Ke$ha - Blow

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Ke$ha might not be too bright, but her handlers, trainers, and writers probably are.

Ke$ha
Blow
Club Anthem
#66 (LoMid)
Feb 10, 2011
Kesha Sebert
Klas Åhlund
Lukasz Gottwald
Allan Grigg
Benjamin Levin
Max Martin
Dr. Luke
Max Martin
Benny Blanco
Kool Kojak

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Actually, I'm a little familiar with Ke$ha: she's the blonde pop star that looks like she came from the factory that manufactures porn stars. I saw her playing a ridiculous laser-synth on Saturday Night Live, trying her best to look like she was having fun (you'd think PornBot Industries would have better “pretending to enjoy what you're doing” software by now)-- to me, Ke$ha usually seems like she's trying to remember complex instructions beyond her understanding, but she's always struggling to look like she's not frightened and confused.

Back door cracked
We don't need a key
We get in for free
No VIP sleaze
Drink that Kool-Aid
Follow my lead
Now you're one of us
You're coming with me

Which is fine, I suppose, because this isn't a half bad club track. Ke$ha's only got a few lines in the verses (which are moronic, sure, but from what I can tell, that's sort of her trademark), but the whole thing hinges on the chorus, which is nothing more than the word “Blow” with a robotic “This place about to” pasted on top of it. The song basically makes a synth lead out of her voice: autotuned to inhumanity, harmonized into a rave chord, and sliced up with a trance gate to give it some rhythm. It stops being Ke$ha and is a mostly inoffensive dance song.

I know, I know... I'm just trying to
drive home my "Interchangeable
Porn Bot" theory.

Until she gets her “rap” verse. I do really hate the valley girl “nya!” sound that skinny pop stars use to hint at their wild bad-assery. If the lyric is “make it rain,” why does it have to be said “make it rayn?” She didn't sound like that for any of the song up til now, and all of the sudden she just manifested a Paris Hilton whine. This song is at its best when it leaves Ke$ha's “personality” out of it.

This is the second song in a row that begins with a fake laugh, too, and while Chris Brown sounds like he's being a dick, Ke$ha sounds more like an actress in over her head-- she just can't convey mirth. I can't quite figure out why they left it in... that laugh goes a long way to support my theory that she's a mannequin they put up on stage while dance music plays.

Honestly, if the pop star doesn't need to write any of the words or music and the voice can be manipulated by a computer so that singing skills are a non-issue, why wouldn't a record company order a new robot from the porn actress factory and use it for videos and album covers? Make sure it's young and pretty, get a new one every few years, and use it to sell their product.

It doesn't make for great music, but it's been a successful business strategy for years.

Walk

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:

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:

Sick Puppies - Maybe

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Wholesomeness from a band called Sick Puppies, sounding like banal 80's rock.  Que?

Sick Puppies
Maybe
Carpe Diem
#66 (LoMid)
Dec 23, 2010
Shimon Moore
Antonina Armato
Tim James

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When the song starts, everyone join me with your best Bono impression:

I have climbed
highest mountain...

Well, that was fun. Maybe we should chip in and buy the Sick Puppies' guitarist an echo pedal. It's christmas, after all: the time for picking on U2. Oh, and free stuff.

This one shifts away from the point where you can make U2 jokes pretty quickly, though-- the verses sink into Richard Marx territory almost immediately, with a kind of Warrant/Poison/Bon Jovi power ballad chorus, a break that was swept off Use Your Illusion's cutting room floor, and just a touch of nasal pop-punk in the lead vocal. If that doesn't sound like an appetizing stew, take it up with the manufacturers.

“Maybe” belies its manufactured origins in its sound: mathematically designed in CAD, played by machines, and then crushed as far as possible into its package. The design of the song is built around the most reliable rock cliches (you remember the turned down half-chorus I mentioned in “The Breath You Take?” Here it is again,) making the first listen come off like a song you've already heard. The inhuman sound, like the layered voices in the chorus and the mechanical, never-varying instruments, were “cleaned up” or “enhanced” in the computer used to record them. As for the crushing*: a song shouldn't be this distorted (not the guitars or one specific sound-- the whole song has been distorted), and it sounds like someone fed it into a piece of gear called “louder for the radio” and turned all its knobs to 11... 

A final note on the sound of this thing: in mixing terminology, you call an instrument without any effects “dry” and one with an effect (like reverb) “wet;” well, this snare drum is soggy. The 80's hairspray bands were lousy with this kind of snare, but this song is absolutely the worst I've ever heard. Apparently, the reason the guitarist can't get his Edge on is because, though he already has a delay pedal, they're using it on the snare drum.

And maybe it's time to change
And leave it all behind
I've never been one to walk alone
I've always been scared to try

So why does it feel so wrong
To reach for something more
To wanna live a better life
What am I waiting for

'Cause nothing stays the same
Maybe it's time to change

Maybe I'm a dreamer
Maybe I'm misunderstood
Maybe you're not seeing
The side of me you should

Lyrically, “Maybe” is the first Carpe Diem song of the project: full of seizing the moment, doing your best, and taking advantage of a brand new day... which I wouldn't mind so much, if it a) wasn't so corny, and b) keeps switching back and forth between “I'm good enough” and “but what if I fail?” When the chorus is so “Yay, I can do it!” it's hard to listen to the whiny verses... well, that, and it's hard to listen to a song that begins with “Maybe I'm just a dreamer.”

Maybe it's hopeless
Maybe I should just give up
And what if I can't trust myself
What if I just need some help

If you don't think it can get sillier than the first verse, verse two opens with a line that has me picturing the guy sulking down the street in the rain, bangs in his face, kicking rocks down the street: “Maybe it's hopeless, maybe I should just give up.” Golly, I'll bet another peppy chorus will have him walking on sunshine again... it keeps cropping up like a Stuart Smalley sketch: whenever you start with stinkin' thinkin', you turn to the mirror and say “I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and, doggonnit, people like me!”

Not to digress, but when the band name is Sick Puppies, how is this the song I get?  It's like firing up a band called "The Wholesome Family" and getting a song about animal necrophiliacs overthrowing the government.  How does the band name like "Sick Puppies" evoke a message of Hey, everybody!  Reach for the stars! 

Even if the lyrics are pretty silly, it's the wild over-production that makes this one unbearable. I'm sure if it was just a guy with a guitar, this song would... well, it'd sound better, at least. As it is, the song already sounds dated, a stale blend of radio rock clichés that have very little to do with chords or lyrics... this sounds the way it does because someone decided to make it into an overblown facsimile of LA rock at its biggest and most inane.

It's the audio equivalent of a geeky kid with huge glasses squeezing into tight, vinyl pants.

Walk

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

*We could follow an aside about Mastering (a process that, among other things, is often used to make songs sound louder on the radio) down a long and winding rabbit hole, but I'm not going to bore you with that. Generally, when a whole song is crushed to death and distorted in the process, someone did a shitty mastering job... this song is a fine example of a really shitty mastering job. For a quick overview, here is an NPR feature on the issue.

Enrique Iglesias - I Like It

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Another thing Enrique likes: Not trying too hard

Enrique Iglasias
I Like It
Club Anthem
#33 (HiMid)
Dec 23, 2010
Enrique Iglesias
Nadir Khayat
Armando Pérez
Lionel Richie
RedOne

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The spots around #11 are still jammed up with songs I've already reviewed, so we groan and head into the next euro dance pop track... I'm not about to pretend that this song isn't all kinds of terrible, but it is pretty lively. Sure, “I Like It” is guilty of everything I hate about this stuff (stock house synths, autotuned vocals, uninventive beats, moronic lyrics, and a structure so dated and overused it might be template included in Apple's Garageband studio software), but it is slightly less guilty than a lot of songs in its weight class. That it has any lively bounce at all is pretty helpful; most songs like this are so lifeless and stale-sounding I can't imagine anyone dancing to them.

