Seapunk? Played out?

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[5.14]

Anthony Easton: So much like a fashionable update of Bow Wow Wow, including the pleasures (the tight rhythms, the yelling vocals, those percussions) and the concerns (how racist is this exactly?).
[7]

Alfred Soto: A cross between Cartoon Network programming and Tom Tom Club, which fans of the former might argue is a redundancy.
[6]

Patrick St. Michel: Miss Emma Lee and Baby Chay, who provide the vocals for this song, seem to have no backstory whatsoever. It appears Basement Jaxx conjured them out of thin air solely for the purpose of “Back 2 The Wild.” Which is pretty unforgivable — not only is this song bad from the goofy-bongo get-go, but the Jaxx went and introduced a duo responsible for the worst sounding vocals I’ve heard anywhere in 2013. Maybe it’s a gag?
[0]

Brad Shoup: Tasteless isn’t quite the word, because this is really delicious: great bassline, ironic non sequiturs, a gleeful multiculti blendjob. Mostly that bassline, though. Damn.
[9]

Scott Mildenhall: As creators of one of the greatest albums since hyperbole began (that being The Singles), it comes as no surprise to discover that “Let’s Have A Kiki” is much more fun in the hands of Basement Jaxx than it was the Scissor Sisters. While they continually ironed out the creases that made them interesting in pursuit of success that accordingly became more and more elusive, Jaxx haven’t; this is as deranged and unabashedly joyful as anything they’ve ever done. If only they had a PR machine to rival that of Daft Punk, a band who surely can’t have many more songs recognisable to the general public than they do (perhaps even less), it might be number one right now instead of “Get Lucky”. (That might also require it being a bit more song-oriented and, well, better, but the point remains.)
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: It makes sense that the Jaxx would apply their brutal maximalist aesthetic to 1980s electro for this song, which wields as unselfconsciously retrograde a lyric as I’ve heard in some time. Sure, pop history is full of exoticized noble-savagery and idealized atavisms, but “Tarzan Boy” (or maybe “Jungle Love”) was about the last time you could get away with that shit even tongue in cheek. I don’t know how ironic they intend their wink to be, but the most depressing interpretation is that they don’t intend to wink at all. 
[5]

Edward Okulicz: No smarter than any 80s teeny pop track that got politely tribal, but a hell of a lot more laboured, that is to say, overstuffed. Basement Jaxx are usually meticulous about having every detail work together to create a groove (even if it’s sometimes an annoying one) but nothing about this collage works together let alone works. When they’re great, they’re great, when they’re bad and putting bad guest vocalists on top…
[2]

Don’t watch the second half in a public space…

[Video][Website]
[4.83]

Patrick St. Michel: So I guess enough time has passed where Bloc Party can be a band’s go-to inspiration? Though, I guess not when it comes to singing, because those vocals sound rough as heck.
[2]

Alfred Soto: It sounds okay on first listen, but the prissy, almost patrician quality of the vocals distracted me, and the distortion obfuscated the generic chords and lyrics.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: “Midnight Missing” is as brash and predatory as befits a band who worship at the altar of Deborah Harry, but is so without the benefit/detriment (delete as appropriate) of being buffed until it shines. The buzzsaw guitars and bass illustrate, rather than hint at, the dissolute — apt for a half-glam, half-scuzz song about high-class prostitutes. SJ Wai’s voice is rough and raw too, lashing at the words with force and commitment.
[7]

Brad Shoup: I dig SJ Wai’s androgynous New Wave declarations, and the drums/guitar melody are recorded wicked dry. But the topline is a sleepwalker, a She Wants Revenge type thing. Would fit well towards the middle of the Stiff Records box.
[4]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Vocally engrossed with the ephemeral and fading, musically tetchy as though it’s fighting the possibility of fading to black (hence the thrilling blast of riff worship at the song’s close). I’ve returned to this song for the level of control Dirty Epics show over their material as it twists and turns, hope to return to another song for addictive songwriting. They’re not there quite yet.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: A Gossip with smaller vocals and more grind than funk isn’t a bad thing, but I kept waiting for a moment to grab me more than any reference-collating would do.
[6]

Did you miss us?

[Video][Website]
[7.25]Anthony Easton: This is so beautiful, isolated, crystalline, and exhausted — softer than Rihanna, but equally obsessive. The bracing corrective of the Missy verse makes it even more interesting.
[9]

Alfred Soto: I can’t explain why Missy Elliott wasted time on a track with an okay beat and vocals by the perpetually blank Kelly Rowland. As for Fantasia, her new album offers tastier goods.
[6]

Brad Shoup: I dunno if Missy’s presence elicited Harmony Samuels’ A game or what, but the track is an icy wonder, punctuated with literal zips and discrete, cooing bgv lines and the pitched-down vocal like the one Jessie Ware had so much fun experimenting with. In a brief cameo, Elliott’s not really able to repay the gesture, although hearing her mirthless laughter is nice enough. Kelly’s completely onboard, dropping perfect phrasing while skating across her middle register. As for the lead, I’ve never paid her much attention, aside from appreciating her slightly ragged vocal style. She impresses by not trying to.
[8]

Patrick St. Michel: The production is interesting, but not interesting enough to cover up how unexciting everything else about the song is. Even a Missy Elliott verse — which should be a big deal! — just seems sorta tacked on, knowing this song by itself wouldn’t stand out.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: Fantasia’s completely overshadowed by that plinky-plonky backing, midway between rain drops and ping pong balls, but also by Kelly Rowland and an almost desultory Missy verse. That’s pretty unfortunate for her, but perfectly fine by me.
[7]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Missy is on her “Son of a Gun (Remix)” shit here, adding her brand of scorned charisma, berating and laughing in the face of the dumpee. Her recent verses are pretty much fanservice for people who still listen to Da Real World on the regular, but hearing her pop up on more and more records these days still retains a sense of fun. The remainder of the song feels remarkably light as the two vocalists calmly allow verses to spill into choruses and back again, the structure of the song never really stopping the sense of overflowing thought. Fantasia and Rowland make a good duo — their vocals seem well matched and their brief dips into melisma don’t affect their chemistry. There maybe isn’t enough to the song beyond casual evisceration of fake exes, but casual evisceration is an interesting alternative to scorched-earth howling for the time being.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: I should be tired of this Diplo/Shebib kind of production, and probably with three less focused and careful personalities I would be — Jhené Aïko was pushing it last year — but Fantasia’s sand, Kelly’s head voice, and Missy’s gruff truth push it out of derivative mope-and-B territory and into something that uses ice to back up fire.
[8]

Sabina Tang: The steady mid-tempo makes it: the ladies never raise their voices, utter threats with surface gorgeousness and venomous consideration. The image that comes to mind is Anne Hathaway, lacquered and brittle, at the end of Brokeback Mountain — though Fantasia intends to make good, not bite her lip like Miranda’s mama; to have her revenge and eat it lady-like.
[8]

One of those “75% of these words are about the featured artist” bits…

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[4.57]

Sonya Nicholson: I saw Killer Mike at South by Southwest this year. The event organizers were smart enough to give him his own venue at the end of the night: no half-hour SXSW teaser set for Killer Mike! Even if he had more time than others, though, he didn’t have so much time that he could do his whole show, unedited. So did he choose to cut back on his usual political rabble-rousing? Hell no! It wouldn’t be a Killer Mike show without the political stage patter. (And not-so-political: “That was the end of the angry portion of the show. Coming up we have the hookers-and-coke portion”) Instead, he performed only the first verse and first chorus of each song. This reminds me, a bit, of Killer Mike’s set. At 3:07, it’s pretty short for a song built around a dreamy, laid-back stoner loop with a nice, hooky snare drum beat. After Killer Mike’s intro hook, we only get one (great) verse from him and then, just as the track was building momentum, it ends. Before that, though, Saints Go Machine provide two perfectly pleasant, atmospheric interludes between the Killer Mike bits. Even if “Love and Respect” doesn’t especially go anywhere, I’m giving it one point above average for that snare drum beat, and another for Saints Go Machine’s excellent taste in collaborators. 
[7]

Alfred Soto: This track faffs around before the guest appearance. Mike’s rap, unfortunately, comes too late and is no big deal.
[3]

Patrick St. Michel: Simple formula – the longer Killer Mike raps over this = higher score. Way way too little of him here, and this just sounds like 3/4ths a demo beat.
[5]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: The beat is a musty update of something that could have appeared on a Lords of the Underground album with added affected vocals; it holds Killer Mike back but forgets to apply the tenets of suspense, angling for a reason to keep us at bay with a “love and respect for my peers” hook. It’s irritating. Killer Kill from the Ville destroys this the moment he is set loose, despite a muddily-recorded vocal: “wise, intelligent/the devil is irrelevant/sand of benevolent/elegant elephant”.
[5]

Anthony Easton: The production of this is beautiful, especially where the vocals sort of fall apart, letting the atmospheric qualities of the sound emerge as the central point. How similar sounds bubble up but do not overwhelm throughout the rest makes me more curious than the lyrics. 
[7]

Brad Shoup: Little bit of Art Russell drag, little bit of Limp Bizkit-style downtempo hip-hop. Perfect for Hollywood depictions of goth clubs.
[3]

David Lee: But isn’t this a Killer Mike track?
[2]

They ain’t holding pomp poms.

