Yolanda Be Cool - We No Speak Americano

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and the award for Song No One Has Any Reason To Listen To When Not Dancing goes to...

Yolanda Be Cool
We No Speak Americano
Club Anthem
#66 (LoMid)
Jan 13, 2011
Johnson Peterson

Sylvester Martinez

Duncan Maclennan

Renato Carosone

Nicola Salerno

Johnson Peterson

Sylvester Martinez

Duncan Maclennan

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The last time I reviewed this song, I wondered if I could get away with a one line review... and now I'm spilling more (virtual) ink on the awful thing; it is slightly less awful without Pitbull chanting “Bon Bon Bon Bon” every couple seconds. It's still a Run, no question, but it benefits, as most songs do, from the lack of bon bon bonning.

Aside from that, there's almost nothing to say; it's an old standard that's been chopped up and had a dance beat added to it. At least when Rednex decided to make a dance-floor anthem out of “Cotton-Eyed Joe,” they actually recorded a cover version of the folk standard-- adding a simple beat to a1950s novelty tune barely even counts as a remix, no matter how many times they loop the instrumental sections.

Counting my blessings, the most annoying repetition in the Pitbull version is lessened here: the bleeping lead line made from a single horn sample is there, but it's not a constant irritant, quacking away through the entire song.  It also eventually changes (gasp!)

I'm not sure this song is anything but a kick drum thump meant to keep people dancing. It's barely a song, and there's hardly anything to say about it, other than I never want to hear it again.

RUN!

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

Flo Rida - Club Can't Handle Me

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The cookie cutter may be the same, but at least the cookies taste slightly better

Flo Rida
Club Can't Handle Me
Club Anthem
#33 (HiMid)
Jan 13, 2011
Tramar Dillard
Carmen Key
Kasia Livingston
Mike Caren
David Guetta
Frédéric Riesterer
Giorgio Tuinfort
David Guetta
Frédéric Riesterer

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I've often complained about the eurodisco/house-derived dance music being stamped out of a rusty and overused cookie cutter (somebody clean that thing!), but what always grates is not so much an adherence to formula as the laziness and lack of ambition. What I really hate is music that sounds like it was tossed off in 10 minutes (one beat, four chords, modulate for the chorus... okay, done). There's a place for music assembled by downloading a couple royalty-free loops and throwing them together in a prescribed pattern: it's called the internet... where bedroom music amateurs, pornography, make-up tutorial videos, and crank critics share space. The thoughtless, thrown-together music backing Taio Cruz and Rihanna belong on the radio as much as I belong in the New York Times.

(I'm dying for the ironic comeuppance of that last bit to strike... from either side)

With all that in mind, “Club Can't Handle Me” isn't half bad-- it's completely a product of it's house-based formula, sure, but some work went into writing it. There are music breaks in the verses, including hard stops and a weird, wavetable-sounding freakout in the bass (check out the crazy synth at 1:01), and there's a chord suspension that stetches lines in the third verse and actually builds anticipation. The beat is standard, but at least offers a few breaks, and the whole thing actually sounds dance-floor ready; it doesn't sound like sluggish pop written for housecleaning or car stereo commutes, it is meant to bounce in a club.

Is it just me, or is there a $50 Casio (set to Violin) playing the base chords to Lennon's “Imagine” in the beginning of this song?

You know I know how
To make em stop and stare as I zone out
The club can't even handle me right now
Watchin you I'm watchin you we go all out
The club can't even handle me right now

Lyrically, there's almost no conversation to have: there's not a single workable rhyme in the chorus, and the verses are just bouncy rhythm (Flo Rida claims to be “arrogant, like yeah,”) but I really don't care that much... nothing in the lyrics strikes me in any way, neither clever nor irritating. I can always do without “put your hands up” chanting, but after the horror this genre's inflicted on me, “Club Can't Handle Me” feels pretty innocuous.

I suppose it's all a matter of perspective: I've heard so much dance music that can't be played in war zones for fear of violating the Geneva Convention, I'm disproportionately impressed by a song that would at least cause a debate within the tribunal. Truth be told, it's not even a very good song... but it isn't offensively awful, and it deserves some credit for being better than so many of its peers.

Walk

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

Train - Shake up Christmas

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And you even put "Ho Ho Ho" in the chorus.

Train
Shake Up Christmas
Christmas
#99 (Low)
Dec 30, 2010
Train
Butch Walker

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Oh shit, don't tell me Sugar Ray's back.

No... okay... it's just Train. I'm not sure it's less painful, really-- it's always hard to listen to white guys who developed their idea of “soulful” vocals from years of intense Sublime fandom. It takes a very special band to marry a song that missed the cut from a 1996 Jock Rock compilation to Christmas lyrics, I suppose.

Writing Christmas songs, in general, is a bad idea for any modern musician-- most, like “Shake Up Christmas,” will hit cut-out bins on December 26^th and never be heard from again. In the rare instance a modern pop star's Christmas song sticks, it's usually a tragic event for the world of music... I'm pretty sure when George Carlin said “The wrong two Beatles died first,” he'd just listened to McCartney's “Wonderful Christmas Time,” a song that can be counted as a crime against humanity.

It sounds like the band's hedging its bets, too, because there's almost nothing Christmasy in the lyrics-- the verses mention Santa a couple times, but the main theme of the song is that little children wish everything would be nice. That's fine, as far as it goes, but it's such a dim bulb sentiment, and we have the world's cheesiest chorus to wash it down.

Shake it up
Shake up the happiness
Wake it up
Wake up the happiness
Come on, ya'll
It's Christmas time
Ho ho ho
Ho ho ho
It's Christmas time

Since the song starts with our narrator saying he's going to tell us a story that he can't quite remember, the chorus makes sense in perspective: this guy has no idea what he's talking about. There were children, once upon a time, who prayed and hoped for... um... shaking up the happiness? Sure. All over the world.

They pray to Santa, of course... Jesus has no place on secular radio. I sort of assumed Christmas songs would get the kind of pass that's universally applied to country music, but if Train doesn't want to sing about Christ in their Christmas song, so be it. There could be a whole discussion about how the holiday existed long before Christians (where'd that pine tree come from?), but that would take up too much space... what's important is: plenty of non-Christians are pro-Christmas.

What's more important within the context of this song is: Train doesn't know any of that (or if they do, they're not trying to communicate it in this song). This is a thirdhand tale by a guy who's pretty sure he heard about some little girl wishing that the world would be full of happiness, and that she'd be on “Santa's magic list.” Santa's list is magic? Since when? Is that why it needs to be checked twice?

Another problem I have here: I don't think of myself as racist, but can we ban white guys from singing “come on, ya'll” ever again? Also, turning the already weak pop laziness of “oh oh”s into “ho ho ho”s is a pretty tacky way to Christmasize your maddeningly awful chorus.

I suppose the mid-90's hey-isn't-this-Sugar-Ray?ness of this song proves that some things never go out of style. This song isn't one of them... but Columbia Records doesn't know that, and they're devoted to proving a moronic song excavated in a time capsule, with a big enough advertising budget and plenty of payola to radio stations, can hit #99 on the charts on the week of Christmas. Good job, guys.

RUN!

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

PS: Extra nausea factor: I just found out that this song is also a Coke commercial. Trying desperately to find Writer/Producer credits, I kept coming up with business articles about Coca-Cola's marketing strategy.

3OH!3 - Hit It Again

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Okay everybody: Keytar dance party!  Whee!

3OH!3
Hit It Again
Sleaze
#33 (LoMid)
Dec 30, 2010
Sean Foreman
Nathaniel Motte

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If a song ever conjured the image of guys trying to look cool playing keytars, this is it.

This group seems like they're trying to create Motley Crue-style promiscuity rock out of hilariously chaste and wimpy synth pop. Everything about this song sounds like a middle-school boy bragging about nonexistent sexual exploits. From the tragically autotuned “I'll make you say Ooh!” intro to the “Woah oh!” chorus, this song is using its dad's shaving cream and razor even though it doesn't even have peachfuzz to shave: it wants to show you how grown up it is, but using “fuck” in the chorus can't undo the fact that the little kids named their band 3OH!3.

(note the exclamation point)

This is now, that was then
You broke my heart
I let you in
This is now, that was then
I fucked around
with all your friends
Woah oh, woah oh
Woah oh oh oh
Woah oh, woah oh
Woah oh oh oh
This is now, that was then
Forget all about the past
and let's hit it again

Near as I can make out, the narrative thrust of this song is: our singer is a wanton ass who fucked his way through all of his ex's girlfriends, and the girl in question broke his heart after he “let her in,” so she obviously deserves that kind of thing. Time has passed, however, and the sleazy manchild is up for another tumble because, hey, heartbreaker on not, he'd like to hit it again.

Can't imagine why she'd need so much convincing. Especially since she's definitely real. You just haven't met her because she lives in Canada. This guy's totally had sex before.

I figure that's the gist... but for the life of me I can't decipher how the opening verse fits in. What the hell does “I got the dirty ol' hands of a drummer in a band but I never really hit the sticks. I got the sunburn tan of every working man who spent a minute in a ditch” have to do with the It he devotes the song to hitting again? Is he trying to tell us how tough he is (even though he's neither a drummer nor a day laborer)? More importantly, how does it relate to the Woah Ohs?

That kind of incoherent posturing makes me wonder about our narrator... he's obviously a total badass, and we know he fucked around with all this girl's friends, but I wonder how she broke his heart. Maybe she told him his hair looked silly... that'd be hard on this guy, but it's the kind of heartbreak you have to survive if you want to grow up to be My Darkest Days.

Musically, I suppose I have to give it some credit for doing a little something with rhythm; especially in the verses, someone put some effort into the synths and the beats. When the chorus hits, though... that's when I imagine the keytars coming out: Keytar dance party! Eurodisco bounce, everybody! Wheee!

er... I mean... “Woah oh!” I don't think the guy with the sunburn tan of every working man wants to acknowledge that his chorus is “Wheee!” and sounds like it's meant to be embraced by the mustache and short-shorts crowd.

The first time that chorus broke, it made me laugh pretty hard... but I'm not giving this one a pass for unintentional hilarity. This song's multi-layered bad-- it makes me want to strangle the singer, and musical shift in the chorus only made me laugh because it's so glaringly awful.

RUN!

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

The Band Perry - If I Die Young

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Death to the Virginal Country Princesses... literally

The Band Perry
If I Die Young
Hallmark
#33 (HiMid)
Dec 30, 2010
Kimberly Perry
Nathan Chapman
Paul Worley

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If I was having any lingering guilt about not hating Taylor Swift, The Band Perry just expunged it... this Virginal Pop Country Princess thing is excruciating. If Carrie Underwood is there for mother/daughter tears at weddings and George Strait is working on dad mortality tearjerkers, The Band Perry is bleeding sap even more nefarious: dead kids.

Well, dead Virginal Pop Country Princesses, anyway... by measure of subject material alone, Swift looks like a Rhodes Scholar in comparison.

On one hand, this song is a letter to a grieving mother from her dead teenager: “It's okay, mom. I lived enough.” That strikes me as really tacky; I'm sure grieving mothers want to hear that, but cheap platitudes from pop country don't sound particularly genuine. This song can serve as 3:40 of “God just needed another angel. That's why he had to take her.” Thanks, Hallmark. I'm sure you've cornered this market.

A penny for my thoughts
Oh no, I'll sell them for a dollar
They're worth so much more
after I'm a goner
and maybe then you'll hear
the words I've been singing
funny when you're dead
how people start listening

On the other: this song is an extended teenage “They'd miss me if I was gone” moping dressed up in country princess rainbows. I suppose it's nice to know that it's not just the girls with multiple lip rings and tri-colored hair that do this, but there's a lot of creepiness in there. There's no mistaking the intent of “funny when you're dead how people start listening.” 

You never paid attention to me, but now you'll have to listen. Has Trent Reznor's stock sunk so low that The Band Perry can chisel into his market? That's a little sad.

Well, that... and the dollar/goner line is a bigger groaner than anything Taio Cruz could have written... but this song is full of terrible rhymes. That's the one that really stands out, though.

The connotations of the song are that Virginal Pop Country Princesses are, of course, virgins who will be welcomed into heaven (“I'll be wearing white when I come into your kingdom, I'm as green as the ring on my little cold finger.”)  Should I even comment on the song's presupposition of a Christian heaven?  Nah... everyone knows country music isn't for non-Christians.  When we die, the lord has no intention of making us into rainbows ("Lord make me a rainbow, I'll shine down on my mother, she'll know I'm safe with you when she stands under my colors.")

Phew... it must be sign-off time; I keep wanting to beat this song with its own lyrics, even though there's no further point to be made.  It's a sappy, pouty tearjerker... gee, I wonder who's making a song like this climb the charts.

RUN!

