Insert easy joke about R. Kelly doing anything…

[Video][Website]
[6.67]

Alex Ostroff: I don’t object, in principle, to R. Kelly gracefully aging into successive quiet storm retro soul projects. Love Letter avoided coming off as shtick mostly due to its sonic breadth; no one style overstayed its welcome, from stepping to Motown duets to mid-period Michael Jackson. “Feelin’ Single” is a languid post-disco number, but so was his last single. (Granted, “Share My Love” was a touch more disco, but they’re pretty similar tracks.) The bridge is the best thing here; its build to the ecstatic “might as well go out and mingle, girl” raises the song above “Share My Love”, whose self-aware cries of “Populate!” break the fourth wall in a manner better suited to 12 Play or Chocolate Factory. For all my nitpicking, R. Kelly on autopilot is still effortlessly smooth vocals, intuitive improvisation – in my house / in my room / in my bed / in my arms tonight babe! – and a general sense of joy.
[7]

Alfred Soto: His retrophilia having reached dangerous levels of toxicity, he nevertheless understands a melody and what to do with his own multitracked call and response vocals. As usual he confuses retribution for empathy.
[6]

Sabina Tang: What would have been a grave moral lapse on December 29 or February 11 feels like a pardonable peccadillo on May 30. The mouth spouts justifications undermined by the instrumental id, already in celebratory mode, bathing in warm summer night air.
[8]

Jamieson Cox: A study in tightrope walking – smooth without feeling sleazy, sexy without feeling caddish, vocally impressive without seeming overwrought – written and performed with the deft, experienced touch of a master two decades into the game. It’s a summer jam, a classic singles anthem, and one of my favourite 2012 cuts yet.
[9]

Jonathan Bogart: Pastiche is another country.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Forsaking his primary constituency of rubbernecking white bloggers to bring the grown folks some Seal-inflected stepping, Kells puts forth a prime cut for my forthcoming DJ mix Songs in the Key of Optometrists’ Appointments.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: So lush that it gets away with everything: his memetic past, his retromaniac present and probable Cee-Lo future, the rhyme “single/mingle.” If Kells is this smooth in real life, this track couldn’t even happen.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: “Feelin’ Single” glides as Kells hasn’t since the mellifluous “Step in Name of Love.” This song isn’t as weightlessly emancipatory as that one; it posits the dancefloor as an escape from relationship angst, but, in this case, the anger follows Kelly into the club. The drama hangs too heavy for the disco pulse to be properly cathartic.
[6]

Ramzi Awn: Another new-millennium addition to the eHarmony commercial aesthetic, “Feelin’ Single” is the perfect song to hear at the mall at Christmastime. Let’s grab some TCBY cuz this is gonna be a moment to remember. I can already imagine which tie I’m picking out, the smiles on everybody’s faces, and the black kicks I’m buying for later. Ready to make a change. I’m gonna hit the town tonight, and this time’s gonna be different. Do I ever need to take this Kelly out of Kohl’s? No. But the drive home is a happy one. 
[5]

Apparently you can apply these reviews to every single one of their songs…

[Video][Website]
[6.00]

Iain Mew: If Saint Etienne’s “Tonight” recently approached the subject matter of a gig from the point of view of a fan, this is a gig from the point of view of a band, and it sounds like an amazing gig. “Pop Tune” is power pop about the power of pop, the music stripped bare in service of the message but loud and energising enough for it to be believable. Shonen Knife, it says, are powered up by playing and by hearing music, happier and (their actual word) bigger. There they are, ten foot tall heroes on stage, and what do they want to do with this superpower? Just to share it with their audience in the hope that you too can have a good time, since, you know, you’re already here and all, and the happiness of the reaction will bring them even more joy. It’s a profoundly generous statement, and not as straightforward or naive as it first appears. The wording of “put away something bad” is an acknowledgement that this is just a temporary thing, that the bad things people have to deal with will have to be taken back out again at some point. To get people to forget about them and to be happy for even a short time, though, that is worth it.
[9]

Anthony Easton: When I was in undergrad and I wanted to have fun with pop music but was too pretentious to actually admit to loving pop music, I spent a lot of time listening to Stereo Total and Shonen Knife. Then I grew up and realized that I could listen to and like almost anything with no guilt, and I no longer have to pretend to like bands in order to impress a demographic. So I can say this: Shonen Knife songs work at the end of a mixtape when they are about 90 seconds long — anything longer than that and I am annoyed.
[3]

Alex Ostroff: My first exposure to Shonen Knife was last October, when one of my girlfriends dragged me a couple blocks north of my apartment to see them play a tiny venue, and it was fun. Uncomplicated, enjoyable, dancing and smiling and having fun. Which is why I kind of feel like the Grinch now. In my headphones this is pleasant and nice but nothing astounding, but I know that if I saw them play this live, I would be having too much fun to contemplate how good it is.
[6]

Jer Fairall: Spirited, Ramones-y, and about a minute too long.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Raspberries subject, Go Go’s harmonies, Ramones chords. For a lot of bands this combination, assembled to address this subject, never gets old. 
[5]

Jonathan Bradley: I like a Ramones retread as much as anyone (i.e. I’m not opposed on principle to Shonen Knife) but this is a particularly thin and under-developed take on the form. The worst part is the key change; it suggests “Pop Tune” wasn’t merely tossed off, but the product of some actual thought.
[3]

Brad Shoup: In not caring for this sunny slice of pop-punk — key change and all — I feel like I’m burying a good friend’s birthday gift in the closet. But I’ve already got this in my size.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: Artist families may rise and fall, songwriting empires may form and shatter, but Shonen Knife will always remain exactly the same. They’ll be dismissed as the same sort of novelty, too, but I prefer to smile and listen for details, like how the drums sound like a thresher, or those just-pretty-enough backing vocals that come in halfway through.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: They’ve only ever had the one song, but it’s still good.
[10]

Insert easy joke about her career starting in black and white etc etc…

[Video][Website]
[6.90]

Anthony Easton: The woots are worth a few points, and the dance-as-post-apocalyptic-thought is always nice. I love “We’re on a time bomb/before the night’s gone/let’s just do it right now,” for the delightful lack of subtlety, and that instrumental break in the middle is amazing. And I love when people have longer careers than they have any right to. The score is mostly sentimental, but that’s OK.
[9]

Alfred Soto: Years into a career that in its last few has boasted more exuberant disco than Madonna’s squeezed past her abs, Minogue fingers a polyurethane casing and puts it on — a snug and not unattractive fit. Without thought, she’s the possessor of a squeak besotted with its own irrational exuberance.
[6]

Brad Shoup: “It’s not the end of the world,” goes the curlicued line. So Kylie didn’t get the memo. But then again, it’s the last dance and there’s explosives under the floor. Either way, it’s a grower: a sinuously sequenced pop tune with intimately-mixed vocals and a subtle modern-rock nod in that pre-chorus chug. Would’ve been a killer Eurovision entry.
[7]

Jer Fairall: Apocalypse-on-the-dancefloor, Kylie-style — but she’s always done euphoric better than aggressive, and the threatening tone feels a bit too much like the girl next door unconvincingly trying on goth makeup. The music bumps and throbs with the sensual menace she can’t quite pull off, though, and under the right (sweaty, drunken) circumstances, that’ll likely be good enough. 
[6]

Iain Mew: She did “Slow”, now here’s fast. She’s only got three minutes to save the world, except that there’s no saving to be done, so, might as well have fun in the meantime. Urgency is provided by the whoops and the the itchy synth riff which likes the way she moves. The single’s rush release seems about right – it’s the definition of a quick fix.
[7]

Alex Ostroff: I don’t want to say Kylie can’t do danger. After all, “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” had (and has), to my ears, a strange sense of creeping dread. Still, she can’t quite match the hunger and implied threat of the minimal electronic chug and bursts of guitar under the verses, undercutting the release that the chorus and its WOO!s want to be. Mechanical performance aside, it’s a catchy little number, and one that I’m almost certain will grow on me. 
[6]

Edward Okulicz: Everyone I know is saying this is Kylie by numbers. I reckon it’s Kylie doing Britney by numbers (this would fit on Femme Fatale easy) and the world needs a lot more of that. Really, it’s the first record she’s put out in years that would sound at home in a club sung by just anybody. Such denseness and frantic energy is a novelty for her, and it’s something that suits her well — and “Timebomb” has some fine gimmicks on top of that. “Wait,” she commands, while the bass squelches and every instance of the spliced “whoop!” makes this feel ever so slightly close to classic. It’s my favourite single of hers since “Love at First Sight.”
[9]

Ramzi Awn: “Timebomb” manages to sneak a few golden moments into what is largely a monotonous vehicle of buzzes and shoddy vocal production.  The froth that Kylie diehards are bound to love should be frothier, and the hooks more convincing.  Besides being a superfluous addition to the already trite canon of tick-tocking doomsday bangers, the fabric and melody of “Timebomb” feel unnecessary as well — neither complementing a current sonic landscape or creating a new one.  
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: Kylie has tenser songs, prettier and airier songs, and more forgettable songs (many of which were on Aphrodite), but at least right now, I can’t think of many with a better chorus.
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: She’s never had the culture-warping powers that Britney did just by existing, so her ode to the apocalypse isn’t anywhere near as magisterial; but because she’s never had the force of personality to wrap the culture around herself and wear it like a shawl, she can glide over the present pop moment where Madonna clumsily founders. “Timebomb” fits slightly better into current UK trends than into current US trends (which was always true of her work), but if some bright-idea DJ slaps an unnecessary RedOne synth-blast hook on it somewhere, it could rule the summer here too.
[7]

T.I. humming “you can have the devil we like,” get out of my head…

[Video][Website]
[6.83]Jonathan Bradley: The creeping synth evokes the dread but Trel makes it claustrophobic: “So many bullets in the clip she skipped out on the lease,” he raps — a boast that disintegrates into despair before it ends. It’s crime music laden with futility rather than bravado: What kind of miserable derangement leads someone to make a threat like “What you taking home with you tonight — your life or your fleece?”? The title could suggest immorality might be emancipatory — Trel does what the devil he likes — but it’s really a statement of affinity. It’s Trel’s blanched realization that hell is home.
[8]

Brad Shoup: I don’t know what the fuck Rich Boy’s doing these days. So I have to turn my eyes from Alabama for moody five-minute rap tracks about making money against the sunset. Boss Major’s track is near-perfect, hanging dread in the air, undercutting it with the occasional cheap-ass Casio strike. Fat Trel’s similarly restrained, repping evil without ever going full goon.
[8]

Iain Mew: The beat sounds like it’s leaking from someone else’s cheap earbuds. I like some of the doomy imagery (“coroners on every corner”!) and the ambiguity about whether Trel likes the devil or is like the devil, but the tinniness is a hell of an obstacle to overcome.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: Normally a midtempo rap song with a “classy” fake-strings-and-piano backing and self-serious rhymes would be my cue to roll my eyes or worse. Maybe Fat Trel’s buttery flow covers a multitude; maybe it’s the fact that the production isn’t overwrought, just makes space for the extremely well-paced rapping; or maybe  I’m just in a good mood.
[7]

Ramzi Awn: Mix so thick you could drown in it, and the disintegrating strings in the background give the track’s omnipresent danger a sense of pure 2am sadness.  The haze on the production is the perfect hotbox for this joint, punctuated even by the spacebar click at the end.  Black cars that you don’t wanna be in have their summer cut out for them.
[8]

Jer Fairall: Has Wale’s voice and flow so down pat that I had to check the credits to make sure it wasn’t a feature, but this only has the effect of making me miss the Mixtape About Nothing-era Wale’s sense of humour and whip-smart engagement with pop texts even more than I do already. What this has that Ambition-era Wale, about which I will miss absolutely nothing, doesn’t is a sense of gravity to go along with that languorous backing, though this guy’s delivery gives the impression of being nimble enough that I’d be curious to hear him over something a little more lively the next time out.
[6]

No, she doesn’t look like that all the time.

[Video][Website]
[4.88]

Anthony Easton: The first few seconds are so ludicrously juicy, and the first verse gets ever so close to the disco trope of rhetorical excess as a way of processing operatic emotion, and it uses the word splendor–but there is not enough of a shift in the chorus, which seems like a problem. It also isn’t angry enough.
[6]

Iain Mew: I’m intrigued by the ambiguity of this song, which shines through despite Paloma bellowing her way through it without nuance and all of the strings trying to tie it in a big neat bow. What exactly happened to the other woman that her partner used to live with? Did she just leave, or is she gone as in dead? If its the former than everyone involved is definitely being over-dramatic and Paloma should just give up already. If it’s the latter then Paloma’s lack of perspective and cries of “I deserve it!” and “somebody save me!” probably aren’t the most sensitive or successful approach to take, but are more tragically believable. I prefer The Hot Puppies’ take on the dead ex scenario, but I like the idea of it lurking in a hit, even as inexpertly executed as here.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: I’m a sucker for a video that’s a good Rebecca homage, and this is a great Rebecca homage. Unfortunately the song’s just mid-level Duffy.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: What’s prompted this to become a big hit, I don’t know. At least from my vantage point outside the UK, Faith’s celebrity has a whiff of popular-for-being-popular and none of her hits have had that much staying power or charted anywhere else. And this song suggests she’s not really likely to change the last of those. Faith has volume but no wisdom or energy in her wail-and-honk of a delivery, the strings are plonked over the outro as if an inevitability and the song itself is dead, dead, dead. I’d say “not going to happen” if it hadn’t clearly already done so.
[4]

Jer Fairall: An Adele with Dale Bozzio’s voice isn’t a terrible idea, but replacing the fine, vivid lyrical detail and perfectly-stated delivery of “Someone Like You” with storytelling limited to only the most broadly expository points and a drama-queeny vocal performance that bludgeons any potential for nuance misses the point of “Someone Like You” entirely. The production, melodramatic yet beautifully ornate, has the right idea, though.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: The Singles Jukebox is proud to premiere the dance mix, produced by Richard X’s sedated assistant, of the first single from Lana Del Rey’s upcoming sophomore album Chanteuse! “I read this article in The New York Times comparing me to Adele and Amy Winehouse, and it just really inspired me to, you know, sing harder,” Del Rey said of the brassy, bluesy cut. 
[2]

Brad Shoup: Kinda sounds like a first-draft mashup. Faith is the prime mover, pushing out these non-rounded vowel clouds while the track paddles around. Good thing there’s nothing cool going on in the background, cos she has a LOT of shit to air out.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Too long, but what else is new. The strings are nuisance — you knew that too. Ludicrous name — well, la dee da. But she’s got the pipes to shake the dust from this generic 12-step would-be anthem.
[6]

In which we find hidden subtleties in aggressive K-pop boyband songs. Or don’t.