Past that, all of my previous complaints remain valid-- can we please, please, stop holding four chords on a trancegate-equipped keyboard and setting it to a house beat? I don't want to keep complaining about it, but it just keeps happening. Since it all happens in exactly the same way, the songs grouped together by this laziness are all pretty indistinguishable...

Lyrically... okay, let's just all admit that the words to this song don't matter. This song, written from a guy's perspective, implies: “You there, hot girl with whom I already have a sexual connection. We can hook up tonight, and though there's a little bit of flirting going on right now, we'll be fucking less than ten minutes after we leave the club.” It says: “Know the way you're sexy dancing implies we'll be fucking soon? I like that.”

Well, duh.

Next up, a song about how good food tastes when you're hungry.

Or about how being in love is better than being sad. (Oh hell, I just tripped over the delta between broad satire and actual songs.)

The bridge offers two concepts that smack of an overt 80'sness: shaking your love (which has been lying dormant since the era of Debbie Gibson), and not stopping until you get enough (who was that guy with the one glove? I seem to remember him being a really good dancer). This doesn't really bother me that much-- if a dance/club/party song is free of the kind of lyrical atrocities you'll find in Dynamite, I'll give it a pass.

This is the second Pitbull guest spot, and I think I like him in that role. Granted, “Bon Bon” was nails-on-a-chalkboard bad, but I kind of like him rapping the guest verse in these dance songs. Then again, I don't really like these dance songs, so by the time Pitbull shows up, he's usually a break in the drudgery that comes with generic-sounding tracks.

My most enduring complaint is that it's just another one of these songs... When track after track is just the same song over again, it's awfully hard to write anything about them. The lyrics aren't as stupid as Taio Cruz's and the beats aren't as limp as Rihanna's, but it's not really much different from those songs either.

Walk

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

Far East Movement - Like a G6

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An uptempo dance track about a downtempo chill scene.
Scanning for self-aware irony: None detected.

Far East Movement
Like a G6
Club Anthem
#11 (High)
Dec 9, 2010
Jae Choung

Virman Coquia

Niles Holowell-Dhar

Kevin Nishimura

James Roh

David Singer-Vine
The Cataracs

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Well there it is: the dreaded G6 song. This was the song that sat at Billboard's #1 when I started looking into how to tackle this project, it was #1 when I began writing, and stayed #1 even after that. “Like a G6” is absolutely the reason I didn't pick the number one song of any week as a review, a song would get there and just sit for weeks at a time... and still, I wondered about the song itself.

I wasn't so curious as to go out and listen to it until it landed on my review list-- let's not go nuts (I'm pretty much at capacity for pop hits. I'm not seeking out extras.) Camping at the top spot could could mean anything (iTunes sales to kids obsessed with sizzurp? Label payola?) Maybe the song's success is a result of the song itself being really good.

Stranger things have happened... but I'm glad I didn't have my hopes up.

Truth be told, this thing isn't that bad-- it's a total club song, even if the lyrics are the polar opposite of the music, this is a classic 303-style squelchy bassline with a retro drum machine beat (the lyrics call out the 808). It's probably done with emulators or soundalikes, because no one can afford a real TB-303 or TR-808 these days, but it's okay by me. High art it's not, and it can't compete with something that has great beats and music (I was listening to “Chonkyfire” off Aquemini today), but it is better than the limp beats I've heard from Will.i.am and so many others. “Like a G6” sounds like it belongs in a club; it actually sounds like people would dance to it. This beat is bangin' in exactly the way "Check It Out"s is not.

Poppin bottles in the ice
like a blizzard
When we drink we do it right
gettin slizzer'd
Sippin sizzurp in my ride
like Three 6
Now I'm feelin so fly
like a G6

and that's a bit of the problem: lyrically, this is not supposed to be a banging club track. The lyrics are all about getting slizzer'd on sizzurp (there's a wikipedia entry for it under Purple Drank; the wiki doesn't use the actual word, but that's sizzurp: codeine based cough syrup and soda), the flagship drink of chopped & screwed remixes. The chorus even calls out the Three 6 Mafia, formative in the style, but chopped & screwed tracks are slooooooow, sedated even, and not really built for dance clubs.

