Carly Ray Jepsen—“Good Time”
#18
Adam Young, better known as Owl City, should not try to be David Guetta (especially if he’s going to sing), and Carly Rae Jepsen, who, despite “Call Me Maybe”, still needs to establish herself as a career artist, shouldn’t be trying to help him. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard a record that sounded like such an obvious cash-in on the part of everyone involved. From Young I don’t expect anything better, but “Call Me Maybe” is going to be in the top ten for the rest of the summer, and it’s way too soon to indulge in such an obvious ploy to keep Jepsen in the public eye. I also hear she’s working with Ryan Tedder. In a recent article in Billboard, Jepsen’s manager, Scooter Braun, was quoted as telling her that her life wasn’t going to be much fun for awhile. Doesn’t look like it’s going to be much fun for her audience, either.

Maroon 5—“Wipe Your Eyes”
#80
Despite, or perhaps because of his second career as judge/mentor on The Voice, Adam Levine has become the most irritating, if not the worst singer of our time. Here, with the assistance of producer J.R. Rotem, he emphasizes this fact by singing, via sample, with one of the best vocalists in the world, Mariam Doumbia of the Malian duo Amadou & Mariam. Rotem and Levine compound the mistake by using one of the duo’s greatest songs, the ethereal and mysterious “Sabali” (co-written and produced by Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz; it may be the best piece of music he’s ever been connected with). The result is almost sad. Levine is so outclassed he doesn’t even try; his voice is hoarse and he sounds exhausted and depressed. If, by some chance, this results in “Sabali” getting the attention it deserves, then I guess this record’s existence will be good for something. But otherwise it’s not much more than a sour joke, one that even I can’t bring myself to laugh at. (Note: At least according to the Billboard listing, Doumbia, her writing partner Marc Antoine Moreau, and Albarn aren’t given a songwriting credit for this record; so maybe Levine’s vocal comeuppance is exactly what he deserves.)

Nero—“Promises”
#81
More pop than Skrillex (who has done a remix), but still identifiably dubstep (whatever that means by now), this is notable only for the fact that it’s a real song, and not just a beat with some vocals thrown on top of it. They may even have written the song before they came up with the beat, but judging by the way it stops and starts and stalls as it stumbles along, I assume not. It’s not a very good song, and if it wasn’t for the music (and the record’s placement in a TV commercial) no one in the U.S. would have noticed it. It did debut at number one in England, but it was a slow week.

Wale featuring Rick Ross, Meek Mill & T-Pain—“Bag of Money”
#93
What a generous guy Rick Ross is. Here, after giving Wale a brief guest spot on one of his many tracks, Ross turns around and allows Wale to release it under his own name, letting a little of that Rozay magic rub off on him as he struggles to establish a career (based on his rap here, he needs all the help he can get). Mind you, Ross knew this wasn’t a great track, and that it wouldn’t be a huge hit, even with T-Pain autotuning (or T-Paining I guess it’s now called—not to be confused with trepanning though the effect is often the same) in the background. Generosity has it’s limits.

Linkin Park—“Lost In the Echo”
#95
For Linkin Park, not bad. The lyrics lack their usual vague generalization and overbearing pretentiousness, and the music continues to modernize their sound without turning it into novelty dubstep. Not great, of course, but at least it isn’t laughable.

BTR—“Windows Down”
#97
Nickelodeon has tried every way to make Big Time Rush into real stars rather than just tween faves. They’ve given them top production and decent songs, got Snoop Dogg to do a guest spot, dressed them up in suits like Il Divo, everything. Here, they get modernized, their name shortened to BTR (already the name of one of their albums), and pointed roughly toward the same musical territory as The Wanted and One Direction. It doesn’t work, largely because the song is too busy and complicated (is anything on the radio simpler than the stuff The Wanted sing? They make nursery rhymes sound baroque), but also because, as singers, the members of BTR are undistinguished. You can’t create pop stars out of nothing, after all, or at least nothing but looks.

Zac Brown Band—“The Wind”
#99
This is better than most of Zac Brown’s stuff not only because it’s fast, but because it’s so loose. He lets the band show off in the best possible way, and the record not only zooms but swings (maybe Brown’s been listening to some Kentucky Colonels in between the Jimmy Buffett and James Taylor). And, for the first time I’ve heard, Brown sings like himself instead of one of his heroes. Turns out he doesn’t have much vocal personality of his own, which explains a lot.

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From the Ridiculous To the Sublime
Hot 100 Roundup—7/7/12

Thursday, July 5th, 2012

Maroon 5—“One More Night”
#42
Less irritating than “Payphone”, but also less catchy, with both the band and producer Max Martin running on automatic. Since “Payphone” still hasn’t peaked (God help us), I’m not even sure why they released this. To prove to themselves they can still make hits without guest spots?

Justin Bieber
“Beauty and a Beat” (featuring Nicki Minaj), #72
“Right Here” (featuring Drake), #95
How confident is Justin Bieber in his talent? Confident enough that the two LP tracks with the highest profile guests are pure filler. Minaj gets jokey and suggestive but does nothing special, while Drake tries out a new flow and nails it but doesn’t say much. “Beauty and the Beat” has a great break, but for the most part the music is passable and nothing more. These charted only because of Minaj’s and Drake’s fans, and I’ll bet neither one will be released as an actual single.

Meek Mill featuring Drake—“Amen”
#86
Mill has nothing to say beyond the usual rap bragging, but he’s funnier and more clever about it than most: the line about drinking so much that when he takes a drug test he pees rosé is perfect, as are the lines about building himself a crib with a moat. As for Drake, he’s been using his post-Take Care guest spots to work out new vocal and rhythmic approaches, and so far he hasn’t taken a wrong step. He’s almost unrecognizable here, but he’s also very good, and his rap raises what would have been just an above-average track to a higher level. Not that much higher, mind you, but still an improvement.

Kelly Clarkson—“Dark Side”
#93
Clarkson is in a groove where every record she releases has some magical quality that makes it compelling, if not overwhelming. There’s a sense of both comfortableness and humility in the music she’s making now. After a couple of shaky years she trusts herself, her talent, and her audience more than ever, and it shows. More than any other singer I can think of, she wants to draw her listeners into her world, welcome them and reassure them, even when what she’s singing about is pain and the loss of emotional control. This isn’t a brilliant record, but it’s very, very good, almost as good as “Stronger”. For the moment, at least, Clarkson may be the world’s friendliest, most sublime, and perfect pop star.

Easton Corbin—“Lovin’ You Is Fun”
#100
Corbin, along with Chris Young, Luke Bryan, maybe Blake Shelton, and others, is what I call a country nerd. Goofy, smiling, dedicated, their music is always pleasant and well-crafted, but never strikes a nerve. To me, they’re a country version of the second-level power pop bands of the late ’70s, only instead of The Beatles and The Byrds they grew up on Garth Brooks and George Strait. They have talent, and they mean well, but most of them don’t have the stuff. Corbin is slightly better than the pack, but that isn’t saying much.

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Good Records From Bad People
Hot 100 Roundup—5/5/12

Tuesday, May 8th, 2012

Maroon 5 featuring Wiz Khalifa—“Payphone”
#3
The sheer hackery of this record is revealed by the very elements that are designed to disguise it. That is, the subject matter itself—just mentioning payphones these days is guaranteed to get people’s attention: “Who uses those, anymore?”—and the expletives in the chorus, which in the era of “Fuck You” sound as false and clichéd as moon June spoon. And I hope never to hear Adam Levine’s falsetto again. The most irritating and possibly the worst record of the year; certainly the worst to make top ten.

Linkin Park—“Burn It Down”
#30
As long as they’re driven by decent hooks and can be taken as metaphors for personal drama, I can just stand Linkin Park’s apocalyptic scenarios. When the music drones loudly like this, however, and when their need to say something important overwhelms any sense of proportion they may possess, they’re unbearable. This is only half way to unbearable, but that’s far enough for me.

