Posts Tagged ‘Young Jeezy’

Buzzkillers: Hot 100 Roundup—3/23/13

Friday, March 22nd, 2013

Luke Bryan—“Buzzkill”
#74

Through most of the first verse, I kept hoping that “Buzzkill” was about Bryan castigating one of his drinking buddies and that it was at least meant to be funny. Once he added the adjective “little” to the title, though, I knew it was another girl-who’s-driving-me-crazy song, with just enough of a twist to make it seem original. The biggest twist is the tempo, which is slow enough to make nonsense of the lyric, and leaves you to wonder if Bryan has figured out where the emotional center of the song lies. The protagonist could be angry, sad, sardonic, whatever, but Bryan doesn’t seem to be going for any of those. He does realize that “wimp” isn’t an emotion, right?

Kelly Rowland—“Kisses Down Low”
#96

Rowland has been on a lot of records that made the Hot 100 over the last year or two, but only one of them, “Motivation” with Lil Wayne, was worth listening to. Two of them, including “Kisses Down Low”, are among the worst R&B records of the last six months (the other is Ludacris’s “Representin’”). “Kisses” is actually the worst of the two, a record so obvious and blatantly pandering it’s hard to believe that anyone with any self-respect would release it (Beyonce has recorded orgasms that are more subtle). I have no idea whether Rowland is running her own career or has put it in the hands of someone else, but whatever the case she’d better find another caretaker soon. If she had been in a group like the Pussycat Dolls, it wouldn’t matter. But coming from Destiny’s Child and having a solo career reminiscent of Nicole Scherzinger’s? Somebody’s making a big mistake somewhere, and I suspect it’s Rowland herself.

Brad Paisley—“Beat This Summer”
#97

The most open-minded artist in the most closed-minded of genres, Brad Paisley finds himself in a bind. He obviously feels the need to expand his music and his themes beyond the limitations of modern country, but at the same time doesn’t want to offend his audience or move so far out that they can’t follow him. The last thing Paisley wants is to come on as an elitist or spell artist with a capitol “A”. Hence the breezy likability of his stronger message songs, such as “American Saturday Night” and “Welcome To the Future”, and the sometimes bizarre tightrope-walking of “Southern Comfort Zone”. At the opposite pole, on a simple, nostalgic love song like “Beat This Summer”, Paisley feels free to pull out all the musical stops, deconstructing the rhythm track, applying decidedly un-country melodic intervals in the chorus, and tossing in sound effects and yet another peerless guitar solo. But by taking the music too seriously Paisley loses track of the song and it’s lighter-weight pleasures. In the end, the two ideas cancel each other out, and we’re left with a beautifully crafted track that doesn’t make much of an impression. Paisley is so smart he’ll work out his difficulties eventually, but I’m not counting on it happening this year.

Juicy J featuring Big Sean and Young Jeezy—“Show Out”
#98

Mid-level rappers bragging over Mike Will Made-It beats have become something of a sub-genre in the last year or so, and here’s another one. The beats are still good, but they’re starting to become repetitive. As for the rappers, there’s a reason they’re mid-level.

Phillip Phillips—“Gone, Gone, Gone”
#100

Not a Lefty Frizzell cover, unfortunately (I doubt if Phillips would even know who he is); just another Mumford & Sons imitation. Phillips is less pretentious than Mumford, and puts a little more variety in his music. That is, he’s more pop. But that doesn’t make him any better. It might even make him worse, if such a thing is possible. Better than the Lumineers, though, for what that’s worth.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Hot 100, Hot 100 Roundup, new this week, singles | Comments Off

The Highway Don’t Care, But My Songs Do: Hot 100 Roundup—2/23/13

Tuesday, February 19th, 2013

Fall Out Boy—“My Songs Know What You Did In the Dark (Light Em Up)”
#26

I’ve never been a fan of Fall Out Boy. Their songs, their playing, and their ideas always seemed muddled to me, and when you combined those with their obvious ambition and self-absorption you got a lot of pretentious mess. I was glad when they decided to go on hiatus (from which I assumed they wouldn’t return), because I could only see them getting worse if they carried on. But now they’re back, and the time off has obviously been good for them, because their comeback single is focused, imaginative, and even comes close to making sense (at least to me; I’m sure it makes perfect sense to them). Naturally enough, the song is at least partially about their time off. At least, I assume that’s what the “dark” of the title partly refers to (these guys love puns and multiple meanings). The best stroke is in the title itself, the idea of a songwriter being informed of mysterious goings on (by who or in what context we’re never told) by the songs he writes. It reveals songwriting as a kind of self-telepathy along the lines of Norman Mailer’s famous statement “I don’t know what I think until I write it down” (and yes, I had no idea what the song was about until I started writing this). These guys have obviously stored up enough anger to drive their songs without a lot of fancy ideas, but it’s good to hear them thinking. It’s even better to hear that thought making it’s way into the music instead of confusing it.