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

Lil Wayne - 6 Foot, 7 Foot

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Lil Wayne is silent, like so much of the pasta he admires

Lil Wayne
6 Foot, 7 Foot
Bragging
#11 (High)
Dec 30, 2010
Dwayne Carter
Peter Panky, Jr.
Shrondrae Crawford
Bangladesh

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Okay, that's just annoying.

Musically, this is just an endless repetition of two Harry Belafonte loops, thin and drained of all low end, just sort of chirping away. The Belafonte bedrock is assisted by low and large kick/sub/notes, and a single “ssh” sound and hand clap... set that up and just keep it going for four minutes.

Now marry that with a really monotonous freestyle from Lil Wayne... no chorus, no refrain, no nuthin-- it's just his unchanging, mid-paced flow until Cory Gunz shows up at the end. Somewhere after two minutes of Lil Wayne, he starts to sound like Chris Tucker in The Fifth Element to me (he's kinda squeaky), but I'm just beat until I'm numb by Wayne's nonstop barrage of syllables: at first, it seems like the sampled loop (“six foot, seven foot, eight foot bunch!”) would serve as a refrain, but after a little bit, Wayne just raps over that, too... and to what end? The guy just keeps blasting away over his own song's chorus to pontificate the aural qualities of lasagna.

Paper tracer, tell that paper, look I'm right behind ya
Bitch, real G's move in silence like lasagna
People say I'm borderline crazy sorta kinda
Woman of my dreams, I don't sleep so I can't find her
You n***a's are gelatin, peanuts to an elephant
I got through that sentence like a subject and a predicate

Wait, what?

Dude, think about what you're going to say before you say it. There are an amazing number of things that fail to make sense in that verse, even without the silent lasagna.

No matter how many ways I approach that, I can't find a way to make it less weird.  At its most clever (and this might be a stretch), he's insinuating that the"g" in lasagna is silent (it isn't-- that's like saying the "z"s in pizza are silent)... and that's the best possible interpretation.  Outside of that, I guess it might mean that noodles don't make noise.

When Cory Gunz takes his verse, he starts with a weird, almost flutey monotone that threatens to be more annoying than Lil Wayne, but not only does he ditch that tone after a few seconds, he also doubletimes some of his lines, giving the song some much needed varaiation in the vocal rhythm... the best flourish coming when, in the middle of rapid-fire lyrics, he says “pause” instead of pausing. It's almost like he was going so fast through the script, he read the stage directions aloud.

For as annoying as this song is, I've got to admit: it's different... so my annoyance is tempered by a grudging respect for anyone who thought this was a good idea (I never would have thought of that) and actually turned the annoying fucking thing into a hit.

How the hell did that happen? Can Lil Wayne make this sort of thing work with sheer force of will?

Walk

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

Sean Kingston - Letting Go

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And now, a four minute meditation on the duttiness of love

Sean Kingston
Letting Go (Dutty Love)
Club Anthem
#98 (Low)
Dec 23, 2010
Ester Dean
Tor Hermansen
Mikkel Eriksen
Sean Kingston
Onika Maraj
Stargate

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At the onset, I just don't get the refrain. What the hell does “Dutty dutty dutty dum dum” mean? “Dutty” is just not in my vocabulary. I'm not sure if the love is dutty or not, but I get the feeling that the chorus could be “do do do do do do da da” without any real impact on the song (losing the duttiness isn't going to change the meaning) and though I'm almost never a fan of do do dos, they aren't measurably worse than dutty dutty dutty.

Kingston has basically Caribbean'd me out of this song (so... “dutty” is “dirty,” then?), and I really can't make out any of the words; between the accent and the egregious use of autotune, I can't get much out of the verses but the rhythm. This is the worst autotune I've heard: there are digital jumps and skips in the middle of syllables. The words sound like they've been thrown into a blender.

While we're stuck with those annoying raver synths and autotune abuse, at least they're not using that stock house beat. I guess if the whole thing is a happy, sunny dance track, it's all about the rhythm anyway, so I've got to be thankful that at least the rhythm was done with some skill.

Also, I can't figure Nicki Minaj out-- she's obviously talented; her part in “Monster” was too good to be coincidence or blind luck. Usually when she pops up in a song, though, it's just not that interesting (leaning towards “annoying,”) and this is another tune where she doesn't really offer much.

Content-wise, I think the song is mostly about loosening up and having fun... I'm still having a tough time figuring out how that meshes with dutty (dirty?) love, but then again, if the refrain is “dutty dutty dutty dum dum,” maybe I shouldn't worry too much about it making sense.

Walk

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell: