So we’ve got the odd theory or two about this one…

[Video][Website]
[6.64]

Jonathan Bogart: Lightning flickers across an ominous gray sky, shorting out the image. Everything pixelates, down to microscopic levels. The earth yawns and shudders. Civilizations totter, collapse, and rise again. Heavenly choirs soundtrack epic orgies. The Demon Bitch Goddess Mother Saint lives again, with digital blood running through coaxial veins. Song of the year? Song of the millennium.
[10]

Anthony Easton: This is the first time Britney has bored me.
[2]

Martin Skidmore: A model of contemporary pop: Dr Luke & Max Martin, check; co-writer Ke$ha-style chorus with lots of whoa whoa whoa and other repetition, check; pumping dancey beats, check; catchy shouty parts, check. Britney is kind of anonymous on this, but it’s highly effective formula stuff.
[7]

Chuck Eddy: There is a beauty to the wordless “oh-oh-oh-oh” vowel parts. Not a beauty I especially care about, but it’s there. The rest of it mostly suggests that skipping “the next level” might be time-effective.
[5]

Asher Steinberg: Usually I go to Britney for psychosexual drama, not songs about the vital urgency of dancing until really late hours and/or distant future millennia. One expects that sort of thing from, I don’t know, every other major pop star, but not Britney. Not that she doesn’t infuse this generic concept of dancing for all eternity with her personal sensibility; I particularly like how, as is seemingly the case on every recent Britney single, she exclaims that she’s never felt this way before. Either she has no memory or every impersonal erotic encounter she has is just so damn fresh and new to her, which must be nice. But anyway, this song isn’t really about Britney, but the computerized cascade of genderless voices going “oh oh oh oh oh,” to whom, or rather to which, she cedes the track. Virtually every electropop record these days contains a similar moment of transcendence, baked into which I tend to detect a sense of the unattainable; the notes ascend and ascend, but never reach a point of resolution. You can read them as sexual longings, or something more metaphysical; either way they always contain a fusion of ecstasy and sadness, the promise of some great unattainable thing and the knowledge that it will never be attained. I used to find these passages extremely affecting, but now that every damn song in the world has them, even songs that could double as commercial jingles for cheap beer (see “Yeah 3X”), I feel a little manipulated, like every pop producer in the world has figured that out by playing a certain type of progression of notes on the hot synth of the moment, he can make me feel sad about certain events that transpired in 6th grade. Well, pop is the art of manipulating the listener, so that’s not a critique, but you do have to ask yourself: (a) is this particular song’s transcendent moment genuinely earned by the performer, or just ginned up by the maestro behind the knobs, and (b), as electropoppy transcendent moments go, is this especially good? And I think this song fails on both points.
[6]

Al Shipley: The clipped vocal stutter hook is only slightly more enjoyable than simply cliched or annoying because the rhythm of it is a little weird and counterintuitive. But there’s quite a lot of very drab and straightforward stuff happening in the rest of the song to flatten any strange or intriguing effect that one bit might have.
[3]

Edward Okulicz: No doubt this is her most uplifting, euphoric chorus since “Stronger”, but hiving it off til the end of the song behind a complete superfluity of “whoa oh oh oh” bits is not a wise use of resources. It must be admitted that said boring “whoa oh oh oh” bits are better than the part with the same melody where there are words; the clumsy repetition there shows the words don’t fit the weird rhythm no matter how much you force them. Sonically, this is exactly what Britney needs to be doing, though.
[7]

Jer Fairall: Anonymity suits Britney. Embarrassed and embarrassing whenever she makes attempts at humour (“Hold It Against Me”), transgressive sexuality (“3”) or, gulp, introspection (“I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman”), this is far better off for how much she is allowed to blend in with the wallpaper. As such, it’s a tight, energetic club track, whooshing and squelching in all the right places with only the characteristic stiffness of its singer keeping it from being anything other than serviceable.
[6]

