Posts Tagged ‘Sean Paul’

Pop is Strange
Hot 100 Roundup—4/14/12

Tuesday, April 17th, 2012

Justin Bieber—“Boyfriend”
#2
This may be a magic leap in quality and maturity for Bieber, but it’s still derivative as hell—music via Justin Timberlake, phrasing via Chris Brown. And the lyrics are dumb on every level. The worst isn’t the infamous reference to fondue by the fire, but a couple of lines later when he warns the girl of his dreams that his falsetto is coming. We already know that falsetto represents ecstasy and climax and all that, Bieber; you don’t need to tell us about it—especially not in the middle of the song.

Waka Flocka Flame featuring Trey Songz—“I Don’t Really Care”
#64
Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Trey Songz—“Heart Attack”
#65
Trey Songz’s new romantic sincerity is an interesting turn in his career, but it isn’t resulting in interesting music. “Sex Ain’t Better Than Love” was too quirky and went on too long, while this one barely exists at all. I appreciate that he has something to say, but he needs to find a more exciting way to say it.

Sean Paul—“She Doesn’t Mind”
#78
Did Sean Paul really expect to burst back onto the charts after his two or so years off without updating his sound? Things have changed—a lot—and here he comes with a record that could have been made five years ago, if not ten. He wasn’t much good then; now he sounds completely out of place.

Pitbull—“Back In Time”
#79
Sue me, but I love this, if only because six months after her death we finally get at least a partial homage to Sylvia Robinson, plus Pitbull at his silliest and the hackiest, most obvious dubstep insert you’ll ever hear. A stupid novelty that sounds exactly like a stupid novelty is supposed to sound: fast, funny, and irresistible.

Josh Turner—“Time Is Love”
#91
There are people I respect who love this, but I’m not one of them. This isn’t bad, but it’s essentially an updated George Strait record, and since Strait is making those himself I’m not sure I see the point. It sounds fresh because, aside from Strait, not too many people are making records like this, but it’s above-average commercial country and nothing more.

Michel Telo—“Ai Se Eu Te Pego”
#95
A bright, breezy, not too cloying Brazilian singalong. First time I’ve heard Portugese on the chart. The lyric is about meeting a beautiful girl at a party (things are the same all over). Pleasant, but nothing special.

Chris Cagle—“Got My Country On”
#98
Country hair metal (mullet metal?) with not a single cliché, country or metal, out of place. When Cagle takes the song to church I feel like pounding his pandering ass into the dirt. The worst country song to make the chart so far this year.

Dev & Enrique Iglesias—“Naked”
#99
This has been floating around the Bubbling Under chart since the beginning of the year, and once you hear it you’ll understand why it hasn’t gotten much higher. Dev is fine, but this a rare substandard track from the Cataracs, and Iglesias is as smarmy as ever.

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Hot 100 Roundup—10/1/11

Wednesday, October 12th, 2011

Coldplay—”Paradise”
#16
Whenever these guys try to make a major statement they always fall back on arty cliches that mean a lot less than they think they do. Since this one is called “Paradise”, it opens with slightly distorted church organ and muzak strings, and throws some glockenspiel into the arrangement along the way. Since the lyrics make no mention of religion, they probably think they’re being subtle and ironic, when all they’re really being is pretentious and obvious. Speaking of pretension, it’s worth pointing out that this sounds more like the intro to a concept album than a single, but I prefer not to think about that if I can avoid it.

Darius Rucker—”I Got Nothin’”
#84
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 8/2/11

Tony Bennett and Amy Winehouse—”Body and Soul”
#87
Bennett is still Bennett, and the craggier his voice gets the more emotion it reveals, but then, nobody is buying this for him, are they? Winehouse was in great voice, but there’s nothing daring or challenging about her vocal—it’s essentially a well done Dinah Washington impersonation, and she’s obviously trying, either out of fear or respect, not to show up her host. A worthy final performance, but hardly a memorial.

David Nail—”Let It Rain”
#95
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 8/2/11

Ace Hood featuring Chris Brown—”Body 2 Body”
#98
Reviewed in Bubbling Under, 8/27/11

Sean Paul featuring Alexis Jordan—”Got 2 Love U”
#99
Sean Paul hasn’t had a major hit since he helped to turn Rihanna into a superstar (either that or she helped him to keep his top-ten career going a little longer). He sounds the same as ever, and Alexis Jordan isn’t bad, but this won’t do anything to revive his career.

Brantley Gilbert—”You Don’t Know Her Like I Do”
#100
I have to give Gilbert a certain amount of credit: he knows that most of this song is cliche, so he does his best to highlight the few non-cliche moments. There’s something off about putting melodramatic emphasis on a line like “She’s my best friend”, though, and tricking it up with a false ending and an extended coda only makes it worse. And all the rest of the song is still cliche.

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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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New this week–11/15/09

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

Justin Bieber—”Favorite Girl”
#26
The new tactic of releasing a song a week in the leadup to an album makes sense if 1) you’re trying to build anticipation for the new work of a major star (as in Carrie Underwood); or 2) the songs become progressively more interesting or of higher quality. I find it hard to believe that you can build curiosity and anticipation in an audience when each record is even more bland than the one before it. Bieber has his appeal, and the publicity push behind him is massive, but he was thin gruel to begin with and gets thinner every time out. You can only dilute this stuff for so long before it becomes nothing at all.

Jay Sean Featuring Sean Paul & Lil Jon—”Do You Remember”
#27
Bouncy, catchy, and totally forgettable, this three-for-one deal’s only purpose is as a commercial for the participants’ careers: it capitalizes on Jay Sean’s recent number one by repeating its sound almost exactly; it provides Sean Paul with actual hit potential, something his own records can’t seem to manage anymore (his last single tanked so quickly most people didn’t even notice it was there); and, finally, it reminds everybody that Lil Jon still exists. This last is achieved by Lil Jon yelling in the background every time there’s a gap in the main vocal, like the runt of a litter trying to get the attention of the big dogs—apparently the producer’s weren’t prepared to give him room for a verse of his own.

Jason Aldean—”The Truth”
#91
Country singers are always trying to act sincere, but it’s rare to hear one come across this vulnerable. The guy really does sound lost, and somehow Aldean pulls this off without easy sentimentality or overplaying his hand. It helps that he maintains a certain ambiguity—we never do discover the whole truth. Instead of drawing us in with cheap emotional tricks, he creates a mystery. The music is a little on the bland side, but this is a very smart, moving record.

Rob Thomas—”Someday”
#93
“Hell, maybe someday, we’ll figure all this out,” Rob opines. Not with bland cliches and woozy philosophizing, you won’t. Besides, don’t all those hired angels in the background make it hard to concentrate?

Jake Owen—”Eight Second Ride”
#95
This is a decent song ruined by the sort of homey, down to earth detail that’s supposed to make country music special. The chorus opens wth a good double entendre (“I ain’t never seen a country boy with tires on his truck this high”), and then follows with an image so disgusting that the last thing you want to hear is a description of how the rest of the evening goes. Owen seems to think the alliteration of “Climb on up but watch the cup that I spit my dip inside” is erotic as well as clever. No doubt there are women who feel the same way. They deserve each other.

Glee Cast—”Defying Gravity”
#99
I’m beginning to think the real joke of Glee is that these high school kids take the awful songs they sing so badly so seriously. Bringing Broadway showtunes to prime-time television is a worthwhile endeavor, but not if you’re going to pick songs as bland as this and sing them as if amateurishness was a sign of personal honesty and emotional sincerity. With a song as dumb as this, sincerity is the last thing you want to convey—it makes you sound like an idiot.

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New this week

Sunday, July 12th, 2009

Colbie Caillat–”Falling For You”
#12
Less like “Bubbly” and more like Sheryl Crow, which is both a surprise and an improvement. In fact, this is so catchy, pleasant, and unpretentious it’s actually better than Crow. Lot’s of help from her father, I bet, though he’ll never turn her into Christine McVie.

Boys Like Girls–”Love Drunk”
#46
What is there to say about punk pop like this besides “Here’s another one”? They’re less misogynistic than the All-American Rejects, less wholesome than the Jonas Brothers, less interesting than either and slicker than both. Louder, too, which is not an improvement.

Sean Paul–”So Fine”
#61
Keeping pace with the minimalist trend, Sean Paul trims down his usually overbearing sound, which has the interesting effect of moving him closer to the dancehall scene he originally came from. He has nothing to say but how good you look when you dance, but at least he does it over beats that actually make you want to get out on the floor.

Jay Sean featuring Lil Wayne–”Down”
#72
In which Lil Wayne expands his already enormous empire by guesting on a record that sounds like Flo Rida run through some kind of teen pop converter, the whole bouncing along as if it were lighter than air. Not only does Wayne turn on the charm for his guest rap, he highlights his generosity by not taking a writing credit. Does he do these things for a flat fee now?

Selena Gomez & Demi Lovato–”One and the Same”
#82
The theme song to a new Disney series–apparently a very loud and unoriginal Disney series. Is there any other kind?

Mary Mary featuring Kierra “KiKi” Sheard–God In Me
#91
You don’t need to be conversant in the growing controversy regarding “Prosperity Gospel” to be concerned by the, er, theological underpinnings of this record. The lady here is fly, rich, beautiful, well-dressed, and spends her evenings on her knees, and with it’s borrowed hip-hop arrangement you’d be excused for thinking, as I did on first hearing, that she’s a high-classed call girl excessively devoted to her pimp. Since the vocals are in roughly the same range as T-Pain, with a lot of autotuning, it’s easy to hear this as being sung from the pimp’s point of view. On closer listening, you realize that the song isn’t about a prostitute at all, but a woman who has been amply rewarded by God for her religious devotion. Those who, unlike me, already knew who Mary Mary were wouldn’t make the same mistake, and I doubt that the ambiguity is intentional. It’s still there, though, a result of flying a little too close to contemporary pop, not to mention embracing a gospel whose ultimate appeal doesn’t seem that much different from, say, drug dealing.

Blake Shelton–”I’ll Just Hold On”
#98
The obvious ’70s soul influence (especially the Chi-Lites-like guitar) sets this slightly apart from the usual country love ballad, but only slightly. Like a lot of modern country it’s syrupy, overproduced, and way too loud. Nice hook, but that and the guitar aren’t enough to save it.

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