I probably have to explain: Michelle, our singer, showed us all Lil Jon, and his chopped & screwed remixes were the first I ever heard. Personally, I think it's pretty cool... and I have some love for Lil Jon, too. Whatever you think of him, Lil Jon's got a unique sound and infuses everything he does with his own distinct personality (and, if you can find it, track down the deleted-from-YouTube Lil Jon/Lazytown mashup. That thing rules). Regardless, this is one area where I'm slightly less of a hermit... I'm no authority, sure, but it doesn't take much to figure a sizzurp sippin, Three Six bumpin night doesn't end up at the dance clubs that play “Like a G6.”

Also, what the hell's a G6? Everyone seems to think it's a jet... but I can't find it. Claims made after the song became popular say it's slang for a Gulfstream G650, but I can't dig up anyone calling that plane a “G6” anywhere but in a reference to this song. If someone can offer up any information that Far East Movement isn't picking random syllables so they can rhyme with a call-out to the Three 6 Mafia, let me know. Right now, I'm unconvinced, and I'm going to dictate that any episodes of Fringe that are boring be called “Boringe” so we can finally have a word that rhymes with “orange.” It's no less arbitrary than what's going on here.

Generally, that's where I am with the song: it's not a bad dance track, but it's got antithetical lyrics and strangely Electroclash vocals in the chorus (now there's a fad whose 15 minutes couldn't end quickly enough.) I don't hate it, but it would definitely get on my nerves if I had to listen to it more than I just have.

Walk

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

Lil Wayne - Right Above It

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Cue up your training montage

Lil Wayne
Right Above It
Bragging
#32 (HiMid)
Dec 9, 2010
Dwayne Carter, Jr.
Aubrey D. Graham
Daniel Johnson
Andrew Canton
Kane Beatz

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Wow... that's really heroic. If Rocky was going to train to a hip hop tune, this song would score the montage. The synth horns that open the song could probably make the argument all by themselves: they're pretty obviously coming out of someone's Korg Triton (Lil Wayne, I have two words for you: Miroslav Orchestra. I know you have the hard drive space), but they're endearingly cheesy. This song would probably sound amazing with real horns... but no use crying over spilled samples.

Though the horns are the first thing I noticed, the beats are the best thing about this song. Some work went into the programming on this one. The kick skitters around on the bottom of the track, and there's a lot of complexity in the hats and cymbals, all kept in check by a steady handclap. Somebody was having a lot of fun with the drums when they put this one together.

I thought it was odd that the vocals were so low in the mix-- the music sort of overwhelms the voices in most of the song. I can still make out the lyrics, but the music is way up front... odd for this type of music, but it sort of makes sense when I try to write about the lyrics and keep coming up dry. The music is punched up because the words are kinda boring.

Putting up music this epic to back a brag track begs for some audacity, but the bravado in this just seems commonplace (“I've been fly so long I fell asleep on the fucking plane”). There's money, crews, cars, and girls (“Don't like my women single, I like my chicks in twos”), but no more than anyone else's bragging...  maybe even a little less. Writing this dull makes me wonder why the song needs to exist at all, since it shares space with “Monster.”

Lackluster, but not awful... and it could be worse. The numbers got shuffled this week because #33 was being consumed by, you guessed it, Glee. That puts things in perspective.

Walk

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

Kanye West & Jay Z - Monster

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Nicki Minaj is one for three, but this is the one

Kanye West
Jay-Z
Monster
Bragging
#99 (Low)
Dec 9, 2010
Kanye West
Shawn Carter
William Roberts
Onika Maraj
Justin Vernon
Kanye West

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I never laid out the rule that a week would be reviewed top-down, so this week I'll start with the Low position, simply because it's the song that's having the most impact on the blog. Exactly like changing to a Stay, Walk, Run strategy, Kanye's “Monster” made me recursively add featured and guest stars into my listings for one reason: Nicki Minaj.

