Dance, dance (music, music).

[Video][Website]
[5.71]

Katherine St Asaph: This is Bebe Rexha’s game, not Pete’s, and it involves pulverizing Sleigh Bells’ “Crown on the Ground,” Marie Serneholt’s “That’s The Way My Heart Goes,” some air sirens and 16-bit plodding pilfered from the charts, and the contents of twelve helium tanks. It’s getting harder by the day to believe producers have a guiding sonic strategy other than making found-sound stew. It’s also getting harder to object.
[7]

Brad Shoup: It’s a special act that can unleash a dancehall siren in a mid-tempo song. Black Cards ain’t that act. The track pings about with a criminal lack of low-end. If only the group had someone who could play bass… I do like when Bebe Rexha kicks into a higher register alongside a stuttering klaxon – it’s an instant transition from the previous section, and these days pop music is all about the appearance of suites. But man, does that “crack for kids” line fall flat. Mayhaps Petey thought FOB’s hip-hop sorties earned his new group their, er… you know. Better luck next time, droogs.
[4]

Anthony Easton: On the proper side of obnoxious. Extra point because it reminds me obliquely of “Paradise City.”
[7]

Iain Mew: A demonstration of how far some well-placed bloops and switching the backing track every five seconds can get you if you have a very limited and not appealing tune or voice. It can make your song interesting and listenable, even repeatedly, just not actually good.
[5]

Alex Ostroff: “Take Me Down (Higher)” is a mess of signifiers. The production is gloriously abrasive electroreggae draped in sirens and bleeps. Sugarland and Robyn are proof that I’m not automatically opposed to white-girl reggae appropriation, but Black Cards’ vocalist can’t make this sound natural in the least. Also, while “The Little Drummer Boy” interpolations are awesome (see: Missy), it would be nice if they could bother to do something interesting with it, instead of just endlessly rum-pa-pum-ing. Were Pete Wentz’s lyrics always this dumb?
[4]

Edward Okulicz: I’m impressed with how Swedish this sounds, given that Black Cards are from the States — not in the sense of “well, Scandinavia produces half U.S. chart pop anyway,” but genuinely in how I could believe this was some little obscure electro pop group from Malmo or Jonkoping. There’s something very crooked and jagged and unpolished which is a surprise and quite unusual given Pete Wentz’s involvement. That’s not to say the song’s very good because it isn’t.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Am I always going to give at least a six to something using a reggaetón beat, however modified? Yeah, probably.
[8]

Why does she have a sword? I don’t know.

[Video][Website]
[5.25]

Brad Shoup: This one’s all pulse and very little heart. In between choruses the bass kinda jogs in place. The contrast of glum delivery and the lightly danceable backing makes me want nothing more than to put on an Erasure tune.
[3]

Andrew Casillas: On paper, an “empowered” Javiera Mena would be a lock-solid bet. But the attitude doesn’t seem to fit her in any tangible way. I’ll add to the chorus of “why is this the second single instead of [“Sufrir”/”Luz de Piedra de Luna”/insert your other favorite song here]??” Regardless, even the worst song on Mena is still half-awesome.
[5]

Iain Mew: The brief sally of excitement that is the synth break before the final chorus aside, this is an extremely lightweight and inconsequential thing that has no edges at all and doesn’t even embrace or emphasize its softness in any strong way. It just slips past, inoffensive but unmemorable. I want to pull the “it’s just because it’s foreign language and I’m missing the meaning” card because I like her so much generally, but it’s a bit weak to do so when clearly that hasn’t affected her other songs.
[5]

Alfred Soto: The rhythm plods when any song about the first star should soar and sparkle; it lets down Mena’s lyric about dead friends. But she can inject pathos into any electro setting, especially when the synths and sequencers go crazy at the 2:50 mark.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: Javiera Mena is capable of good-to-amazing electro-pop numbers. And, bafflingly, also this: a politely plodding bit of flowery synth dullness in which even Mena’s coolly expressive voice sounds as if she’s as bored as I am. I love the 80s, but there’s really a time and place for everything.
[3]

Jonathan Bogart: Mena was the most overlooked disco-pop album of 2010, and possibly of the last decade, at least in most anglophone circles. (Not here, of course.) The second single released from the album may not be quite as lovely and beguiling as “Hasta La Verdad,” but it’s a better single; the electropop pulse and Mena’s fluttering voice insert her into the Robyn/Solange/Goldfrapp tradition of slightly waifish, slightly tuff left-field dance-pop singers.
[8]

Mallory O’Donnell: One of Javiera’s most bracing, wide-eyed vocals is brought into sharp contrast against what could be her least futuristic beat–Bobby O bass and Chris Lowe chords with a dollop of golden era synth-pop atmospherics. As always, it’s glorious, soaring stuff, with the retro trappings a point of reference, not a crutch.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: Apparently the truck driver’s gear change still works if the driver’s asleep.
[4]

Closing eyes != having chemistry or feelings

[Video]
[5.71]

Alfred Soto: Remember the Tim McGraw-Faith Hill duet “I Need You,” in which the male partner confesses the physical details that makes his female partner so awesome while the girl signals an approval not half so specific? But damn if “Remind Me” almost works too. The unaffected warmth with which Paisley imbues carnal details as perfect as kissing her so long she misses her flight mitigates the rather less impressive impact of Underwood’s choral support. Luckily Paisley doesn’t embarrass himself matching her high notes in the last third, especially when their partnership is ecumenical enough to accomodate a third supplicant: Paisley’s guitar.
[7]

Anthony Easton: Underwood singing the chorus, straining to its upper heights, is close to orgasmic. Her voice and guitar entwined near the end moves from soft core to hard core – and some of the domestic details are enough to burn the barn down. 
[8]

Alex Ostroff: The best thing about this song is that I still can’t tell if Brad and Carrie are performing regret or seduction. Neither are they.
[7]

Andrew Casillas: This song has [10] potential, but Underwood vastly overplays her hand. At times, she sounds like she’s channeling Maya Rudolph’s SNLimpression of Beyoncé Knowles (this was before the “é” was mandatory). However, the last minute or so is an absolute rush. And it’s still as grand a “showcase” tune as country music can give us nowadays.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Suddenly, country is all about letting all your shit hang out at the airport. I’m always gonna support Paisley in grown’n’sexy mode, and it’s wonderful to hear a proper duet filled with story swapping and overlapping lines and all, but subtract the lump I’m getting from the delivery of the titular phrase and I’m left with some seriously cheeseball guitar solos and the image of two people idly flipping through a photo album.
[5]

Josh Langhoff: I’m pleased to learn that Paisley still lives in a state of perpetual connubial bliss, or at least I’ll assume he does, since this is the least convincing song out of his last 28.
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: Carrie’s cleansed of all her grit, leaving behind light then heavy syrup. Brad’s verses and intonation start out interesting and almost emulsify the duet, but somewhere around the second chorus, both voices settle into the exact staid, still inertia the words fight against.
[5]

Strong, lustrous, corrosion-resistant… do we mean the metal or Guetta’s hair?

[Video]
[5.60]

Katherine St Asaph: The more permutations of bosh and vocalist spring from David Guetta’s shaggy robot skull, the less I’m convinced he knows how to showcase a guest. He gave Nicki Minaj an “Only Girl (in the World)” knockoff and made her sing; meanwhile, when he actually did work with Rihanna, he clipped away all but five dull notes. He’s OK when working with Flo Rida, but unfuckupable is different than good. How does he fare with Sia, pop’s appointed Only Known Singer-Songwriter in the World? She’s fine on the verses, where she can warble over not much, but then Guetta takes a hacksaw to the track and asks Sia to sing over the din, and every sound muffles the others.
[5]

Brad Shoup: Guetta initially had Mary J. Blige on this track, but it’s just as well: titanium resists corrosion, and Blige is all about accumulating wear. Sia’s declarations of resilience are cool enough, and her controlled-soul enunciation adds the character lacking in Guetta’s Duplo-block construction, but my favorite moment has to be when she airs out the word “glass” (as in “bulletproof…”). If those catatonia-inducing laser beams didn’t quite crack my stone heart, that note did the trick.
[6]

Anthony Easton: There is something really crystalline and beatific about Sia’s voice–I’m not sure that this is what serves it best, but I like the attempt. 
[7]

Jer Fairall: No taste substituting for Guetta’s usual bad taste, thanks in most part to Sia classing up the joint.  Expect it to be his lowest charting single since the pre-One Love days.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: Sia’s a lot more versatile than often given credit for — if Some People Have Real Problems gave her a reputation as a sad sack it was probably unfair, because she does at least try other emotions. Resilience and strengh actually really becomes her here. Guetta’s production is as monochrome as the titular metal itself, Sia’s voice is like rhodium-plating.
[7]

Alex Ostroff: At the very least, it’s a different look for 2011 Guetta – one thankfully devoid of BEP, Akon or Flo Rida. The lyrics are a bit silly, and Sia has a tendency to slur the end of sentences during the verses. Her proclamations of “I am Titanium!” tower convincingly over the rest of the song, but I find her more affecting as a broken whisper than as a scream.
[6]

The “hipsters in Santiago” video is quite nice…

[Video][Website]
[6.57]

Pete Baran: This is a bloke called Adrian Igual right? I like the funk, I like the Cubano licks but like much foreign language pop I don’t have a angle on the lyrics which means it’s less sticky in my head. And is that really the oldest sample in the world in the background? I think it is.
[5]

Brad Shoup: The first few seconds feints toward that mid-tier funk, that Captain Sky shit, which ends up becoming just one element in Adrianigual’s al fresco disco, in which the action mostly takes place on breeze-swept streets and is witnessed only by the narrator. It’s truer to how I generally consume music, but I won’t rate for that. I will note the wonderful horn parts and bass line while pardoning the less-than-polished female vocals and that damn J.B.’s sample. A wonderful dance summoning.
[8]

Anthony Easton: This has enough changes in texture that it doesn’t bore, but enough similarities that it is an immersible experience. Love the sunny buoyancy that seems a little more human than much of the metallic sheen seen in current dance pop. Sweet and kind of lovely. 
[9]

Ian Mathers: The music is actually pretty decent, but I’m having trouble focusing on it whenever that querulous little voice pipes up. He sounds like he should be singing sensitive singer-songwriter shit, and I wouldn’t like the sound of it then either. Apparently I care about voices, because with a better singer you could probably add 3 or 4 points to this, but I’m never going to listen to it again.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: The instrumentation’s lush and layered enough to be twice its length with no singing, but alas, Adrianigual proves again the great global truth of dance music: the male vocalist always sucks.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Although its sinuous bass and piano chords distant reminders of Aretha’s 1982 pop comeback “Jump to It,” the vocalist’s flat tones aren’t up to the memories; he wants to be Philip Oakey while she goes for Suzanne Sulley, complete with the right overlay of emotion atop the bed of electronics.
[5]

Andrew Casillas: Oh look! Another Chilean house/disco-influenced band! But seriously, this is exhilarating. Everyone keeps talking about the Rapture’s new one like its some great party jam, but this has the sense to evoke chaotic fun without ripping off “The Thong Song.”
[10]

The Cuteocalypse is upon us!

[Video][Website]
[6.86]

Edward Okulicz: I go through phases of interest with Asian pop music, but one thing that never ceases to amaze me is how thrilling their introductions are. “Bling Bling” bounces in promising to be nothing less than the loudest, fastest, most sense-destroying bit of ear-cocaine imaginable, and very nearly makes good on it. If “Bling Bling” doesn’t work for you, then it’s not for any lack of attempting to bludgeon you with hooks and shrieks and chants and twitchy noises. If songs could be diagnosed with ADHD, this would have a Ritalin drip.
[8]

Ian Mathers: I’m seeing malls in my head when I play this; not because malls are good or bad, but because this seems designed to be listened to by many, many people who aren’t paying that much attention. Except for the part where they sing “bling” a ton of times in a cutesy voice, which is just grating.
[4]

Iain Mew: Partly it’s because whoever gets the first and last lines sounds like Nicola Roberts, but this reminds me a lot of imperial phase Girls Aloud, only faster. They sound cool and controlled but also like they’re having a fantastic time, and over a rich and multi-layered rush of sounds and ideas which never becomes predictable or allows the energy levels to drop. The fuzzy keyboard riff which stomps in for two seconds at 2:25 and then immediately disappears is my favourite for now, but I’m sure that continued listening will reveal a lot more.
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: Disco for dance marathons: hells of sensory attrition with streamers and lights piercing your eyes, dozens of people shouting at you to JOIN!DANCE!STAY UP, and hours until the exit or end.
[4]

Brad Shoup: It’s best not to think of “disco” here as an absence, but as an invocation of sense-loss. This one’s pistons are churning with savagery, a dance-pop maglev transporting a positive outlook. The obligatory rap-break allows some of the previously subliminal disco signifiers to assert themselves, but again, the big takeaway here is a frenzied sense of universal fun. “Even if he’s short,” sings Subin, “he’s the number-one Napoleon.” Now that’s inclusive.
[7]

Frank Kogan: Alien energizer bunnies infiltrate human bodies. Cute, catchy, cold.
[6]

Anthony Easton: Excess, pure, unadulterated, Disco Rococo. Like having Hello Kitty fellate you in the back of a white limousine. And I know that Hello Kitty doesn’t have a mouth. 
[10]

Just one more? Surely there’s always room for another…

[Video][Website]
[3.62]

Anthony Easton: This is the line where clever turns into stupid. 
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Jerrod Niemann is clearly a fan of Jasmin Tabatabai. He’s also clearly from the 19th century, tired of all those damn brindisis and compelled to censor “laid.” He is also probably sober.
[1]

Brad Shoup: One of my critical liabilities is my weakness for live-party songs, an essentially fictional genre of music featuring a bunch of “friends” raucously singing along in-studio. Beach Boys’ Party! is probably the most famous approach, but I swoon for tracks like Bowling for Soup’s “Ohio (Come Back to Texas)” and the Tremeloes’ immortal take on “Here Comes My Baby”. All that to say Jerrod Niemann fucks up the heritage by drowning out his accompaniment. “Oh, now you want to sing along,” he chuckles, but it’s too late: the crowd’s turn is shunted to the end and quickly faded out. The tune itself is a masterfully-recorded country shuffle, way too smooth for a pure drinking tune. Points added for Niemann’s drink of choice, the Daytona Wet T-Shirt Mixer. Those same points negated by the hair-metal-style self-censorship.
[4]

Ian Mathers: Does what it says on the tin, I guess, but if drinking is this boring, you’re doing it wrong (he won’t even sing “trying to get laid,” for fuck’s sake!). The rhyme scheme and level of content is reminding me of a bro-ier Jack Johnson, which is never a good association to have.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Not as sharp as the other excellent drinkin’ and partyin’ songs on Judge Jerrod & the Hung Jury one of 2010’s best country albums, or even as funny-warm as Toby Keith’s (many) excellent contributions, but the acoustic snaps, bed of piano and liquid guitar fills, and the way you can hear Niemann smiling through the drawl put it over. Meta should strive to be this casual.
[6]

Josh Love: Niemann doesn’t work very hard here, which is sorta the point I guess. Just easygoing vibes and a good strong buzz. A pleasantly sloshed Jimmy Buffett nods his approval.
[6]

Sally O’Rourke: Jerrod Niemann just wants to fill the world with silly drinkin’ songs, and what’s wrong with that? Nothing at all, except Jerrod’s the dullest drinking buddy to ever frequent Applebee’s at happy hour. He’s kind of guy who keeps shouting how drunk he’s going to get while nursing his lone Coors Light, who coyly self-censors the words “sex” and “laid” while snickering over the “hung” pun in his album title, who likes that Jimmy Buffett fella but wishes his songs weren’t so dang catchy. Country music’s supposed to be beer for breakfast and a shot of Jack for the road. “One More Drinkin’ Song” is some sugary 20-proof cocktail that has açaí berries in it or something — just one, bartender, don’t want to get too crazy.
[3]