[Video][Website]
[5.67]

Iain Mew: People talk about the pop bits of Nicki Minaj’s album being a waste but much of this is close enough to the RedOne on overdrive of “Pound the Alarm” that I imagine her doing it instead and it would be a massive improvement. The mushy yelling of the chorus would have to go for the replacement to go smoothly. Still, it’s imaginative and powerful bosh and they aren’t bad singers. I also appreciate the electronic break more than normal, thanks to the fact they couldn’t decide whether to go for heavy machinery, friendly robot, pinball high score totaliser or rave siren mode and so, yes, here are all four in quick succession.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: Excellent use of the dubstep breakdown, maintaining the song’s melodicism while allowing the tempo to go screwy. This is, if not the first certainly the best, time I’ve heard a K-pop boy band sound like the actual heir to the Backstreet/*Nsync megaliths of yore.
[8]

Alfred Soto: The breakdown at the 2:30 mark is unexpected and fabulous, almost a match for the hysteria of the vocals and other beats. The rest is Max Martin doing meth.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: Evidently every country’s music industry gets the Cascada it deserves. Here, it’s a boy band. That doesn’t matter.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Aside from the dubstep/Diplo/invincibility music tangent on the bridge, this could be a dance mix from some lost bonus release of a 98 Degrees album. Somehow that’s not even strange anymore.
[4]

Brad Shoup: “Get me Pitbull and David Guetta!” “They’re unavailable.” “Then get me their non-union South Korean equivalents!” 
[4]

He’s from Georgia, don’t you know?

[Video][Website]
[4.43]

Anthony Easton: Since country is about storytelling, let’s get the narrative correct before we note anything else. Aldean is sitting next to two wealthy passengers in first class. They are all flying from New York to Los Angeles, and somewhere in the air, over what may be Oklahoma, the two men do not understand how anyone can live there. Aldean responds with a litany of what is great about America. In that narrative, let us think about the contradictions. a) Aldean refuses to acknowledge the class components that allow him to sit in first class. b) Aldean thinks that he is closer to the ground than the air, though he is actually sitting in first class. Those are the two big ones, and the ones that I can say without editorializing. It seems to mean something that the farther away that he gets from the land — and I mean this physically, not metaphorically — the farther he gets away from the narrative details that enlivened his early work. But this is not only an Aldean problem. One of the things that I have been worried about is the idea that the land has no connection whatsoever to ideas of class — that the observation of cliches so generic that they cannot be disagreed with is enough of a political statement that country music can no longer juxtapose the implications of small, detailed studies of people with small detailed studies of the psycho-geographic spaces they occupy. This juxtaposition is one of the gifts of the genre, and to lose it, for the refusal of self, and to think that refusal of safe will make you both rich and common, is an act of such naiveté that its deliberateness seems political. Aldean had this potential, this working class boy made good who never forgot where he came from, but his ideas become more general, and the work becomes more banal — and the diminishing returns of his singles output is clearly visible. It has become a way for him to play cowboy and get access to those first-class seats. The 3 is because I still very much like his voice.
[3]

Alfred Soto: The rote chord progression reflect Aldean’s ambivalent relation to his wheat-filled terrain and flatbed cowboys; he’s not sure whether they’re worth eulogizing and the song ain’t good enough to sell the ambivalence on its own. Part of the problem is Aldean himself: he sounds mealy-mouthed and tentative. Toby Keith would have known exactly what was needed, not to mention Brad Paisley and Miranda Lambert on the other side.
[5]

Iain Mew: I’m not from New York or Los Angeles, but as a matter of fact I have been through Indiana. It was boring, too hot and I couldn’t get a decent vegetarian meal anywhere! That’s a dickish response, I know. I don’t genuinely think that I can dismiss somewhere on such little experience, but it’s the response that the song leads me to from its own trading in black and white certainties. It makes a surface show of being a persuasive piece but it doesn’t actually make any real attempts to reach out. If it did, it wouldn’t be so presumptuous about the ignorance of the people it’s addressed to, and would trade in something more than the unexpanded idea that glimpses of fields and meeting a country girl will change your life. The planes/plains pun and the bloated guitar bits both grate too, though I may have been predisposed against it by that point.
[2]

Jonathan Bogart: I’m so torn. On the one hand, I’m a resident — if not a very enthusiastic one — of one of those flyover states, and I do experience murderous rage when I read people dismissing the middle of the country, no matter how much they protest that they’re joking. On the other hand, well, I’m in the middle of trying to move out to a coast, to a city with media and culture and infrastructure. I do want to leave it all behind. But it’s like family: I can talk shit about Arizona all day, but you? You shut your goddamn mouth.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: Kristeen Young has one track, “Under a Landlocked Moon,” about this near-exact premise: “Kansas City’s where the problem is, right? / But you don’t even know what state it’s in! Right?” There are two differences between that great song and this mediocre one, neither having jack to do with genre or politics. One, I grew up in a flyover state — well, drive-through, but still — and its population probably contains more of Young’s rebels than Aldean’s stock characters like badass train engineers, throwback cowboys or girls from Amarillo whose personalities consist entirely of being hot and channeling God like scenery in the chorus. Two: Young’s song seethes and snaps where this keens and plods, and Jason’s voice is one round of processing away from Adam Levine.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: I don’t know what this song is about, or trying to do. Is it a sincere defense of the merits of fly-over country and those that live it and love it, or is it sarcastic and cynical? Is Aldean singing characters, or just using them as a fig-leaf for his own prejudices? Is the song nothing but an excuse to celebrate how damned euphonious U.S. place names are when sung just right (whole genres have been built on less, after all)? Is the mish-mash of ideas — big pastoral anthem meets enormo-ballad for a film meets unstoppable country-pop crossver, I mean you could tell me the guitar bit in the middle is off a Taylor Swift B-side and I’d believe you — the makings of a curate’s egg or a potluck of a pop song where everyone comes away with something? Since I don’t know, all I can do is applaud its gross (in more than one sense of the word) populism and determination to either please or troll everyone in existence, even if I can’t fully appreciate it. He’s got a great voice, though, and all but the last part of the song (“take a riiiiiide,” that bit just doesn’t work) has something going for it. It need not mean anything as long as it sounds nice.
[7]

Brad Shoup: Dolly Parton standing in front of the Gateway Arch: “People think life in the flyover states is a lot of work. But it’s really one big vacation.” Dierks Bentley’s scalp peeking above a shit-ton of corn: “We’re tops in our field!” Matt Holliday pulling a child out of a well: “We really know how to get down.” Lee Ann Womack laying a coyote snare: “There are some real animals out here.” Nelly wrapping tarps over hay bales: “You know how we roll.” Willie Nelson driving a semi, popping greenies in a desperate effort to stay awake: “We love the nightlife!” Ron White fleeing a meth lab on a tip from his uncle: “We’re always cranking it up!” The Westboro Baptist church picketing the Kansas City Royals rebuilding a park playground: “You’ll always find a welcoming committee.” Jason Aldean putting a foreclosure sign on a sixth-generation farmhouse: “We’re always shutting it down. So check out the flyover states. We desperately need the revenue.”
[3]

Acapulco!

[Video][Website]
[5.00]

Brad Shoup: Self-proclaimed Los Lideres recruit Lopez, gambling that her presence in the video justifies her audible exertion on the track. (Or her converting “ignite” into a phrasal verb.) Speaking of which, I guess I still haven’t warmed to Wisin’s ever-present shoutiness. All I wanna do is hear that accordion toss out riffs.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: Leave it to the most popular duo in reggaetón, shouty rapper Wisin and electro crooner Yandel, to finally bring out the best in J. Lo, after a year of depressing collaborations with Pitbull and so forth mostly failed to achieve anything worth returning to. Not only does the clipped, kuduro-inflected beat force dancefloor movement, but López herself sounds freer and happier than she has in years, unleashing a belt that hearkens back to the glory days of “Waiting for Tonight.” I understand, economically, why she wants to keep aiming for the brass ring of U.S. chart pop, but she’s almost always at her best in Spanish.
[8]

Iain Mew: Wisin’s verse starts at 1:20 and lasts for 27 seconds. Yandel gets even less time later on. Whatever the order of the names suggests, between them they get no more mic time than Pitbull on “Dance Again”. Which is annoying, at least in Wisin’s case, because his verse leaps out as exciting and unpredictable in way that nothing else in “Follow the Leader” does.
[4]

Alex Ostroff: Technically, this is Wisin & Yandel. (And for the precious few seconds they get the mic, they make the track.) Practically, it’s another competent post-comeback J.Lo single, with just enough syncopation and olé olés to code as self-consciously “exotic.” Maybe it’s cynical of me to think so about a guest feature on an actual reggaeton single, but this still feels more calculated than Shakira’s recent detours into bilingual merengue ft. Pitbull & co. Perhaps it’s just that Lopez’s voice, thin and breathy, works best overtop of pillowy production or submerged in shimmering dance noises. You need a strong personality and some throatiness to leave your mark on beats like these, and while J.Lo has many talents, dominating tracks has never numbered among them. Unfortunately, “bubbly” and “frothy” are out of fashion these days.
[4]

Anthony Easton: Can one be an A-list star by re-entrenching into an ethnic market that you had left a decade before because you were too small, and does the internationalizing of American popular culture go both ways? Is this the equivalent of premiering The Avengers or Battleship in international markets before moving to domestic, or is that a racist question to ask? Would it be equally racist to want Shakira to sing this, and to find J. Lo mostly a little bland?
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: This is a market play, yes, but it’s mainly a Lopez showcase, as evidenced by everything: its video, a track-length advertisement for J. Lo’s hotness; the fact that if you type “follow the leader” into YouTube, you get multiple variations of Jennifer Lopez’s nicknames with only two mentioning Wisin & Yandel; an American Idol finale coming-out party where if either Wisin or Yandel was mentioned, I missed it. If you don’t like Lopez’s voice, I can’t imagine you’d possibly like this, but it basically succeeds as the dance banger she wants so fervently it’s her only remaining songwriting topic. W&Y make the most of the couple bars they get; the groove is genial. There are other J. Lo singles far more worth your hate.
[6]

Ramzi Awn: J. Lo does a fine job of working It-instrument accordion and selling this largely escapable beat.  I wouldn’t hesitate to put this on at a house party, and the chorus actually kind of bangs in its practically goofy precision.  I believe J. Lo when she says that when she’s on the floor, her hips are in charge.  And as occasionally innocuous as Latin electropop can be, it’s about time we met “On The Floor”‘s zanier cool older sister.       
[7]

Alfred Soto: She can do better than refried Miami Sound Machine (and MSM were funkier and edgier than this), but she has done worse.
[3]

Off the mic with a dope rhyme/Jump to the rythm jump jump to the rhythm jump

[Video][Website]
[4.38]

Kat Stevens: Skepta has to be taking the piss here: similes about Noel Gallagher, reality television and classical architecture, vague allusions to the Jubilee and the Olympics. It even sounds like he’s putting air quotes around the obligatory reference to The Club. Top that off with the most obvious sample you can think of — the result is blatantly a big Fuck You to his pop-rap peers, which makes the song title even more hilarious.
[7]

Brad Shoup: Oh, Europe. Never change. This couldn’t possibly hold a candle to the decade’s best use of “Gonna Make You Sweat” (“H.A.V.E.F.U.N.” by Yer Heart), but based on the Noel namecheck I’m awarding a special Shop Boyz Memorial Award in the Field of Not Having a Clue about Rock Music.
[4]

Iain Mew: When the vocal line from the sample comes in after the emo-rap intro, it really ought to be accompanied by a comedy needle scrape for full “wait, wha?” effect. From there the sample and Skepta are two entertaining party guests who are entirely unable to engage in small talk with each other, never mind anything more. It’s all a bit awkward. If pushed to take sides, I’ll go against the guy claiming to “rock and roll like Noel Gallagher.”
[3]

Alfred Soto: Jive Bunny were briefly a global phenomenon, and this grotesque amalgam of Guetta and early nineties dance tropes is too cloddish to even raise an eyebrow at “I rock and roll like Noel Gallagher,” not to mention “I’m the gingerbread man, come and catch me.”
[2]

Andy Hutchins: If Lupe Fiasco were British and afflicted with Flo Rida’s addiction to rapping over the world’s most recognizable samples, he would probably sound like this. (And maybe better than he actually does!)
[4]

Alex Ostroff: “Make Peace Not War” supports Prof. Calvin Harris’ Theory of Bonker’s Power of Dirtee Disco-tivity: The better a rapper’s grime output, the more awkward and potentially embarrassing their inevitable dance-rap fusion track will sound.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Oh fuck NO you did not just sample C+C Music Factory for your whatever-grime. I bet the concert has paid extras filling the dance floor.
[3]

Jonathan Bogart:
[9]

Between Usher, Miguel, and now this, 2012 is looking like TSJ’s Year of the Gentleman.

[Video][Website]
[7.29]

Alex Ostroff: Libra Scale‘s singles campaign accomplished the near-impossible task of making me totally uninterested in listening to a Ne-Yo album. So if the languid and comfortably seductive “Lazy Love” never approaches the glory of “So Sick” or the perfection of Year of the Gentleman‘s Imperial Phase, it convinces me in three minutes that I shouldn’t have written Shaffer off so quickly, and that’s no small feat.
[7]

Iain Mew: The chorus is reminiscent of Shayne Ward and the facts of the narrative don’t involve much more than Ne-Yo meeting a really nice girl and having some really nice sex. Yet somehow he turns it into an amazing high stakes drama. There are booming drums and teasing licks of guitar and tinkling pianos and he treats everything with tortured seriousness. He’s not just going to be late, he has responsibilities! Listening to him you feel like the world might just fall apart if he doesn’t run to save it. He’s a victim in some cruel master plan. The shower sex scene turns into something from Psycho. It could be very silly — it kind of is very silly — but with its force of feeling it stares down silliness and that act of staring it down is highly compelling.
[8]

Alfred Soto: The big beat and arpeggiated guitar, incongruous for a Ne-Yo single by themselves, pale beside “I’m officially the opposite of her,” as odd as a K-pop transcription. He’s also not lazy about promoting his sexual prowess; he’s better at suggesting than narrating. But it doesn’t go on for a second more than necessary.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: “I’m officially the opposite of early” is either a stroke of genius or a clunker, and I’m going to have to listen to the song several dozen times to tell which. Not that I mind.
[8]

Brad Shoup: He nearly clears the obstacle of the first verse: an indifferently-sketched loverman scenario with lots of superfluous interjection is not my sweet spot. But then he slides into an existential plane with the help of a Moogish bass rumble. The chorus sustains the mood somewhat, and suddenly the voices — harmonizing with attention paid to contrasting timbre — are a help. As someone whose worst part of the day is the moment I leave her to the rest of daylight, I appreciate the tempting sentiment.
[7]

Jer Fairall: Not quite the drop dead sexy thing that Miguel’s “Arch & Point” is, but what it lacks in erotic charge it makes up for in warmth; Ne-Yo’s domesticated version of sensuality is clearly of the slow jam variety, but his is such a forthright and non-squeamish take on S-E-X that it feels downright revolutionary in light of the prudishness of the current political climate (and the clownishness of garbage like “Sexy and I Know It”). Could 2012 be the year we all become grown ups on all matters carnal again? If so, it’d make me even happier than the sheer gorgeousness of this production.
[8]

Anthony Easton: The funny thing about this is that it’s really not that lazy — you have to work hard for the languorous, half seductive, low voice to succeed. It’s like stage magic, hiding all of the hard work under a gloss of smooth patter and distracting hand movements.
[6]