There's been a bit of recurrence in the featured slot before, but Nicki made me reconsider the whole system because, though she hasn't been the main name of any song I've reviewed so far, she keeps popping up and always gets some mention. She was autotuned and blank in the awful “Check It Out,” so much so that you'd never really notice it was her; she was my least favorite part of “Bottom's Up,” but I detected some interesting turns in her voice, changing characters from her normal tone to a dainty little girl to a growling beast.

The neat little turns I noticed in “Bottoms Up” live large in “Monster;” three MCs each get a verse, and they get some time to do what they do (the song runs longer than six minutes), but Nicki Minaj is the real monster of the track, a force of nature and a goddamned rockstar. Her verse starts slow, but she's already playing with character in the song; she employs Rastafarian accent at her convenience, sometimes for a line, sometimes just to hit a word. She writes her verse with smaller crescendos, ramping up with the music, digging in and raising intensity as the builds, and switching to her little girl voice when the beat backs off a bit, and then dropping into her growl to cap off a line. Her part has lots of little arcs that follow the music, but eventually builds to a scream and roaring “I'm a motherfuckin Monster!” I didn't really dig her in the last two songs; I love her in this.

The first two verses pale in comparison. Rick Ross in the first verse is solid and serviceable... since this is a brag track and everyone's declaring their monstrousness, you know someone had to pull out and show us his dick (it was bound to happen), but “Have you ever had sex with a Pharaoh? I put the pussy in a sarcophagus. Now she's claiming that I bruised her esophagus” is sort of amazing: even if it makes absolutely no sense*, that dude just rhymed sarcophagus with esophagus. Jay-Z's verse is done in that style where the rapper just can't seem to keep up with the beat-- he never hits the one, always seems to be lagging, and you can hear him struggling for breath in the gaps; I've heard other rappers use this style, so maybe my palette just isn't developed enough to appreciate it, but I don't like it. Regardless, neither of these guys make as much with the music as the lady who follows them.

Musically, this one's pretty good-- I'm not sure how much we're all supposed to be praising Kanye these days (and again: I'm a hermit, and  outside of Garfunkel & Oates, I have no idea where Kanye West falls on the current cultural barometer), but the beats are well written and dramatic, rising and falling within the song to keep its length from flatlining the whole thing. Bon Iver opens the song with an octave-synthesized voice that could just as easily be introducing Dr. Funkenstein and closes with a coda that might have appeared on an early 80's Prince record; neither of these things occur within the body of the song, but “Monster” begins and ends with stylized vocal melodies, both of which are pretty cool.

I have to admit, I'm sort of on the fence with this one... there are parts of “Monster” so good they're outstanding, but it's only bits and pieces, and I'm not sure how often I'd listen to a six-and-a-half minute song simply because I like the third verse. It's compelling, though; this is as close to Stay as a song I'm not actually keeping can get.
 

Walk

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

* the sarcophagus part, I mean-- I'm not so dim as to misunderstand the bruised esophagus.  [back]

Rebuilding

We're one-for-everything on the keep/delete measure, so I'm thinking that my categories are far too broad.  From now on, instead of a binary system, I'm splitting music into three categories.  Retconned immediately:

Initially, I really wanted to make a cultural reference, but I just couldn't find a way to make a magnificent trio into something that split into something I loved, was okay with, and hated.  Seriously, if you were a great trio (like Groucho, Chico, and Harpo), I loved all of you... the best I could do was Butters, Kyle, and Cartman, and even that was a poor measure.

Over a time, I went back to square one: run, walk, or stay.  This should be pretty easy to understand, but let's clarify:

	Stay	I want to stay with this song; this is a cozy tune I will listen to in my normal life, like any song I'd listen to as a normal guy listening to music I love.  This is the highest praise I can give.
	Walk	I can walk away. It's not bad... it may even be good, but it's not good enough for me to stay.  Even if I appreciate this song, it's not good enough to hang in my headphones for weeks; even if I'm not keen on this tune, it's not so bad as the music that inspires RUN!
	RUN!	Oh please, make it stop.  It's hard to believe anyone can listen to music this empty and soulless without being sucked into a terrible void.  Your best bet is to run like hell and hope the zombie apocalypse doesn't catch up to you.

I kept trying to make it more fun, but I like Blossom, Bubbles. and Butterercup equally.... and I tried Zim, Dib, and Gaz... Michael, Buster, and GOB...  even Team Venture, Sphinx, and The Guild... but I can't actually find a trio where I love one member, am ambivalent about another, and hate the third.

For right now, you're stuck with my arbitrary rating system

Eminem - Love the Way You Lie

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I didn't figure Eminem would have the first Sad Bastard song on the list

Eminem
Love the Way You Lie
Sad Bastard
#33 (HiMid)
Dec 2, 2010
Marshall Mathers
Alexander Grant
Holly Hafferman
Makeba Riddick
Alex da Kid
Makeba Riddick

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While I've never been even a casual fan, I'm not going to deny that Eminem's got talent. As a matter of fact, as the weeks progress and I listen to a wide and random selection of rappers, I'm more impressed with his particular skill than I would have been if someone had played me this track before I heard Wiz Khalifa and Tyga. In the pack of Billboard stars, Emimem's absolutely an A-lister.

Regardless of the rapper's skill, “Love the Way You Lie” isn't a very good song. It comes off fairly one-note, with verses in Eminem's signature throaty yell, separated by a sad and balladic chorus sung by an un-autotuned Rihanna (hey, looks like she can sing). Lyrically, it plays like a celebrity explaining away his own headlines and presence in the national hype machine... an okay narrative, I suppose, but I'm not really drawn in by it.

For the record, I respect Eminem's honesty. No matter what you think of his oft-reported behavior or his records, you have to admit he's not a celebrity handled by PR men-- his lyrics truly represent who he is and what he feels. It may be hateful or misogynist, it may be a bad career move, it may illuminate our image of a childish idiot (an image he's too stubborn to stop perpetuating), but he meant what he said when he said it. Since I spend a lot of time complaining about pre-processed product being passed off as music, this kind of honesty counts for something. If Eminem's reprehensible, at least he's genuinely reprehensible, and he's not going to bullshit anyone about it.

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

This song, then, is the story of the violent relationship told by the violent man: they were desperately in love once, no one wants to have that kind of thing turn sour, emotions run high during the screaming matches and things get out of control. Most anyone who's been in a serious relationship or two has been in the fight this song can evoke... he never physically hurts the girl, but punches the wall and the guy she's out with (general, violent, jealous guy behavior). It feels pretty selfish coming from a guy who made headlines and earned probation time for the first verse.

There will be no next time
I apologize
Even though I know it's lies
I'm tired of the games
I just want her back
I know I'm a liar
If she ever tries to fucking leave again
I'mma tie her to the bed
And set the house on fire

Again, I believe Eminem-- this song feels like a public apology, sure, and probably a sincere one-- but it also feels like Sad Bastard self pity. There are a lot of promises to never do this sort of thing again, but he's self aware enough to know he's full of shit and honest enough to tell us. The gestalt of the piece is that love can go bad, fights can get intense, he doesn't mean for things to get out of hand... but they do, they always will, and he's going to get violent, so what can you do? At least he's sad about it.

Having a famous domestic abuse victim sing the choruses is kind of an odd choice, too-- if you're going to have an “I'm sorry I've been such a violent guy” song and yet have it end with immolating the person you're apologizing to, why have the sad, soul singer chorus containing “I love the way it hurts” sung by Rihanna of all people?

Even though I'm still impressed with Eminem's rhythm and gift for internal rhyme, the song itself is pretty generic: alternating verses and choruses over (admittedly interesting and well composed) beats laced with mopey acoustics. None of the cleverness displayed in the details from line to line make it into the structure of the song: nothing ever changes, it just keeps sulking sadly along.

Walk

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

Trey Songz - Bottoms Up

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Not bad.  Nice to hear a club track not so interested in boonch boonch boonch

Trey Songz
Bottoms Up
Club Anthem
#11 (High)
Dec 2, 2010
Tremaine Neverson
Onika Maraj
Edrick Miles
Tony Scales
Daniel Johnson
Kane Beatz

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Had a busy weekend (just back from Portland), so I'm running a bit late in my writing, but I have been listening to this week's offerings and... yeesh. If last week had some pleasant surprises, this week is overcompensating. No worries, though, because while I agree with Brad Bird's mouthpiece Anton Ego that “the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so,” but I also agree with the statement in Ratatouille that precedes that phrase: negative criticism is fun to write and to read. I love to be pleasantly surprised by the good, but sometimes bad is its own reward.

Pause for snarky retort. I don't disagree. And moving on...

“Bottoms Up,” this week's opening salvo, really isn't bad at all; it's a Club Anthem, sure, but it's not built on the 4-on-the-floor pre-fab beat and has a lot of neat turns in the melody. There's even some counterpoint in there (hey! counterpoint!), and some fun call and response as well:

My vision's blurred (confirmed!)
My words slurred (confirmed!)

It's good to have people that will confirm this type of thing for you.

Since this is a song about drinking in the club, dancing, and appreciating the way the girl is shakin' in them jeans, it's probably not fair to condemn it for having lyrics that are a little on the dumb side. The words are a frame to hang a lot of cool melodies within the slow swagger of a drowsy, euphorically drunk track.

It's a little strange when MC Chris shows up at the end-- I knew he went by MC Pee Pants on Aquateen Hunger Force, but apparently he uses Nicki Minaj as a pseudonym as well. I'm only half kidding; she really sounds like MC Chris, and (like him) she's somewhat endearing but still kind of annoying. Her best attributes are when she steps outside her normal flow and either gets little-bird-dainty (“excuse me, I'm sorry, I'm really such a lady”) or gravelly mean (“double my dosage”), but I think she's the weakest link in this chain.

This song is definitely well done, and I'm all for Trey Songz unseating lesser artists on the charts, but, stepping back to the wider perspective, I just played shows with Absence of Light and Order of the Gash, and crammed my sweaty self into a sold out Kylesa show... this club track really isn't going to capture my attention. Remember: until I fired up this blog, I never listened to big pop acts. One of these radio hits has to be pretty special to get shoulder-to-shoulder with the music in my real life.

Walk

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

Plain White T's - Rhythm of Love

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Maybe I'm coming down with something... Plain White T's are sounding okay to me, too (or at least giving me very little to complain about)

Plain White T's
Rhythm of Love
Indie
#66 (LoMid)
Nov 25, 2010
Tim Lopez
Ian Kirkpatrick

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*sniff* It's got an indie pop body, but I'm getting notes of Beatles and Beach Boys, with maybe a The Mamas and the Papas finish. It's got a very 60s nose. I'm not one for the desert whites (I'm usually a shiraz man myself) but for a sweeter wine, this'll do.

I'm certainly learning a lot about perspective through this project. Compared to my record collection, the albums and songs that I truly love, “Rhythm of Love” barely charts: I'd never buy it, and if it were dumped as an MP3 into my hard drive, I'd probably press skip if it popped up in a shuffle. However, compared to a lot of the toxic waste that clutters the Billboard charts, this is a pleasant little tune. If I gave Taylor Swift a pass, I'm duty bound to let Plain White T's through, too.

Again, I'm not keeping this one-- this is on the Delete side of the Keep/Delete scales-- but it easily strides past all of the land mines that blow songs from okay to bad to oh my fucking god. No autotune is a good start, and sounding like a song that was actually written is another; no one will mistake the music for karaoke backing tracks... because... is that a ukulele? It's got some personality, even if it is a little... er... “cute,” I'm willing to say that it's rising above the risible pack for more than just simple competence (and, seriously, competence is enough to outpace most of the songs I've reviewed). It's actually pretty good.

This is a nice singing voice, for starters, with some decent range, and I like the harmonies quite a bit... they sound like they've been sung by a singer, as opposed to plugging someone into the Harmony-O-Matic 2000 and setting it for “Major Chord.” I appreciate the human touch.

I can occasionally go overboard about bad rhymes (I'll let the shock wear off before continuing), but I'm really not that rhyme obsessed. Some of my favorite songs have very rhythmic lyrics that have little to no interest in rhyme... no, but I hate writers who pretzel-bend lyrics to try and force a rhyme, even if there isn't one there, and completely wreck any kind of flow the song might have had. This song opens with “clouds” and “down” not rhyming, but my attention is focused on the charming head-in-the-clouds picture being painted. I find the couplet “I love the view from up here / Warm sun and wind in my ear” more annoying; yes, “ear” and “here” are a stronger rhyme, but I think “wind in my ear” is kind of a clunky lyric that got dropped in for the sake of the rhyme.

That's the exception, though-- the norm is fairly clever, as the song is pretty gracefully executed. The drums come in at the word “drum” in the “my heart beats like a drum” lyric; this is a nice example of prosody, especially given that the drums don't come in on the one. The word is at the end of the line, so prosody demands that the drums enter on the fourth beat of the line. It's not as iconic as “Stop! In the name of love,” but it's well applied and shows some imagination. Ditto dragging out the “slo-mo,” which rhymes with the previous line's “low,” but complete the word “motion” into the next chord. These are all marks of songwriters putting some thought and creativity into their craft, and if it seems like I'm overselling this, go back and listen to the Blake Shelton song. Book ends, folks. Book ends.

I can't really explain the difference between “Rhythm of Love” and a song I would keep-- it's an intangible element within music, and it's part of an incalculable personal taste. I am pretty pleased with my week so far: Taylor Swift was better than I expected, this song was pretty good, and I got to skip out on Glee (yay! I got to skip out on Glee!)

Not a lot to complain about.

Walk

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

Taylor Swift - Mine

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If I give Taylor Swift a pass, am I going to hell?

Taylor Swift
Mine
Ballad
#33 (HiMid)
Nov 25, 2010
Taylor Swift
Nathan Chapman
Taylor Swift

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I think I've pre-judged Taylor Swift too harshly, because this song simply doesn't deserve the bile Rihanna, Taio Cruz, or (ick) Chris Brown warrant. She's actually debuting in the blog with the most palatable entry pop-country has offered me yet... though this might have something to do with it sounding almost nothing like country music. She's a pop star singing pop songs; there's some country in the harmonies, I guess, but there's a reason my genre/style labels are never “Dance” or “Rock” or “Country:” I'm trying to work with what the song actually is, as opposed the rack it calls home at Sam Goody.

My prejudice against Swift was born of all the jokes and causal digs regarding “unicorns and rainbows” lyrics, and I doubt I'll like that song if I hear it. Sure, this is a love song (I'm trying hard not to make that a Genre, because it could swell and consume the entire blog), but it's a story song first and foremost. Screenwriters, take note: it starts by introducing its characters, then it establishes and resolves conflict. I'm not calling Charlie Kaufman on the carpet or anything, but Taylor Swift (or, more likely, the songwriters she keeps locked up in her guest house) cracked a nut in three minutes that Kurt Wimmer's been struggling with for about five films now.

It bothers me a little that I'm stuck caveatting songs that aren't tragically inept and generically machined with “I don't like this song,” but giving “Mine” a Delete tag doesn't mean it's half as bad as “Mama's Song” or “Deuces.” There's some skill in both the writing and performance of this song. There's a line in the chorus, especially, that is pretty impressive: the “a careless man's careful daughter” is an amazing bit of writing economy. One quick line gives us an almost fully realized character, her current state, and her backstory. That's a pretty keen turn of a phrase, right there.

As for performance, I don't detect a hit on autotune on Swift's voice, which is always good. The thing that stands out about her, as I listen to this, is that she actually seems to infuse a bit of personality into the lyrics-- that's not a writer beat, it's the performer. While there are plenty of pop stars on the radio at any given time that can sing on key (or at least seem to), it sounds like Swift is trying to suppress a giggle during the line about “a drawer of my things at your place.” It's the kind of thing that sells a story, the kind of grace note that can't be written on the sheet music.

So... sure, it's a fluffy pop tune, and really not something I'd be anxious to listen to again, but it's done with some talent and skill. I've got to give it some credit.

Walk

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