Zach Lyon: This is the perfect song for the moment in a night of drinking when you start to nod off. When the disembodied voices start singing along at the end, it sounds like television commercials that try to build up their subpar product by giving us scenes of people GEEKING OUT over them. This Swiffer Wet Jet saved my life!
[3]

In an alternate universe, E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Jek Lensman…

[Video][Website]
[4.12]

Anthony Easton: I must have listened to this half a dozen times — and I mean I should hate it, it’s just too self conscious, and of that indie folk genre that prides itself as clever. The problem is that it kind of is clever, and the self consciousness slides into a kind of self-loathing. I find the self-loathing charming. 
[5]

Brad Shoup: As a lyricist, Lekman’s always been too clever by half. Here, he attempts a weird detente between Paul Simon and Jason Mraz. The internal rhymes occasionally gleam (points for the galaxies/taxis/backseats/drunk suites/half-Greeks set — I understand others might have abandoned ship at that point), but this is facile romanticism at its most ingratiating. Lekman attempts a cod-Afropop groove, but while pleasant enough, the thing comes off (if I can get even more reductive) like David Byrne scoring Morrissey’s travelogue.
[3]

Josh Love: I’m typically fond of Lekman’s Morrissey-but-cuddlier schtick, but this one doesn’t belong on his top shelf. It’s a good concept –- a lovesick guy wanders the streets of Melbourne warring against his own mind and heart, while still finding time to get annoyed by his surroundings (there’s a terrific image of backpackers pouring out of a hostel “like a tidal wave of vomit”). Unfortunately, Lekman keeps undercutting the power of his conceit and of his pipes with abrupt shifts into a more boyish, chatty voice that can’t come close to selling a vulgarity like, “Fuck you / No, you fuck you.” If that wasn’t bad enough, he goes full-on spoken word smack dab in the middle of the song, grinding everything to an inexorable halt.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Lekman’s timbre — the dolor which lends his sad songs their gravity and the funny-sad ones their warmth — can’t match the polysyllables tumbling from his mouth, and his melodies sound limp over the galloping beat. Footnote: is this the first time anybody purloins musical ideas from Rei Momo-era David Byrne?
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Three problems: one structural, one stylistic and one fundamental. Everyone has silly internal monologues, or so I reassure myself. Folding them like origami to showcase their most self-deprecatingly flattering excerpts does not constitute songwriting. If you must do that, and you’re a Swedish guy, it’d help not to rip off reggae and patois. And if you must do that, and you’re Jens Lekman, you could at least not tempt inaccurate cross-Atlantic comparisons (Mraz, Buffett) and instead make it shatteringly gorgeous.
[2]

Edward Okulicz: Jens Lekman is at his best when he takes on slices of life with whimsy. But when he takes on a whimsical conceit in his lyrics, everything just sounds so forced. His musical ideas work for the most part but some of his affectations and lyrics reek of “aren’t I clever?”. Cleverness is best shown not told.
[6]

Ian Mathers: Jens, either you’ve changed or I have; circa the early singles and the first album I thought you were brilliant, insightful, even charming; now you’re reduced to “stop hitting yourself” and overly busy arrangements. I’m almost scared to go back to my old favourites; I’m hoping that it’s you, not me.
[4]

Zach Lyon: When Jonathan Richman tried this kind of thing, he typically made sure that a general audience might find his words, in some way, useful or interesting or valuable or anything, anything at all, besides this self-entitled time-waster.
[2]

I didn’t try very hard to capture a flattering frame of the video, just cause, you know…

[Video][Website]
[4.00]

Brad Shoup: Beware of tunes that make their lyrical conceit musical. The refrain’s sophisticated melody cries out for a resolution. Instead, we get skip-skip-skipping. Everything else is no great shakes. The most memorable instrumental bit is the rinky piano chipping away at the two and four, constantly beset by a filter set to ‘vinyl authenticity’. Much as I’m hopeful for their future, Rizzle Kicks’ cameo is too brief and robs this already-piecemeal track of badly-needed momentum.
[4]

Iain Mew: “Olly Murs. True Lad. Rizzle Kicks.” Thanks to the tendency of messageboards to gawk at horrible things I am aware that there is an unpleasant UK website called True Lad, largely a repository for user-generated misogyny and sex bragging. Now, Rizzle Kicks aren’t definitely referencing it, but the rest of the song doesn’t make me inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: Getting syncopatedly pitter-patter over your lady, then claiming that’s skipping a beat, is factually wrong. It’s as wrong as strip-mining “All That She Wants” of all the interesting sounds and kidnapping its melody but swapping out its hook for a clinky MIDI sample. 
[3]

Edward Okulicz: So light-weight and bland that it’s hard to tell what style this song was conceived as a Radio One-friendly dilution of.
[4]

Sally O’Rourke: Rizzle Kicks, realizing their contract stipulates they provide a verse for Olly Murs, of all people, rhyme “see-saw” with “see Saw.” To be fair, how could they have known that Olly’s new single would be — dare I admit it — rather good? “Heart Skips a Beat” defuses the cod-reggaeisms of “Please Don’t Let Me Go” by filtering them through early ’90s dance, then slaps on a chorus uncannily like a one-man ‘N Sync covering “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.” I fully expect to never again like an Olly Murs single, which makes me even more impressed by how closely this one comes to touching greatness.
[7]

Note: it’s not safe to love a Grammy. I mean look at the shape of it!

[Video][Website]
[5.29]

Katherine St Asaph: I am fairly sure Jason Derulo’s girl does not have “it” but them.
[3]

Brad Shoup: His career is only two albums in, and I’m already looking back on it fondly. Derulo’s consistently brought a fierce, almost staccato delivery to some fine pop material. And while tossing off profanities in pop songs is generally a fool’s game, he’s pulled it off in the masterful “Ridin’ Solo” as well as here. Forsaking his previous helpings of processing, Derulo does his best to sell a so-so, BBMak-nificent Emanuel Kiriakou production. The whistled/hooted hook is probably the best part, but he also makes a couple falsetto jumps that ought to become a greater part of his arsenal. If he stays the course, he could end up this decade’s Andy Kim. Speaking of damning with faint praise, please tell me he didn’t just say he likes her better than a Grammy.
[5]

Dan Weiss: I love this song but I don’t have much to say about it. Neither does Jason Derulo.
[9]

Erick Bieritz: “I’ve been looking under rocks, breaking locks,” is a promising beginning, and a well-written song could continue from here to develop the idea of a woman who could invoke this sort of behavior. But something goes awry around the point where Derulo brags about his Grammy win and it’s all to pieces after that. The “it girl” becomes less a matter of fixation on someone else and instead a matter of possession, something that is valuable to the degree it reflects well on its owner. The ambiguous, objectifying nature of the word “it” as a pronoun is consequently the sense of the term that really comes across, and it doesn’t reflect well on Derulo or make for much of a pop song.
[5]

Jer Fairall: Whistling as the latest mark of male sensitivity co-mingling with that more timeless one, the gently plucked acoustic guitar.  Not at all unpleasant, though typical of the blandness of its singer, who continues to sound, to me, like a less interesting Chris Brown, which I think we can all agree is not a good place to be. 
[4]

Alfred Soto: If his voice boasted more of a twang he could be Luke Bryan or Chris Young, but instead he’s the nicest guy on R&B radio. Aww…he loves her more than a Grammy!
[6]

Edward Okulicz: Breezy, without character or identifying trait of any kind, but it does have a nice whistle hook. Could have been anybody, or everybody, so inoffensive is Jason. While the whistles are appreciated, putting them over a bit of post-chorus water-treading isn’t the best use for them.
[5]