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: