Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Christina Perri - Jar of Hearts

Fairly important: the formatting on this post goes to hell in most feeds, and it will be best read at ericonthecharts.blogspot.com

Christina Perri will survive (after moping around for a while)


Christina Perri
Jar of Hearts
Sad Bastard
#33 (HiMid)
Christina Perri
Drew Lawrence
Barrett Yeretsian
B.Yeretsian
C. Perri
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First, a quick wager that this song was originally titled “Who Do You Think You Are?” but someone decided that “Jar of Hearts” was more unique (and therefore more memorable.) What they seem to have overlooked is the inanity of the new title: pulled from the abysmal lyric “Who do you think you are, running round leaving scars, collecting your Jar of Hearts, and tearing love apart,” Jar of Hearts is the kind of phrase only turned by children who protest (too much) their individuality by dressing anachronistically and writing terrible poetry that includes phrases like "jar of hearts."

Far from the Taio Cruz total rhyme failure, “Jar of Hearts” lives in the poetic playground of cheap, easy rhymes (with a few cheating near-rhymes thrown in for good measure). It's a sunny place, this playground; in the center, there's a statue of Lenny Kravitz, and the revelers all want to fly so high in the sky like a butterfly. Most days, Christina Perri sadly dances here by herself, wishing she'd missed the first time you kissed, afraid you'll catch a cold from the ice inside your soul (and hoping you'll notice). Maybe she should bring him some hot soup (how over her Lothario can Perri be, anyway, if she's still concerned he'll catch cold?)

The whole affair seems awfully naive to me, anyway (see also: “Of Course I Don't Listen to the Radio. I'm Not a 15-Year-Old Girl.”) I can't balance all the time it's taken her to get the light back in her eyes after losing the love she loved most with the icy-souled guy running around collecting hearts for his heart jar and tearing love apart... Not to overload my cynic circuits, but this story makes more sense if it's using the Unreliable Narrator device, and Perri has blown a two day mini-relationship with a guy out of proportion to near psychotic levels (“But we kissed! Twice!”)
This song was done with more passion back when it was called “I Will Survive,” and Christina Perri doesn't offer a single thought that isn't borrowed from a vastly superior Gloria Gaynor... and Gaynor sounds like she lived with the guy. If I wanted to listen to someone de-disco Gaynor's anthem, I'd listen to Cake.

Musically, this song is a turgid mope through remedial piano and syrupy, Hallmark strings... and while I appreciate producers trusting a sad song to captivate an audience without a dance beat, but there has to be something here to do the captivating.  A set of lyrics Perri will be embarrassed by in a few years married to clunking piano won't get it done... and it can be done.  Take Nellie McKay, for example: there's a girl (younger than Perri at the time of the taping) at a piano venting some disappointment, frustration, and rage with some real cleverness in the words and some talent with the keys... and doing it live, without all the vocal overdubs and sappy production on Perri's track (Christina Perri can be heard live here, and, on an unrelated note, did I mention Nellie McKay can actually sing?  Dunno why that just popped into my head.)


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


Saturday, April 16, 2011

T-Pain - Best Love Song

Fairly important: the formatting on this post goes to hell in most feeds, and it will be best read at ericonthecharts.blogspot.com

A Tune By Two Guys Who Think the Best Love Song Ever Should Be "The Crunkest"
(Luckily, neither of them know what that means)


T-Pain
Best Love Song
Prom Song
#33 (HiMid)
Faheem Najm
Chris Brown
Young Fyre
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There's a little bit of ironic fun to be had with T-Pain. I hate autotune as much as the next snarky critic, but there's something about the egregious, inhuman, completely over-the-top way that T-Pain does it. If all the R&B vocals on the radio have been autotuned into an almost comical stereotype, T-Pain usually sounds like he's recording a caricature of everyone else. If Homer Simpson were to set up his own recording studio, his output would sound like T-Pain.

That said, I'm starting to feel self-conscious about logging this many Run!s in a row-- seriously? Another awful, awful song? I knew it was going to be bad as soon as I saw Chris Brown's name attached (why can't I shake that guy?), but this continuous flow of thuddingly bad is making me nostalgic for Ke$ha...

“Best Love Song” isn't lacking in self-awareness as much as it's lacking in awareness altogether. I was focused on the self-aware part initially: lines like “And if I'm gonna take her home, it's got to be better than what they play on the radio” while the song isn't just like what they play on the radio, it actually is what they play on the radio... that kind of writing is so ignorant of itself, of what the song is, that it probably ought to appear in the next Tommy Wiseau picture.

Similarly, if the song is to work, “It's gotta be the crunkest, gotta be the loudest. It's gotta be the best love song she ever heard in her life.” Again, the song doesn't seem to understand that not only is it not the crunkest, it's not crunky in the least (there is a significant lack of crunk here. It is crunkless), and it won't be the loudest because stereo systems and club PAs have volume knobs which can make any one song louder than another. Finally, the song doesn't seem to realize that it's not the best love song anyone's ever heard.

Blinded by how the song isn't aware of what it is in the first place, I almost missed the fact that these guys just don't get it. If they're trying to write the best love song anyone's ever heard, why would they want it to be the crunkest? Even if their crunk-failure levels are epic, did they start writing with Crunchy Black in mind, assuming that was the key to the greatest love song ever? Or loudness? Did they believe that in order for their love song to be the best, it would have to be deafeningly loud, because nothing says romance like jet engine volume levels?

The more I think about it, the more I'm sure T-Pain and Chris Brown don't even know what these words mean. The lyrics could be “It's gotta be the most grindcore, gotta be the most klezmer” and they wouldn't make any less sense. It's not like loudness and crunk have anything to do with the junior prom slow dance number they're actually singing.

Turn on the lights (lights! lights!)
give me a mic (give me a mic)
I'm about to sing
and do it just as she likes (la-likes)
Jump off the stage
crowd surfin all the way (cowabunga)
T-Pain's lyrics are generally about the song he's singing, which doesn't seem to have much to do with a love song. Chris Brown, of course, spends his verse preening; it's annoying that he spends so much time reminding us he's god's gift to womankind when there's so much contrary evidence out there. Amidst all the autotuned non-singing, there's a computerized background chorus backing up everything Brown has to say (including “Cowabunga,” which stands alone as the stupidest lyric in a song filled with stupid lyrics). He does promise to sing to you just how you like, and provides some instructions as to what you have to do if you want to get with him. Such a wonderful guy-- you should do what he says.

Musicially, this is just a Prom song. It's too wimpy and lifeless for clubs, and I can't imagine it flourishing anywhere but teenage dances and pop radio... which wouldn't be the case if it were actually the crunkest (or most klezmer) song someone's ever heard.

For unintentional comedic value, the actual song is a cross between Tenacious D's "Tribute" (a song about the best song in the world that isn't actually the best song in the world) and "I Just Had Sex" (a slightly less subtle parody of Prom songs than "Best Love Song," but not by much).  On its own merits, this song is pretty ridiculous, but viewed through the lens of all the comedy that came before it, you could view a pathetic slow-dance prom song demanding it be The Loudest and The Crunkest as the height of satire.

If anyone has information about T-Pain being a comic genius instead of a happenstance pop star, please let me know.

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


Genre: Prom


Oh, the Prom song. These things are as sappy as Hallmark tunes, but they're walking a fine line between true love and getting naked as quickly as possible (usually promising one to get to the other). Generally set up as slow dance fodder, Prom songs are mawkishly sentimental to the point that they probably shouldn't work on anyone who's ever been in an adult relationship... but, hey, that's not their audience.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Black Eyed Peas - The Time (Dirty Bit)

Fairly important: the formatting on this post goes to hell in most feeds, and it will be best read at ericonthecharts.blogspot.com

Um... what's hot right now?  Do those wacky kids still like 80's retro?

Black Eyed Peas
The Time (Dirty Bit)
Club Anthem
#66 (LoMid)
William Adams
Allan Pineda
Damien LeRoy
Franke Previte
John DeNicola
Donald Markowitz
Will.i.am
DJ Ammo
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I've heard Black Eyed Peas used as a punchline more than I've heard their music: I know the names Fergie (from random publicity) and Will.i.am (from appearing in a godawful comic book adaptation).  No one talks about Black Eyed Peas without calling them out for being tin eared, cheesy, and possibly aiming for “so bad its good” guilty pleasure music and missing the mark.  From what I've read, they're regarded in the same way as Two & a Half Men: everyone knows it sucks, but it is wildly popular and profitable.

Comparatively, I actually kinda like the only Black Eyed Peas song I know-- “Let's Get It Started” isn't a great song or anything, but I think it's a fun Party Anthem, and it's good at what it does.  I never could marry the one song I know by them to the pervasive hate for the group.  From where I was standing, they were one for one.

And then I heard “The Time (Dirty Bit)” and every snippit of internet snark ever launched in the Black Eyed Peas' direction came flooding back into my brain.  Suddenly, it makes sense that there's a collective groan every time these guys drop a single, that each new song is treated like it deserves a human rights tribunal.  If “The Time (Dirty Bit)” is any indication of their other output, I'd rather not hear it.

While the production is sharp and shiny (the bass punches, the synths swirl), the music itself is the worst of amateur half-assedness.  My first instinct is to compare it to the songs made with the BuzzTracker freeware in the early 90s, but it would be too disrespectful to tracker musicians as a whole-- even the bedroom keyboard junkies aren't obsessed with sample retriggers and trance-gates to the point of butchering this song's last chorus into stuttery, choppy word salad.

The nonsensical and ill-timed cuts are predicted by the lead in to the first verse: after the intro, the word “you” is clipped and repeated in traditional rave-up form.  I have nothing against that (I've used it myself), but it's just so badly implemented here-- instead of building excitement and anticipation of the next beat dropping, it's overlong and annoying.  These are symptoms of somebody toying with their very first sampler... how does this kind of tin-eared obnoxiousness show up in the product of megastars and hit makers?

All of this reflects how annoying the song is without addressing the quality of the songwriting or the lyrics. We could end now, call this a Run!, and still wouldn't have addressed the fact that about a quarter of the run time of the song is actually a cover of The Time of My Life from Dirty Dancing... but where's the fun in that?  Seriously, if you want to hear someone autotune their way through the chorus of a soundtrack tie-in hit from the mid 80's, this is your song.

(I just re-read that last paragraph.  It gets more ridiculous the longer I think about it.)

No one's going to be surprised to discover that the lyrics are pretty stupid.  I find it baffling that people tried to make a laughingstock of Rebecca Black for the awful lyrics in Friday, but somehow the Black Eyed Peas can toss out gems like “I was born to get wild, that's my style.  If you didn't know that, well, baby, now you know now” with impunity.  There's an implied rhyme between “style” and “now,” too-- if you want to mock idiots singing a bad song, leave the thirteen year old girl alone and turn your attention to the Black Eyed Peas: these are adults, and they weren't handed these words by some mercenary company. They actually wrote these lyrics.

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