Mac Miller—“Loud”
#53
A mixtape cut, which means Miller’s turn from old-timey samples to electronics may not mean anything in the long run. Not that Miller’s records mean anything, anyway. He’s isn’t a terrible rapper, but he sure isn’t a great one, and he has nothing original to say. He does have diamonds on his chain, though. No, really, he has diamonds on his chain.

Rick Ross featuring Drake & French Montana—“Stay Schemin’”
#58
I find the slow motion chorus intriguing, and Drake is rapping better than ever, but this sounds exactly like what it is: a mixtape track that got enough attention from fans and bootleggers, largely because of Drake, that the label decided to issue it as a single. In other words, a rip-off. But hell, why shouldn’t an otherwise free track make you some money off of those who aren’t in on game while at the same time thwarting those pesky bootleggers who had the idea first? That’s what scheming’s all about, isn’t it?

Kanye West featuring DJ Khaled—“Way Too Cold”
#86
What may be most fascinating about Kanye West right now is how unpredictable he’s become. Most artists at this point in their career start to smooth things out: their music becomes more polished, which many often mistake for maturity, capitalizing on their strengths while limiting experimentation to those ideas that can easily be folded into an existing sound. West appears to be doing the opposite: his records are getting rougher and more outrageous every time out. He seems to be running on pure instinct. The result is throwaway tracks like this, a fast moving, unpolished rant that builds and builds and gives you the feeling that it could get even bigger. Until, that is, DJ Khaled steps up to the mike and starts reading the names of Chicago neighborhoods off a gazetteer. Without Khaled, this is a near perfect record. I would have been happy to hear that great beat bump along for the last minute and a half without any more raps at all. Did West owe the guy a favor or something?

Chris Brown—“Sweet Love”
#89
I go back and forth on this one. Brown’s vocal is as irritating as he’s ever been (is there anyone in pop who sounds more self-satisfied?), but the music is amazing: brash and energetic, with a lilt that adds a pleasant and unexpected romantic tinge to the whole. It’s messy, but it works. Couldn’t producer Polow Da Don have given this beat to somebody else? Anybody else?

Toby Keith—“Beers Ago”
#95
After demonstrating, on “Red Solo Cup”, how a country beer-drinking song should go, Keith now focuses on the subject of country teen nostalgia, which once again features beer. It’s almost as if he’s presenting a masters class on how to rejuvenate tired country themes. Rule number 1: include as much realistic and humorous detail as possible. Rule number 2: don’t lose count of your beers.

Gotye—“Eyes Wide Open”
#96
It’s not fair to make a judgment after only two singles, but this record helps to confirm my belief that Gotye is the Gerry Rafferty of our era: a talented, intelligent, well-meaning guy who has his flashes of inspiration but isn’t a genius, and who will make a number of enjoyable but unimpressive records and one or two great ones. He’s already made a great one. If he’s lucky he’s got one more left. This isn’t it.

John Legend featuring Ludacris—“Tonight (Best You Ever Had)”
#97
If this had been released five years ago, I would say that Legend was talented but a couple of years behind the times. Now I’m not sure what to say, except that Ludacris is even further behind.

Future—“Same Damn Time”
#100
A lot of this is fairly standard Atlanta rap, and Future, though he has something of a gift for words, doesn’t have that much different to say from everybody else (two girls at once? amazing!). The vocals, however, are something else. He goes from straight shouting to a flow obviously based on T.I. to electronically stretching his voice to the breaking point. If you’re not listening closely, it sounds like he has lousy breath control, and maybe the idea was to recreate the sound of someone trying to speak while their lungs are full of smoke. Which isn’t all that meaningful of an idea, either, and though I’m willing to give him credit for possibly trying to get at something more important, I have no clue as to what that would be.

Listen on Spotify

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Hunger Games, Dubstep Games
Hot 100 Roundup—4/7/12

Thursday, April 12th, 2012

Taylor Swift—“Eyes Open”
#19
What’s surprising about all The Hunger Games songs I’ve heard is how literal they are, in the sense that they focus on particular aspects of the story rather than delivering the usual pop tropes and vaguely tying them to the theme of the film. They’re actually about the movie, rather than simply being attached to it. That doesn’t mean they’re great, though: this is Swift indulging her heavy metal side, as dull as she’s ever been, and all I can say is that I’m glad she’s letting that aspect of her musical taste out on a soundtrack and not one of her own albums.

Alex Clare—“Too Close”
#68
Alex Clare appears to be a genuine singer/songwriter, but it’s hard not to view this as just another part of Diplo’s concerted effort to inject dubstep into everything. Someday someone may succeed at making a record like this work, but not this time. It would help if the song wasn’t so ordinary, but I’m not sure I would buy the idea even if it was better. The electronics sound tacked on in the worst sort of way, as if someone were trying to do a mashup of Gavin DeGraw and Skrillex and gave up after sorting out the chorus. To get theoretical for a moment: pop music requires an organic mix of structure and texture to create emotional cohesion; you can’t just throw any old thing over the top and expect it to work.

Maroon 5 featuring Rozzi Crane—“Come Away To the Water”
#83
I was impressed by this at first, and even devised a little formula to explain it: if T-Bone Burnett is capable of ruining true artists by amping up their “arty” side, then it makes sense that the same process could turn second-raters into something better than they are, at least for one song. Further listening made me realize that all he had really done was turn Maroon 5, who don’t need any help in being arty blowhards, into a copy of Los Lobos (even vocally, which is a neat trick). If you believe that songs that are essentially chants backed by heavily reverbed guitars and rumbling low-fi drums automatically equal art, this is the record for you. I find it vague and hollow myself.

Craig Morgan—“This Ole Boy”
#92
I like the loose feel of this, and the way the verse toys with the idea of how many syllables you can cram into a line, but it’s too cute. Cute seems to be how many male country singers choose to deal with women these days. It’s their way of trying not to be sexist, I guess, but it shows a real lack of imagination to believe that the only option outside of being a macho boor is being a charmless doofus. In its own way it’s just as sexist, because it sees women as being as easily overpowered by cute as they are by handsome. In a teenager like Scotty McCreery it may be excusable, but Morgan’s 47.

Shinedown—“Bully”
#94
I can’t speak for everybody, of course, but when I was in high school the kind of people who listened to bands like Shinedown were the bullies, not the ones who claimed to be victimized by them. Maybe things have changed, but that strikes me as being a major disconnect, whatever the song’s good intentions. It’s also clichéd, boring, and overwrought, as message songs so often are.

Havana Brown featuring Pitbull—“We Run the Night”
#99
More dubstep dabbling, this time from producer RedOne, for whom you’d think the style would be second nature, what with his own leaning towards the brash and garish. It turns out, though, that the best parts of this are the more Euro-disco moments, which are decorated with intriguing shifts and sudden turns. Pitbull is added to give the record more commercial heft, but also finds himself the victim of the best joke on the record when a burst of dubstep insanity drowns out his trademark sotto voce growl at the end of his verse. Not that Pitbull cares; he’s too busy jumping on another dance-pop gravy train. Oddly enough, I respect him for that.

Drake featuring The Weeknd—“Crew Love”
#100
Interesting to find this on the chart. Is it actually being promoted as a single? Are people grabbing at it because it’s the weirdest sounding thing on Take Care, as well as being one of the few tracks that could be described as up tempo? Or are they mistaking The Weeknd’s deconstructed R&B for dubstep? Whatever the case, it has a decent hook, and it’s nice to hear Drake finally admitting to his privileged background (did he really turn down an opportunity to go to Harvard, or is that just more bragging?). It’s a throwaway, but a good one.

Listen on Spotify

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Hot 100 Roundup—7/9/11

Wednesday, August 10th, 2011

Maroon 5 featuring Christina Aguilera—”Moves Like Jagger”, #8
Javier Colon—”Fix You”, #52
Dia Frampton, “Losing My Religion”, #54
Vicci Martinez—”Dog Days Are Over”, #68
Xenia—”The Man Who Can’t Be Moved”, #92

Pitbull featuring T-Pain & Sean Paul—”Shake Senora”
#69
This record doesn’t sound like a good fit for anyone involved—too brazen and obvious for T-Pain, but, if anything, too subtle for Pitbull, who’s better at leering and lustful growling than the lightness of touch that would be required to make this work. As for Sean Paul, only his biggest fans would notice that he’s here. It doesn’t even work as parody. All they’ve done is overemphasize what the song is already about, and not in a way that points out anything interesting. I do like Pitbull comparing booty, which reminds me of “My Gal Is Red Hot”, but the rest is a disaster.

Selena Gomez & the Scene—”Love You Like a Love Song”
#72
One of the things I love about the production team Rockmafia is their belief in traditional pop form and structure. They’re well aware of the possibilities of emotional tension and release inherent in verse-chorus-verse form, and they do their best to take advantage of it while keeping the music itself as simple and catchy as possible. Sometimes the results sound too simple and automatic, as they do on the chorus here. But it also helps them to create classic pop moments like the first verse, as perfect a melding of music, mood, lyric, and performance as you’ll ever hear. If the rest of the song came close to it, this would be a great record. As it is, it’s only a very good one. Not that that isn’t achievement enough.

Bella Thorne & Zendaya—”Watch Me”
#95
What’s most fascinating about this Disney-pop variation on Ke$ha is how well it works. It isn’t as brash as Ke$ha—the music is more bass heavy, and of course the “sleazy” is removed—but otherwise it would be difficult to tell the two apart. It isn’t that Ke$ha’s music is easy to imitate, but that it’s tapped into a generation’s universal mood of directionless, hyped-up energy and restlessness that, oddly enough, Disney has helped to promote and capitalize on, and maybe even helped to create. The Disney tweens of five years ago are the Ke$ha, Katy Perry, and GaGa and Glee fans of today, and it’s a sign of Disney’s marketing savvy that they’re trying to keep up with them. I don’t think they are, quite, since it’s all out of their control now, but this is a good record nonetheless, and they deserve credit for trying.

Jill Scott featuring Anthony Hamilton—”So in Love”
#97
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 5/14/11

Train—”Save Me, San Francisco”
#98
The Loggins and Messina of their era, and if they’re not as irritating as, say, Rascal Flatts, it’s only because their tunes are catchier and clever self-deprecation is a part of their act. They’re just as clueless, though. They can’t even get a song about their hometown right. Except for a few obvious lyrical references, nothing about this record sounds like San Francisco. What it sounds like, instead, is an above average Rolling Stones cover band, and considering the Stone’s history in the bay area, is that really the vibe you want to go for?

Brantley Gilbert—”Country Must Be Country Wide”
#100
True enough, but does that mean it has to be heavy metal, too?

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Hot 100 Roundup—5/14/11

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

Glee Cast
“I Feel Pretty/Unpretty”, #22
“Somewhere Only We Know”, #42
“Born This Way”, #44
“As If We Never Said Goodbye”, #80

Javier Colon—”Time After Time”
#65
So Glee and American Idol aren’t enough, but now I have to review this crap, too? Colon has a voice, alright, but he has no real idea of how to sing with it—he’s all affectation and sentimentality. The arrangement is terrible, as well—the lines and phrases are broken up with no consideration for meaning or sense, turning a good song into a pile of sticky glop. Until I hear different, that’s what I think of The Voice in general, and may we never cross paths again.

Duck Sauce—”Barbra Streisand”
#89
This is about as predictable as dance music gets, and once they’ve recited the title and brought in the vocal hook, you know exactly what this record is going to do and where it’s going to go: nothing and nowhere. The non sequitur of the title is the only interesting thing about it, and even as a joke it’s only funny about one and a half times. By the third time around you’re struggling to pay attention.

Foster the People—”Pumped Up Kicks”
#96
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 4/2/11

Nicki Minaj—”Super Bass”
#98
This isn’t Minaj at her best or most outrageous, but it isn’t Minaj at her most sentimental and cringeworthy, either, the side of her personality I was afraid was taking over. In pop terms it’s may be best thing she’s done: a clever and meaningless piece of fluff, with a great hook and hilarious word play. Which doesn’t mean it lacks bite. Congratulating her man for being in touch with his feminine side is as sharp a slap at male rap culture as you can get, and even if she’s being sarcastic it’s a great line. Especially since Minaj’s feminine side, and the way she plays it, is the scariest thing about her.

Jana Kramer—”Whiskey”
#99
A wonderful song, and Kramer, whose voice reminds me of Dolly Parton, sings it perfectly. Which makes this an appropriate time to lament country music’s continuing inability to keep the goddamn volume down. The band is so loud it all but drowns out the funniest and cleverest lines of the song, which also happen to be its emotional center. Kramer’s too gifted a singer to be overshadowed in this way, and maybe the best thing she could do for herself, since she already has an ear for material, is find a producer who knows how to set that material properly.

Maroon 5—”Never Gonna Leave This Bed”
#100
The groove is impressive as always, but it’s still automatic, and Adam Levine’s egotism just won’t go away, even when he’s pleading. A line like, “Fake it, fake it, I’ll take whatever I can get” may sound as if he’s being brutally honest with himself, but what it really means is that he doesn’t care whether the woman is having a good time or not as long as he’s getting some. He also doesn’t help his case by waking her up in the middle of the night to tell her he’s not going to leave her. Like she asked. What a selfish little fuck.

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Hot 100 Roundup—10/3/10

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

Glee Cast
“Empire State of Mind”, #21
“Telephone”, #23
“Billionaire”, #28
“Listen”, #38
“What I Did For Love”, #51

Akon—”Angel”
#62
Yet another “I Gotta Feeling” rip, only this time not from someone directly associated with the original record, which is a relief. Akon’s voice may have changed, but his gift for hooks remains, and here he strings enough together to make for a bearable dance record. My only question is whether this is intended as a tribute to Lady GaGa, who has guaranteed Akon a comfortable living even if he never has another hit. Maybe he should just go into promotion and forget this whole making records business. He wouldn’t be the first.

Update: Whoops, there I go forgetting to check the credits again. This was produced by David Guetta, so just ignore that first sentence.

Maroon 5—”Stutter”
#84
Catchier than their previous records off the new album, but in its own way just as stiff and claustrophobia inducing. Their clockwork groove is like a wall they build between the music and whatever emotion is supposedly generating it. Which means they’re either trying too hard or are too tasteful to get really funky. Working with a producer other than the tireless careerist Robert John Lange might help.

Jesse McCartney—”Shake”
#90
A few years ago, Jesse McCartney was the equivalent of Justin Bieber, only with a little more funk and without the hordes of screaming girls. Now he seems to be in limbo. His voice has matured, but his material still has a teenage quality to it (doesn’t everybody’s?) that doesn’t quite match with his voice. I like the telephone gimmick leading into the chorus, and this is catchy and almost funky enough to get by, but the song’s slightly Bieberish quality throws me off. He’s like a solo version of Maroon 5: his heart is in the right place, but his music is too stiff to catch up.

Diddy – Dirty Money featuring Drake—”Loving You No More”
#91
This goes down smooth and easy in the background, but like most muzak, once you get up close you notice how barren it is. And that’s even before Drake clears his throat and starts to rap.

Mike Posner—”Please Don’t Go”
#94
Pleasant but forgettable, which is a step up from his last record, which was brainless (often mistaken for pleasant) and irritating. I like the random electronics on the last verse, but the rest of it is sap. With guys like Posner and Owl City on the scene, the hipness quotient of electronic music is going to nosedive fast, if it hasn’t already.

Bubbling Under:

Zac Brown Band featuring Jimmy Buffett—”Knee Deep”
#101
When Zac Brown sings by himself, he sounds like James Taylor. When he sings with Alan Jackson, he sounds like Alan Jackson. Guess who he sounds like now? And no, despite the presence of the original inspiration, this is not as good as “Toes”.

Bon Jovi—”What Do You Got?”
#102
Ann Powers swears that Bon Jovi is a great arena band, and though I’ve never thought of that as a distinct genre, I’m willing to take her word on it. All the same, should I ever find myself in an arena with Bon Jovi, this song is when I would seize the opportunity to find a bathroom.

Maroon 5 with Lady Antebellum—”Out of Goodbyes”
#103
Apparently anyone who comes in contact with Lady Antebellum turns immediately into another version of Fleetwood Mac, and though the voices don’t blend as magically as Buckingham’s and McVie’s, this has its moments (the line about the “storm brewing in his eyes” is perfectly set). But moments is all it has, and though the playing is as precise as you’d expect, Fleetwood Mac was both precise and passionate, and that makes all the difference.

David Guetta featuring Kid Cudi—”Memories”
#104
Never, ever listen to a song called “Memories”. It’s guaranteed to be sentimental, even when it comes on with garish, hard-edged dance beats and features a vocalist who sounds like he’s coked himself hoarse. In fact, that might be even worse.

Bruno Mars featuring Damian Marley—”Liquor Store Blues”
#105
This doesn’t work, largely because Mars’s overdeveloped pop instinct undercuts whatever sense of “the blues” he may possess, but I’m fascinated by his attempts to show a serious side, or at least some sort of social conscious (this, “Billionaire”, maybe even “Fuck You”). It’s not the sort of thing you find in most masters of lighthearted melodic hooks, and it suggest that if he can ever manage to balance the two, he could become a major artist, instead of just a highly successful one.

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Hot 100 Roundup—8/29/10

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Administrative note: For the sake of clarity, I decided to change the name of this column so people dropping in from Venus will know what they’re getting from the start. Part of the reason is purely mercenary; I figure it will make more sense in search engines (to paraphrase Liz Phair: I want to be read, dammit!). Also, Maura Johnston referred to this as a roundup in a tweet last week, and I liked the sound of it. Thanks, Maura. This will continue to be tagged as “New this week”, for those people who search around here by the tags. I’m also considering an archive page like the one I did for my top ten reviews. That’s for the future, though. As far as this week is concerned…

Lil Wayne featuring Drake—”Right Above It”
#6
I’m sure they thought they had a good idea when they started this track. Whatever it was, they lost it. Or maybe they were wrong to begin with.

Nelly—”Just a Dream”
#12
After nearly disappearing for half a decade, Nelly comes back with a record that pretty much takes up where he left off (this is the guy who recorded with Tim McGraw, remember?). His mix of R&B and rock seems a lot better thought out than Lil Wayne’s, and comes closer to a true synthesis than just about anybody, but that doesn’t mean you haven’t heard it before, or that Nelly has anything interesting to say. Not bad, but nothing special.

Katy Perry—”E.T.”
#42
When you consider that Perry’s fiancee is Russell Brand, who looks as much like an alien as anybody I can think of, this comes across as a good, affectionate joke. If you don’t know that, though, it’s just a mess. What’s interesting is that it holds up much better on the album, where Perry’s vocal affectations actually seem subdued in contrast to what surrounds it, than it does as a single. It also fits in perfectly with the other LP cuts that are about coming to terms with the split between her upbringing and the world she finds herself in now. She only plays dumb, you know.

Rascal Flatts—”Why Wait”
#48
I could make a comment about the continual mellowing and softening of country over the last couple of years, but these guys have been doing it for a decade now. While others of their generation followed The Eagles and Lynard Skynard, Rascal Flatts has stayed strictly pop, so when they want to up the tempo and look for a model in the ’70s they imitate Loggins and Messina. Loggins and fucking Messina.

Maroon 5—”Give A Little More”
#86
I appreciate their tempo and their brevity—this clocks in at exactly three minutes—but they sound mechanical, and they don’t seem able to write a song that has any ebb and flow to it. Their endless funk riffing, however well they do it, is crowded and claustrophobic. They also don’t seem to have a single interesting lyrical idea. I give them points for trying, but this just doesn’t cut it.

Soundgarden—”Black Rain”
#96
If you’re coming back after 12 years of dicking around and cashing in on your past, do you really want to do it with a song that sounds like all your previous records squeezed into one huge cliche? Not that they ever had more than one great album in them, anyway.

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