Lady Antebellum—“Downtown”
#45

After the run of mediocre singles that followed the wonderful “Need You Now” (there were seven of them, in case you’re counting), I figured Lady Antebellum for one of those groups who have one great song in them, and then repeat the formula for as long as it takes for the magic to wear off and they disappear from view. But “Downtown” is a surprise in every way, a slice of stripped-down country funk that’s the polar opposite of “Need You Now” and just about everything else in mainstream country. It does have one predecessor: “Pontoon”, and I would be surprised if Little Big Town’s hit wasn’t a strong influence on this one. “Downtown” isn’t as sultry, but it’s funkier, and if the song and arrangement aren’t enough of a surprise, the guitar break sure is. The first great country single of the year, and it’s going to be a hard one to top.

Rihanna featuring Mikky Ekko—“Stay”
#57

Adele having opened the door with “Someone Like You”, we’re starting to see a rise in piano-only (or near-piano-only in this case) ballads. Bruno Mars has one (and a good one, too) in the top ten, and now there’s “Stay”. I was impressed at first: the song moves nicely and shifts in ways that keep your attention, and Rihanna’s voice is looser and comes closer to real emotion than she ever has before. But then you have to deal with Mikky Ekko (ugh, what a name), and his “Ed Sheeran wasn’t available so they sent me” vocal. Ekko gets the entire second verse to himself and sinks the record. At at her most mechanistic, at least Rihanna has a voice that keeps your attention. Ekko couldn’t get you to notice him even if he was singing to you in an elevator—you’d mistake him for muzak. There are a lot of guest vocals and raps on Unapologetic, along with dance tracks with not much in the way of lyrics. This is Rihanna’s way, I suppose, of giving herself a break while making sure she doesn’t drop out of public view for more than 25 minutes. I don’t blame her, but if she’s going to do that she needs to find better singers.

Tim McGraw & Taylor Swift—“Highway Don’t Care”
#59

Tim McGraw may be the most overrated country star of the last fifteen years. He’s got a voice, but he uses it for nothing but the usual country sentiment. He’s willing to experiment with sounds and styles, but he always lands in roughly the same place, and those experiments never extend to the ideas or the themes of the songs themselves. He generates a lot of buzz at times, but no heat. On “Highway Don’t Care” he teams up with Taylor Swift, who has already done her part to canonize him, and though neither one of them had a hand in writing the song, it may as well have both their fingerprints on it. Which means it leads nowhere new. Even worse, it takes its sweet time not getting there. The only revelation comes when Swift takes the part of the generic love song playing on the radio: if ever there was proof that it’s her voice as well as her songwriting talents that have made her such a star, this is it. She makes those banal words come alive. Too bad McGraw can’t do the same.

Drake—“Started From the Bottom”
#63

“Started From the Bottom” is more a teaser for the new album than a legitimate single, but I’m impressed by the beat, and by Drake’s switching up of voices. Whatever you may think of him overall, there’s no doubt that he’s improved as a rapper. As for the lyrics, I assume that he means that he and his crew started out from the bottom of the rap game, not life itself. I’m willing to concede that point; how many people would take any teen actor—especially a Canadian one—seriously if he suddenly announced he intended to become a serious rapper? But that doesn’t mean he needs to devote every track to complaining about it.

Kenney Chesney—“Pirate Flag”
#68

Chesney is coming off a string of above-average singles, but this is the fourth single off Welcome To the Fishbowl, and the inspiration doesn’t run quite as deep this time around. Certainly not deep enough to float his pirate ship.

Young Jeezy featuring 2 Chainz—“R.I.P.”
#69

Is he talking about his career? Not yet, I guess.

Chris Young—“I Can Take It From There”
#97

For assembly-line made country slap and tickle, not bad. But I’d have less doubt about his lust if Young didn’t use so many pre-formed parts to put it across.

Wale featuring Tiara Thomas—“Bad”
#99

This is the first time a Wale record has gotten my attention since he teamed up with Lady Gaga on “Chillin’” nearly four years ago. Once again it’s the woman who makes the track worth hearing. When Tiara Thomas announces that she’s never made love but she sure knows how to fuck, the record is essentially over, at least as far as Wale is concerned. Who pays attention to anything else after that? Thomas also outs herself as a cheater who’s guaranteed to break Wale’s heart, which I guess makes her whatever definition of the recently controversial term “bad bitch” you care to apply. The word “bad” applies to Wale, too, but in only one way that I can think of.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Hot 100, Hot 100 Roundup, new this week, singles | Comments Off

Small Miracles
Hot 100 Roundup—3/31/12

Wednesday, April 4th, 2012

Rascal Flatts—“Changed”
#73
What’s happened to these guys? Can a change in label—from the Disney-owned and now defunct Lyric Street to the Nashville giant of independents, Big Machine—make that much difference? Or is it that anyone, no matter what their history, can make good music once in a while? Odds are it’s the second, even if I’d like to think it’s the first, but whatever the case, I have to say it straight out: this is a great record. It’s as if Rascal Flatts had suddenly learned that all those country-pop clichés they’ve been trading in can be used to create truthful, emotional music if you twist them the right way, illuminate them from the inside, and are careful not to overplay your hand. This gets big, like all their records, and the middle eight is a disappointment—just when you hope they’ll dig a little deeper they come out with facile banalities—but overall this is as fine a piece of country gospel as you’ll ever hear. It will be interesting to see what they come up with next.

Neon Trees—“Everybody Talks”
#74
Starting off with a rip of “At the Hop”, the most mechanical of the great early rock records, this proceeds to become at least as mechanical, and even more of a pastiche. When Bruno Mars trades in fifties styles he does so because he lives and breathes them—it may not be original, but it’s organic. These guys, on the other hand, are dabblers playing at cut and paste. But just like “At the Hop”, sometimes being mechanical works; this moves fast and hard, and never lets up. It’s as shallow as they come, but it’s also exciting. Wonder if we’ll hear from them again?

One Direction—“One Thing”
#90
One Direction want to have it both ways: they want their pop to be simple enough to appeal to young girls, but they also want it to be hard and modern enough to appeal to girls who are a few years older. The instrumentation here sounds like it comes off a modern dance floor, but the song also uses pop tricks that are so old they probably seem fresh to anyone under the age of twenty (I haven’t heard the stutter beat they use in the chorus for over a decade, at least). The problem is the modern part of is so heavy-handed and leaden that it kills the older, poppier bits. If they want to last more than six months they (or their handlers) need to come up with better stuff than this.

Eli Young Band—“Even If It Breaks Your Heart”
#91
In the main, the shift in influence in country rock from The Eagles to Tom Petty is an improvement: the songs are faster, the grooves stronger, and the sense of self-satisfaction is more manageable. But even at his best Petty had his own pretensions, to say the least, and most of the bands that are influenced by him tend to lean on his trademark hits rather than his better, more eccentric numbers. They all want to be “The Hardest Part” instead of “American Girl”. Eli Young is no exception, and sings about his early days learning his rock and roll over a backing band that may as well be The Heartbreakers jamming the usual changes. It isn’t terrible, but streaming your personal perspective through clichés doesn’t break the clichés, it reinforces them. Which, come to think of it, is almost exactly what Petty did most of the time.

Young Jeezy featuring Ne-Yo—“Leave You Alone”
#95
Ne-Yo didn’t just write a hook for Jeezy— it sounds like he gave him a whole goddamned song, one that he had a chorus and a bridge for but no verses. This shouldn’t be a surprise; lyrics have always been Ne-Yo’s weakness; he’s melodically gifted, but he has a hard time making words both flow and mean something. What he should do, instead of handing songs to rappers like Jeezy, is find himself a decent lyricist and finish the songs himself. Easier said than done, I know, but this is just sad.

Bella Thorne—“TTYLXOX”
#98
The lyrics would sound dated even if this song had come out two years ago, and the music it draws on is even older, but that could be said of just about every piece of Disney pop, and nothing could stop this from being a joy from start to finish. If that sounds corny, so be it. Real joy is always in short supply on the pop charts, viewed either as manipulative or childish. The only place you normally find it is in music made for tweens and pre-teens, where too often it sounds simplistic or condescending. This is neither. It will never make radio aside from the Disney Channel, and most likely will never hit any real dance floor, which is a greater loss than most people would think. Imagine an ecstasy that isn’t based on sex or chemicals. If you can’t I suppose you should move on to something else, but it’s your loss.

Listen on Spotify

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Hot 100, Hot 100 Roundup, new this week, singles | 2 Comments »

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.

Listen on Spotify

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Hot 100, Hot 100 Roundup, new this week, singles | Comments Off

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

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Hot 100, Hot 100 Roundup, new this week, singles | Comments Off

New this week—5/16/10

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

Eminem—”Not Afraid”
#1
I’m happy for Eminem; he sounds stronger, sharper, on top of things. But this is not a good record. His delivery is forced and too consciously aggressive, his mix of scatological philosophizing and sentimentality confusing when it isn’t embarrassing, the hooks are dull, and there isn’t a single moment of wit or humor. Maybe this is a lead-up to something better, but he’s still trying too hard and thinking too much. He sounds like a dry drunk.

3Oh!3 featuring Ke$ha—”My First Kiss”
#9
Hate to admit it, but this one’s growing on me. It gets a certain kind of lust just right, and Ke$ha helps to tamper down some of the more offensive edges of 3Oh!3′s masculine aggression. They’re still crude and simplistic, but as long as they’re playing on a level field and the hooks are catchy enough, I have no problem with that.

Glee Cast
“Total Eclipse of the Heart”, #16
“Run Joey Run”, #61
“Ice Ice Baby”, #74
“Physical”, #89
“U Can’t Touch This”, #92
Campy trash like this week’s selections should be perfect for a show like this, but if they had any fun with these songs on the program you’d never know it by the music. They approach these songs with the same stolid seriousness and Broadway earnestness with which they approach everything else. If that seriousness is intended as a joke, it’s never been funny, but I don’t think it is. As far as I can tell the only joke is: “Look, I’m singing those trashy hits your parents get all nostalgic about.” Only “Ice Ice Baby”, which was half a joke to begin with (in retrospect it may be the greatest rap parody ever), comes across.

Drake—”Find Your Love”
#34
This isn’t great, but it’s the first Drake record I’ve heard where I feel I’m listening to Drake, and not his imitation of somebody else. A step in the right direction, if nothing else.

Young Jeezy featuring Plies—”Lose My Mind”
#35
In a way, it’s good to know that people like Jeezy, and even Plies, are still celebrating the thug—or, as they call it, goon—life. As hip-hop has moved further towards dance-pop, and Euro-dance-pop at that, it’s only right that there’s someone on the charts to remind us of how a lot of people still live. Not that Jeezy and Plies take any of that seriously, and this is as trashy and crude as you might imagine, but it’s also clever (“We drink that rozay til we black out/wake up, drink some more, pass back out”), and they’re representing all the same.

Lee Brice—”Love Like Crazy”
#97
This starts off with so much down-home country syrup, especially in the vocals, that it’s hard not to wonder if it might be intended as parody. Then you get to the second verse, where the clean living, hard working, loving, praying small town southern man sells his one man computer business to Microsoft for big bucks, and suddenly you find yourself somewhere beyond parody, where the brushing of nostalgic country cliches against modern life generates a form of artless surrealism. Brice sings the whole thing straight, and I don’t think it’s intended as a joke, which only makes it weirder. It’s one of those odd moments where worlds collide, garishly, in the place you’d least expect.

Theory Of A Deadman—”All Or Nothing”
#99
I have no idea what a theory of a deadman would be, but these guys do inspire me to suggest a new definition of a deadman: a guy whose greatest ambition in life is to be Nickelback.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Hot 100, new this week, singles | 1 Comment »

New This Week

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

Drake featuring Kanye West, Lil Wayne & Eminem—”Forever”
#8
The beat is rote, the raps display a high amount of craft but little inspiration, and the air of self-congratulation is so thick it’s a wonder anyone else can breathe when these guys are in the room, but that’s not what makes this record so offensive. What’s makes this record so offensive is Drake, who lies through his teeth every damn minute of it. Exactly when did a guy who was a regular cast member on a successful TV series from the time he was fifteen shovel shit at the mall? When he was signing autographs on promotional tours? Or was that an episode of DeGrassi High he somehow confused with real life the way Ronald Reagan used to argue government policy by reminiscing about movies he’d been in? And when Drake says “nothing was done for me” what exactly does he mean? He’s got Lil Wayne for a mentor, he’s got a father who’s a well-respected session drummer, and his uncle is Larry Graham, formerly of Sly and the Family Stone and Graham Central Station, one of the most influential bass players in the history of funk and R&B. None of them lent him a hand or showed him a few chops or opened the occasional door or offered a few words of advice? Ever? I realize it’s accepted in the rap world to emphasize and exaggerate your hard knock past, but inventing one out of whole cloth strikes me as going way too far.

Drake featuring Lil Wayne & Young Jeezy—”I’m Going In”
#40
Drake has nothing to say, Lil Wayne sounds uninspired and repeats himself, and Young Jeezy says “motherfucker” a lot. This is a statement of purpose?

Leona Lewis—”Happy”
#50
Weird lyrics; they seem defensive, as if they were trying to justify the metaphorical excesses of her first hit, “Bleeding Love”. Maybe somebody suggested to Ryan Tedder he’d gone a little too far last time. Whatever the case, this is, thankfully, less self-abusive than “Bleeding” (or at least less graphic), and the chorus, surprisingly enough, almost lives up to the title. If Lewis wasn’t trying so hard to be the new Mariah Carey this might even be tolerable.

Kid Cudi featuring MGMT & Ratatat—”Pursuit of Happiness (Nightmare)”
#59
It opens with Cudi (or at least his “lonely stoner” persona) rolling a joint, ends with a booze and dope fueled hangover, and in between ruminates, without relying too heavily on banalities, on a stoner lifestyle that sounds half fun and games and half self-medicated chronic depression. In other words, an interesting record, but also a trifle boring. The sound effects provided by Ratatat and MGMT are far less interesting than the borrowed dubstep of “Day ‘n’ Nite”; if this is the kind of music the guy listens to on a regular basis, it’s no wonder he doesn’t want to get out of bed

LMFAO—”La La La”
#61
Their borrowed lover man moves and borrowed techno are far less entertaining than their borrowed offensiveness (see “I’m In Miami Bitch”). Which wasn’t all that entertaining to begin with.

Mariah Carey—”I Want To Know What Love Is”
#66
In a way I feel sorry for Carey. After mounting her comeback and making the best music of her career over her last two albums (which wouldn’t be saying much, I know, execpt that there was truly excellent material on both records), she finds the ground shifting under her feet once again. The modern R&B she mastered so effortlessly had peaked with Usher over a year before her comeback album, and her older, massively successful style has been usurped by the likes of Leona Lewis, who gushes over-the-top sentimentality in a way Carey wouldn’t think to do now. And so, after a few flop singles and a couple of hits that were nowhere near the overwhelming sellers she’s used to, Carey goes back to the safety position of the power ballad (and a hoary old 80′s classic power ballad at that—”classic” in this case meaning a Foreigner song that everyone has heard to death already), unleashes her pipes at the upper limit of her range (though only near the end and deep in the mix, thank God), and generally pulls out all the commercial stops, and still the best she can get for a debut is number 66. The shame of it is that until this takes off for the Church of Our Lady Mariah of the Golden Larynx it shows more maturity and subtlety and soulfullness than any ballad she’s ever recorded. It’s not a great song, but for awhile she almost makes something great out of it—until, that is, she feels the need to ignore the song completely and massage her audience with her voice.

The Black Eyed Peas—”Meet Me Halfway”
#75
Like it or not, Fergie’s feigned soulfulness is a kind of home truth for a lot of fans out there, and I for one think that the Peas’ resistance to polishing up their singing is an attribute, certainly commercially if not always artistically. They appear to have no aesthetic principals at all, yet also come across as both friendly and likeable. This could be nothing but commercial calculation, but since they were pretty much like that even when they weren’t selling any records (and since “My Humps”, which is obviously the pattern for a lot of the new album, took them as much by surprise as anyone), I doubt it. They may well have fallen on this formula by accident, but who can fault them for running with it? Like it or not, they’re producing something that’s truly new, and they’ve convinced an army of fans to go along with them.

Bon Jovi—”We Weren’t Born To Follow”
#90
No, you were born to endlessy repeat yourself. And you’re good at it.

The All-American Rejects—”I Wanna”
#95
There’s actually a fairly nifty, if totally unoriginal, song under all the ego flashing, and under the influence of the remasters I detect a similarity in structure, melody and rhythm to the Rubber Soul era Beatles. But the Beatles usually knew how to keep their egos from getting in the way of their music (at least most of the time), something I doubt these guys will ever learn. To them, flaunting their ego is the music.

Carrie Underwood—”Cowboy Casanova”
#96
Always hip to the latest fab trends, Underwood harkens to the success of Katy Perry, mines some bubble-glam rhythms from the seventies, and even dresses up in a glittery drum-majorette jacket for the cover (or icon, or whatever you call it these days). It’s nice to see Nashville paying attention to a different part of the seventies, even if they still remain lost in that decade. The lyrics are generic, and this doesn’t hit as hard as “Before He Cheats”, but I suspect good clean fun like this is the best we can ever expect from Underwood.

Alice In Chains—”Check My Brain”
#99
I have one question: did they distort those guitars the old-fashioned way, by playing with the tape reels, or did they auto-tune them? Also, is it just my imagination, or is this song actually about how nice it is to live in California? I’m probably missing some ironic or cynical lyrical clue, but I can’t bring myself to listen closely enough to find out. Those guitars give me too much of a headache.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Hot 100, new this week, singles | Comments Off