Ian Mathers: I haven’t been paying attention to Britney’s music for a while, so this was kind of a shock. It’s not as if she was in a power trio or anything before, but has her music been this rave-y and pleasingly, artificially glossy for very long? “Till the World Ends” sounds machine tooled to within an inch of its life, but in the greatest possible sense; the verses are supple, the wordless refrain and subsequent sort-of chorus are effortlessly driving, and it’s easy to imagine how outright euphoric it would be in the right setting. And let’s face it, that minute pause between “I notice that you got it/You notice that I want it/You know that I can take it” and “To the next level baby” is Blind Date Murderer-level genius.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Since succumbing to the allure of celebrity excess, Britney is less a human being than a nerve ending, responding to sensual pleasure with signals sent to a central processor that responds with gurgles, sighs, and coos. I’m a sucker for apocalyptic dance songs about dancing, and this one hooked me from the electronic stuttering applied to key verbs to the oh-oh-ohs straight out of mid eighties Italo disco. May she never grow up.
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: The publicity apparatus for Britney Spears’ Femme Fatale — as just about everyone has pointed out — has lacked one crucial component: Britney Spears. You see, Brit’s not herself tonight; speculate how you will, but here’s your list of symptoms. The music could obviously be anyone’s, but that’s standard. Her choreography? Long gone in person, and on recording, edited only to make you wince least. Her lyrics are cobbled together from whatever slang was cluttering Max Martin’s cortex that day, making her evoke Ke$ha and Gwen Stefani and fucking Train — everyone but herself. Her voice could be anyone; she doesn’t even pronounce “baby” like she used to, no matter how much she spits out the word. So this is our endpoint, the stabilized final iteration of Britney, post-fall and post-recovery. And it turns out she’s just like us: infinitely polishable with the right (Pro) Tools, yet infinitely vulnerable, all minor chords. That last is the key, because you can relate: how the night is where we pin all our hopes and, as it goes on, fears, until that moment when the world ends and we wake up and the party’s gone.
[8]

Jonathan Bradley: A masterful exercise in dynamics, which is a terribly dry description of a song whose euphoria climaxes so naturally. The wobbly synths and Britney’s not-quite unnoticeable tracing of Ke$ha’s guidelines mark time well enough, but they’re just there to delay, in almost tantric fashion, the arrival of the blissful chorus. After the hook’s first appearance, with the song two thirds finished, the tune catapults into a state of untethered, freeform loveliness, a state of bliss teetering forever on the cusp of the apocalypse.
[8]

Kat Stevens: It worries me that the bits of this song I like are the bits that sound like that Ke$ha Dawson unicorn thing.
[6]

Zach Lyon: Maybe I think higher of this than I should, but it’s been so long since I’ve enjoyed a Britney single. This is worth celebrating.
[8]

To be fair, we like it more than we liked Darius Rucker going country…

[Video][Website]
[5.44]

Jonathan Bogart: There’s not a lot in pop that I want more than for Beth Ditto to be a massive star; unfortunately, this determinedly retro house anthem, sounding like something Madonna — or, worse, Kylie — would have left on the cutting room floor in 1997, isn’t going to be it. It’s not just that I miss the abrasiveness of the Gossip (though a hard-edged dubstep remix might go a long way towards appeasing me) — I miss their velocity. Ditto’s remarkable gospel-punk voice requires a much more urgent setting than this burbling midtempo blah.
[6]

Martin Skidmore: In an indie context, she sounded an exceptional vocal talent; in a dancier context, her voice sounds less special. This is pleasant enough squelchy indie-dance, but the song doesn’t offer much opportunity for her to stretch.
[6]

Chuck Eddy: Once upon a time, the idea of a former alleged garage punk making such a blatant Eurodance move would’ve hit me as daring and exciting. But I guess Ditto has been moving in that direction for a while now, even if I never much heard the soul influence people seemed to claim for her, and to be honest she never struck me as all that intriguing a garage punk to begin with. Her Eurodance move is…okay.
[5]

Jer Fairall: At least Gaga had the good sense to rip off one of Madonna’s most beloved hits, rather than an Erotica or Bedtime Stories filler track.
[5]

Anthony Easton: Classic Disco, Amazing Beats, Beautiful Sound. Lyrics of severity that refuses to betray heart break. Done.
[8]

Jonathan Bradley: The sort of chilled beats I could ignore at the start of a night out.
[3]

Ian Mathers: I like early Madonna, I like the Gossip, I can barely stand this. Too busy? Her voice sounds wrong? I genuinely don’t know. It’s like some mysterious, unknowable Bermuda Triangle of pop music.
[4]

Alfred Soto: She should know about “good intentions” — her career’s been an avatar for them. I don’t hear any taint of “empowerment” or “consciousness-raising” in this low-key thumper, just a voice that flirts with interesting thanks to sudden falsetto swoops and a modest talent for riding the sequencer line like an early nineties diva. I still don’t believe she inhabits her lyrics: she’s more apt to compose a screed that’s well-received by the Woman’s Center of a mid-level public university. And her audience is more apt to remember it over “I Wrote the Book.”
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Beth Ditto in The Gossip is to Beth Ditto solo as a human is to her own ice sculpture. It’s breathtaking how much you can crystallize someone, but you can only half-see her face in the glass. Seconds later, it all melts away.
[6]

A top 40 hit by a teenager who’s so new and undiscovered SHE DOESN’T EVEN HAVE A WEBSITE…

[Video]
[4.56]

Martin Skidmore: A 14-year-old talent contest winner (anyone else heard of UK Idol?), great-niece of Dirk Bogarde, performing a Bon Iver song. She sounds much older — there is no teen fun here, just classy singing over classy piano. It’s all very upscale cocktail bar, background music to some romantic scene, and completely forgettable.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Man, you really can find everything on the Internet. I’d forgotten what middle-school talent show auditions sounded like.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Seriously — what is wrong with modern parenting? When I was a kid, my sister’s piano teacher taught her Elton John and Roxette. This is worse than sex-ed.
[3]

Anthony Easton: Technical skill wins over any heartbreak, which is weird, because 14 yr olds are notorious for impetuous anger, and this could use it.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: Birdy’s glassy prettiness misses entirely the point of a lyric steeped in bloody desperation. “Come on, skinny love, just last the year,” she trills dutifully, and the pleading doesn’t sound horrible or crushing or organic, it just sounds like an audition. She strolls through the litany of “I told you…” blood-letting as if she were reading a shopping list. It’s an ornament at best, and even then a woefully nondescript one.
[1]

Ian Mathers: Well, it’s an improvement on the original (to damn it with faint praise). Whereas Justin Vernon’s litany of “I told you to be”s came across as petulant, Birdy skillfully conveys the way she can’t help making those demands at the same time as she limns their sheer futility. I tend to prefer solo piano to acoustic campfire twaddle, so the music works better as far as I’m concerned, and she has a lovely voice. The end result is to take a song that I found mildly irksome and recast it as something lovely and desolate.
[8]

Jer Fairall: Justin Vernon bores me to tears, so I never got too familiar with the original, but what might sound mediocre coming from an overpraised “sensitive” adult songwriter actually sounds pretty good coming from a precocious 14-year-old. She’s got an impressive voice; a mixture of early Joni trill and Lilith Fair clarity and resilience, and if I’m hearing more technique than actual passion in her performance, I think we can safely assume that the latter is something she probably still needs to grow into.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: I’m sure it’s very lovely. And more power to those who can wring meaning out of its spare, crystal syllables. But that leaves those of us who can’t at a severe disadvantage, because without meaning, there’s nothing here.
[5]

Kat Stevens: Somewhere out there, a hard-hitting BBC2 drama (about a young girl that runs away from home and ends up a homeless drug addict hooker but still keeps her teddy under her pillow) is missing some music for its trailer.
[4]

It’s not exactly what you think…

[Video][Website]
[6.00]

Martin Skidmore: Another pleasant Swedish pop single, sounding rather derivative of a lot of old pop. It’s kind of stilted, as if its parts haven’t been very skillfully fitted together, but mostly it skips along with some bounce.
[6]

Anthony Easton: Reminds me of the clean-girl-doing-dirty-things genre perfected by Gainsbourg with a little bit more indie grit—but mostly because Jag Kommer sounds a lot like I’m coming, in how she says it.
[6]

Ian Mathers: So, does “I’m coming” have the same double entendre sense in Swedish that it does in English? The way Maggio sings it in the chorus here (repeatedly, rising to the brink of some… emotion) makes me think it does. She actually has a storied history with the Jukebox, and while she’s always been at least competent, “Jag Kommer” is the first song of hers I’ve liked as much as “Dumpa Mig,” and for opposite reasons; this one soars where that one twinkled, and I haven’t heard such a great, propulsive use of an identifiable drum kit on a pop song in quite a while.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: Perfectly serviceable coquetry, delivered in a breathy voice with the trills and coos your crush is supposed to like and draped over percussion flutters like gathering skirts and guitars that graze lightly over the edge of your real feelings. In other words, it’s all performative — all an act. And it just takes a quick trip to Google Translate to see how well that’s working out.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Based strictly on the sound: bright power-pop is always nice, but it’s immensely dependent on when, where and who it strikes if it’s going to have any chance of hooking a listener who’s not already deeply invested in Veronica Maggio. Once upon a time I thought I was, but it turns out I just liked “Nöjd”.
[6]

Jer Fairall: A charmingly excitable vocalist, some chugging Strokes-y guitars and a sweet string bit sweeping its way in to make a grand exit, yet when it’s all over it still feels like nothing’s really happened here.
[5]

Never reviewed her before, apparently…

[Video][Website]
[5.71]

Al Shipley: If any singer and songwriter combination possesses the powerful voice and sense of writerly detail to turn the kind of question people usually text to each other into a poignant refrain, it’s J-Hud and Kells. But they don’t quite get there, do they?
[5]

Alfred Soto: Too lustrous to sit staring at the phone. “Too smart,” I’m not sure. Who ever heard of a woman who looked askance at her boy going to church? Maybe he’s praying for an anvil falling on the Oscar winner’s head.
[4]

Anthony Easton: Crisp phrasing, and in words and phrases that would provide an excuse to go buck wild on the vowels, she restrains herself (c.f “Umbrella”). The coldness of the delivery suggests an exhaustion with the player — not anger or cataclysmic sadness, but just a giving up. Breaks down the control in the last very little bit, but Hudson may be one of the great gifts of American Idol.
[8]

Jer Fairall: The pristine clarity of the sparkling piano hook, slick backing loop and the song’s overall melodic forthrightness are like something off of an MTV playlist circa 1995 that I probably wouldn’t have cared for at the time, but which today finds me mournful over the comparative lack of smooth professionalism in the cookie-cutter scraps regularly thrown out by Dr. Luke or Max Martin. Shame that no one involved was able to resist the melismatic finale that Hudson’s presence all but guarantees, but which feels wholly inappropriate nonetheless.
[7]

Ian Mathers: Those opening sobs of vocalese pass sad on the way to lugubrious, and that barbaric yawp circa the words “no show” is ridiculous, but the verses are solid and who doesn’t love it a little when she bluntly directs him to stop slangin’ and get a fucking job? If only there were an actual chorus…
[4]

Martin Skidmore: She delivers it very well, with vocal muscle if not too much personality. Ultimately it sounds sort of generic, all well done and in a genre I like, but in the end uninspired.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: Good for her for finding exactly the material she’s suited for — outraged you-ain’t-living-up-to-my-standards Big Balladry. And extra points for the “Umbrella” reference in the opening line. But despite what is evidently supposed to be a sturming and dranging production, it kind of just ebbs back and forth, without building to any kind of catharsis.
[6]

We may be a few weeks late on this one, admittedly…

[Video][Website]
[7.00]

Alfred Soto: Oh dear: Robyn clones already.
[4]

Jer Fairall: An effervescent melodic whirl, reminding me blissfully of referents as dated or exotic as Roxette, Scarlet, Stretch Princess, Lights, Belinda Carlisle, The Bangles, Emm Gryner and Nina Gordon. What it reminds me nothing at all of is the hard, cynical edge of what qualifies as pop in our current Britney/Ke$ha state, against which I suspect this will have to function as my salve for quite a while yet.
[9]

Martin Skidmore: Pleasant Swedish Idol-derived pop by a woman who is also a model. Its dancey electro backing has some energy, and she sings it well enough, though she gets very thin on the high notes. The “I want a perfect moment” stuff does sound like the worst kind of uplifting nonsense those TV shows love so much, but this isn’t bad.
[6]

Ian Mathers: I usually watch the video first, then listen to the song while I write my blurb, and in this case I happened to watch this version of “White Light Moment.” I thought it was a perfectly fine ballad, a little more muscle in the chorus than most (and some fine “aww, Swedish people are adorable” lyrics) but not too distinguished otherwise – and I think that reaction actually helped endear the studio version of the song to me. I still like the piano-y live version just fine, but that burbling digital spurt galloping through the chorus really picks the song up by the scruff of its neck. I hadn’t managed to contribute to the Jukebox for a little while until our Nate Dogg week, and this is the kind of unexpected, joyful collision (“White Light Moment” doesn’t sound like a rave remix of a ballad so much as the mutant offspring of the two) I really missed discovering.
[9]

Jonathan Bogart: Is it just the grass-is-always-greener effect that makes Swedish woolly-headed ambition and emotionalism more immediately appealing than the homegrown variety? Or is it because she and her producers hold back more than the American version of this kind of pop would? Either way, she’s very nearly got me singing along, and if a White Light Moment doesn’t mean anything in particular, that means we can each of us make up our own meanings, and love the song more for it.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: For a song like this, score pretty much has to correlate to excitement, no? [10] = ZOMG MOMENT MY RETINAE ARE GOING SUPERNOVA; [0] = well, um, I guess this is OK, kinda. So on this scale, the music gets a [10], being the exact sort of kinetic joy Robyn wouldn’t let loose in “Hang With Me.” Lyrics, who gives a damn. Vocals, [5] — you can’t really want to start fires and watch stars explode if you’re just gonna mumble away at the bottom of the scale, backing vocals on the bridge excepted. Time to average…
[7]

Seven over seven by my count now – we may yet get this top 10 up by June…

[Video][Website]
[7.10]

Jonathan Bradley: A decade ago, the South’s token white rapper was Bubba Sparxxx, and he leaned into the redneck stereotypes associated with his race and region. In contrast, Alabama-native Yelawolf, whose Caucasian looks are more skate rat than good ol’ boy, has a musical approach less Hazzard County and more Yoknapatawpha. His dense lyricism mimics the pestilent Dixie creeper called kudzu: it is wild, rambling, and seems like it might get into anything. That makes the rapper a good match for the introspective Texan Trae, and together the pair tackle flutes, pattering drum lines and a muted trumpet that is a little too awkward to be much more than admirable. There’s a lot of wilderness in which to get lost in on “Shit I Seen,” and though it isn’t the most infectious number Southern rap has produced, its gothic sensibility means it is never anything less than absorbing.
[6]

Anthony Easton: Cinematic in that old Hollywood sense, and the reckless speed/intensity of the flow suggests that even though Eminem discovered him, there is a geninue split in practice.
[7]

Chuck Eddy: Yela’s verbose sandpaper-drawled storytelling picks up momentum as it goes along, but takes longer than it should to get there, and Trae’s motormouth turns monotonous fast. But the matador/ conquistador horns and chorus hook, which feels sung even if it isn’t, make the dark mood work. So I reckon this probably equals anything on Trunk Muzik 0-60 — most of which I’m ambivalent about — except for “That’s What We On Now” and “Billy Crystal.” And he still might be my favorite new rapper in years.
[8]

Zach Lyon: Something intriguing about all of this and no part of it is particularly bad. Yelawolf’s flow is pristine given his slow slurring, and the first verse is a great showcase, compared to his second where he sounds too Eminemy. I can’t latch onto more than a few of Trae’s words at a time but his verse is just as interesting nonetheless. And I didn’t expect a chorus that was, of all things, catchy. Thought this dude was an indie band, nice surprise.
[8]

Kat Stevens: This is a superb showcase of rapping. It’s one of the few songs of 2011 I’ve put on repeat, marvelling at Yelawolf’s tongue-twisters and haunting images.
[9]

Martin Skidmore: I like the trumpet a lot (anyone know where it’s from?), but I’m a little less taken with his rapping, which is both nimble and slightly stiffly timed. I like the guest verse from Trae the Truth, who is fast and likeably gruff.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Bustling – trumpet solo, skittering post D&B beat, faint horrorshow organ, two motormouths rapping atop. Yelawolf’s gift for accelerating past rote triumphalist sentiments is enough. For now.
[6]

Doug Robertson: The backing is almost a mariachi take on a James Bond theme, and would probably work amazingly as an instrumental, but with the rap over the top it becomes… well not bad as such, but just kinda generic, which is ironic given the chorus.
[6]

Jer Fairall: He comes off as a thoughtful, if not particularly subtle, storyteller and the setting is a note-perfect mix of noir-ish horns, lush 70s soul strings and persistent early 90s loops. His flow and vocal presence are disappointingly weak, though, denying the song the anchor it needs to really click, one provided by the considerably more agile Trae Tha Truth all too briefly.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: The languorous Latin-jazz disco of the backing track is the real star here, even as Yelawolf and (to a lesser extent) Trae Tha Truth manage to surprise and impress with obvious dynamics but less-than-obvious lyrics. If this is the standard he’s setting, I might even have to start being curious about the album.
[8]

A Modern Rock chart hit by an Australian band. I should probably have known how this would end…

[Video][Website]
[2.29]

Doug Robertson: Wow, I thought the clocks went forward this weekend, yet listening to this it seems clear that they actually went back twenty five years. Resetting all my clocks is going to be a lot more of a bugger than I thought.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: At last, radio accommodates those who thought Daughtry didn’t have enough truck driver’s gear changes.
[3]

Al Shipley: Their previous hit “Odd One” had a strangely bewitching sense of stillness and subtlety that made it stand out from other alt-rock radio power ballads. But given the total MOR banality of the more popular follow-up, I guess that was a fluke.
[3]

Martin Skidmore: Reasonably skilled but rather limp post-grunge, like a watered-down and indeed wet Nirvana.
[3]

Jonathan Bogart: It’s one thing to play to the Christian audience with broad, soaring gestures and vaguely seeking lyrics. But when you pretend that’s not what you’re doing, that’s what really gets to me. Shut up and let the kids sing along on their summer retreats.
[3]

Jonathan Bradley: There’s one tiny little moment in this clogged-up sewer of a song in which the micro-compressed cardboard guitar grind transitions into a micro-compressed acoustic guitar interlude. As this blessed signpost of the song being two-thirds finished passes, singer Shimon Moore’s sub-Nickelback moan twists too far and the unmistakable hiccuping quiver of Auto Tune having to work too hard makes a transient appearance on the track. Oh, it’s beautiful: a little glitch in the Matrix proving that there’s a real world out there with industry men and studio machines just beyond the tune’s sheen of heartfelt Stepford Blokery. Because the alternative is far more horrific; it’s terrifying to imagine that a real person actually believed this machine translation of human emotion might communicate insight into spiritual renewal or a personal crisis in confidence. Instead, the truth is revealed: This is drive time rock radio fodder built to accompany a boot stamping on the brakes in gridlocked rush hour traffic forever.
[0]

Ian Mathers: It’s probably unfair to call this everything wrong with rock music in 2011 (god knows I’ve loved some polished-to-death, slick bullshit in my day, and will again), but a large part of me wants to punch anyone who finds this anodyne bullshit actually uplifting. Congratulations, Sick Puppies (ugh), I now hate the idea of people pulling themselves together and fixing their lives.
[1]

It was at that moment I knew she would never set fire to my leg hairs again…

[Video][Website]
[6.36]

Anthony Easton: Sucker for the ooos, love the distorted guitars, nothing deep to say about this, except it’s real and quite lovely.
[5]

Martin Skidmore: This feels like a slowish workout rather than an actual song, and without disliking the way it rolls along, it feels like an aimless ramble.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: I know, I know. It’s supposed to sound like that.
[5]

Jer Fairall: A crunchy center, but no appetizing candy shell.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Thickly textured quasi-reggae, and pissed off about it.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: The appeal of the Kills is always at least fifty per cent reliant on atmosphere and texture, so I would have thought a new single distinguished by lurch rather than melody might retain some appeal. It really doesn’t; there’s no gleam in the murk, no rising tension or engaging dynamic. Like an arty short gone wrong, the result is grainy and indistinct. If that’s meant to be a boogie, the only movement it prompts is an awkward shuffling of feet as you wait for the thing to end.
[4]

Rebecca Toennessen: It took me a while for this song to grow on me, but I’m glad I gave it a chance. Mosshart’s growly vocals work well over layers of snarly, crunchy guitar. I’m still unsure about The Kills and prefer The Dead Weather, but then again I think there’s not much that can’t be improved with Jack White.
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: For once it’s the female vocalist who ruins things, not the male; fortunately, her line works easily as a descant to mentally leave off. That way we can get to the real point of this track: wallowing in sleaze while some vaguely disreputable guy sings at you, and letting it go on indefinitely.
[8]

Zach Lyon: I know two other songs from The Kills, “Hitched,” which I liked in 2003 and “Last Day of Magic,” which I first heard last year. “Satellite” is so reminiscent of both that I’m inclined to say that they need to try something new, but they’re so pleasant at low dosage and high volume that I won’t complain.
[7]

Ian Mathers: Everything about Midnight Boom, from the guitar tone to the jumprope rhyme loops to the cracked-open percussion to the lyrics was sparse, nasty, and deliciously ersatz. The low-slung organ groove vamping along beneath “Satellite” is only the latter, and makes it sound like they want to join Grinderman or something. That’s offset by the wordless parts where they shamelessly steal from the Congos’ “Fisherman,” and the combination means I’ve been unable to get this out of my head all week.
[9]

Doug Robertson: Since when did The Kills become an Auteurs cover band? I mean, this is good and all that, but Luke Haines could do a much better job of coming up with a tribute to his work himself.
[7]

How else were we gonna end? RIP Nate.

[Video]
[9.73]

Kat Stevens: I was very excited to return from my semi-regular Saturday trip to the Uxbridge branch of Our Price with a cassingle of “Regulate” in my sweaty paws. Until that morning I’d thought of the tune as a harmless whistling pop tune with a good bassline and some dudes chatting about going for a drive. It was down as a ‘maybe’ on my mental shopping list for Our Price, along with “Absolutely Fabulous” by the Pet Shop Boys and “Searching” by China Black (Prodigy’s “No Good” and “Swamp Thing” by The Grid were definites). I bought them all eventually (once my pocket money replenished itself) but that day I bumped up “Regulate” to top priority when I saw it on the shelf with a black and white sticker on the bottom — tiny, but no less thrilling. I had no idea this song was at all naughty! I had a new-found respect for Capital FM for daring to play something so illicit. As soon as I got home I shoved it into the tape deck and listened to it carefully all afternoon to see if I could hear some swearwords. Alas the only vaguely rude thing I could pick up was about going to a motel with some girls they’d just met. My disappointment at Warren and Nate’s failure to say ‘shit’ was significant, but thankfully it turned out that saying “chordz…stringz…we bringz…” was just as good. I kept the cassingle case hidden underneath Stiltskin’s “Inside” in case Mum ever opened my tape drawer and saw the sticker.
[9]

Edward Okulicz: One of the most generous records of all time; Warren G gets mugged, Nate Dogg saves him, but it’s you, the listener, who gets to feel like a total bad-ass when it plays. More than rapping, this is a convincing enough narrative and performance to feel like acting. Warren G never suited another role like this one, that’s for sure.
[10]

Zach Lyon: Just astonishing how utterly ludicrous this story is when you play it out in your head (Nate apparently kills a dozen-or-so armed men just by open-firing at them I guess) but how convincing it remains. I listened to it for the first time last week (take away my music card or whatever) after learning about the death of a guy whose name meant very little to me at the time. Yeah, it’s pretty good.
[10]

Alfred Soto: Nate’s breakout single happens to be his best, and it’s impossible to separate my memories of how it seized control of my imagination in a summer dominated by Lisa Loeb, Soundgarden, All 4 One, and Erasure’s “Always.” Seventeen years later, I still haven’t parsed the lyrics. Pure sensation — fake outrage, Nate so euphoric he chokes on polysyllables, minds switched to freak mode thanks to a Michael McDonald keyboard sample. I would argue that “Regulate” represents so complete a distillation of the West Coast sound that I need never listen to period Dre, but that’s no way to persuade naysayers from removing their feet from my neck.
[10]

Jonathan Bogart: One of the iconic singles of the g-funk era. Although much of the supposedly classic music of the 90s has faded into a sort of dismal phoniness, the menacing stillness underlying Nate Dogg’s deceptively smooth vocals as he rides that chirping, night-crawling beat remains fresh. Warren G is almost as good, switching up his flow so that the two interlock. It’s the rare great pop song without a chorus, but when you have “next stop is the East Side Motellllll,” who needs a chorus?
[10]

Ian Mathers: I’m sure that we’ll get some contrarions (and that nostalgia is affecting me, and probably most of us), but at an age where my conception of rap was Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer (you can imagine the contempt), “Regulate” was the first song I heard to make me think I could love the stuff. Warren G has always seemed a bit ineffectual to me, so of course he gets into a scrape that Nate has to rescue him from, via lots of violence, followed by picking up some women and then some casual sex. That cheesy Young Guns dialog, the Michael McDonald sample, “the rhythm is the bass and the bass is the treblllle,” Nate’s touching ode to violent brotherhood, Warren’s surprisingly effective distress, the video… everything is about as close to perfect as it can be.
[10]

Martin Skidmore: By the nature of a site reviewing new singles, we don’t often get to review solid-gold classics that we’ve loved for ages, so this is a rare delight. From the tense opening beats, this is a masterpiece. Warren G is expressively nervous and distressed as he gets mugged, then Nate rides to the rescue. I usually find macho stuff offputting, but I’m a sucker for a rescue in a doomed situation, and Nate’s sweet, controlled tones as he is killing people is a beautiful contrast. There’s nothing about this I don’t adore, and I’m not sure there are any hip hop tracks I’ve listened to more often – much the easiest ten I’ve ever given.
[10]

Jonathan Bradley: Uncomplicatedly classic, with an ambience chilled like the dropping mercury at twilight, a groove that glides like a gas guzzler on an L.A. freeway, and just a hint of approaching danger, like getting caught alone in a bad neighborhood. Whether speaking to the narrative or the arrangement, few duos achieve this level of coordiantion; Nate Dogg and the Warren-to-the-G go together like rhythm-as-bass and bass-as-treble. The machine is so efficient it dispenses with the narrative after two verses, leaving the last to act as a genre thesis. PhDs have been awarded for less.
[10]

Anthony Easton: The narrative here is amazing, the story telling, and the regulating voice to tell that story. I cannot say anything more really, cannot explain with an intellectual rigour why this is as genius as I think it is.
[9]

Al Shipley: That part where Nate sings a couple bars of “Let Me Ride” and in the video looks off in the distance with this suddenly disarming earnest, wistful expression? That always gets me, man.
[10]

Mark Sinker: What happens when ugliness is not just pretty, but lovely? Obviously we often resolve the conundrum simply by declaring one side the winner — and cheering or booing accordingly. The music sweetens the crime, and to some that’s just bad. For others, the pleasure is redemptive: he’s obviously pretty much a villain, but oh! That voice! For many, the crime simply ruins the music: such people are protected by intensity of revulsion from confronting any contradiction. But the questions the contradiction asks are worth not dodging, even if your real feelings or tastes are encouraging you to slip away safely. What do we do when ugliness is — not seems, is — gorgeous? What does it mean? How is the world changed if the balance is exact, equal and opposite, not just in this song, but other situations too? Lots of other situations? I wouldn’t want to live there — and actually I doubt Warren G does and Nate Dogg did, much of the time, but some people do — and it’s worth discovering there are zones of the world that you wouldn’t find remotely decideable, and maybe a little of what that feels like. “For beauty is but the beginning of a terror we are just barely able to bear, and it stuns us as it serenely disdains to destroy us.” And no one believes they’re angels, obviously.
[9]