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[5.27]

Patrick St. Michel: 1. This entire song hinges on a marching-band theme, yet “Pom Poms” sounds nothing like a Friday night halftime show. So many artists before the Jonas Brothers have pulled this off well – “Lose My Breath” and “Hollaback Girl” cartwheel to mind – that hearing this flimsy take becomes even lamer. I’m convinced nobody involved in this has ever been to a football game, or even accidentally flipped by College Gameday. 2. The girls-vs-boys breakdown reminds me of “Pretty Fly (For A White Guy),” which is not OK. 3. Is this about boobs? Geez, these guys start having sex and their music somehow gets even worse.
[1]

Alfred Soto: Hair shorn and sunglasses updated, they graft the horns from “A View to a Kill” to a distorto-riff variant on U2’s “New Year’s Day” and a chorus their teen audience can understand too well. Will boys admit they like it? It’s the Jukebox’s mission to preach it. But let me preach to them: lose the falsetto.
[7]

Anthony Easton: Like jerking off to that reality television show about the Dallas Cheerleaders or to a Dallas Cheerleader official calendar instead of Debbie Does Dallas, the irony-gree, orally fixated (that whistle in the beginning), brassy (in ever sense of the word), mall breed simulacra of porny pleasure is shinier, sweeter, and more exquisite in its excess than anything more penetrative could deliver. Makes me want to go to Hooters for wings, unironically.
[10]

Brad Shoup: I spent a few days last week digging through the 1970s’ one-hit wonders. Surprise, surprise: now I hear ’em in the Jukebox. The Bros. Jonas offer ruthlessly pared hooks, just like the ones cast by acts with names like Tycoon or Hot or Ace (it really didn’t fucking matter). The whistle is a call from “Morris Brown,” the meat is Jeremih’s “Down,” the mention of revival drops like a Taser victim.
[5]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: “Every time feels like a revival,” Joe Jonas sings, the meaning of “revival” caught somewhere between religious fervor and horndog giddiness. Sonically, “Pom Pom” has everything to do with the sports meaning of the word, all marching-band horns, chant-a-longs and arena-friendly uptempo stomping. It’s pop music with a ticker tape cannon attached for when the key changes kick in. It feels as fun to listen to as it must have been to write, even while the Jonas Bros sidestep having to define themselves as believable adult heartthrobs. It explains the cheerleader imagery of the title – planting both feet in a make-believe adolescence has served the Brothers well thus far, why not simply allude to the fantasies of adolescence in the meantime?
[7]

Scott Mildenhall: An attempt at exuberance, and if exuberance is something you’re attempting then you’re very clearly doing it wrong. It is successful in evoking the movie screen image of the American high school “experience”, though – cheerleaders, marching bands, “jocks” wearing “varsity jackets”, “bleachers” – all things that surely can’t really exist (can they?), but are at least reference points, albeit ones that read as “all-American”, a label that – not to intend a sleight on the US – is often given to people who are quite boring.
[4]

Crystal Leww: I can’t tell if it’s more creepy or pathetic to be singing about pom poms and cheerleaders when all your band members are too old now. Other points: this kid wanting a milkshake metaphor has been played out and draws attention to the fact that they are too old to be singing about cheerleaders anymore; the girl vs. boy sing off is atrocious vocally; and yelling over your brothers in the outro does not equal good ad-libbing, riffing, or harmonizing. 
[2]

David Lee: July 4th compressed into a firecracker of a song. Though this is anything but compressed.
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: I do not hate this terrible song by the Jonas Brothers. Perhaps it’s the key change, or the sexless innuendo (ooh, her hands are free…?) or the mini-Gokey scream, or the way it sounds like a boy band full of three Matt Bellamies, accompanied by four Polly Pockets, all seven thinking they’re in “Good Girls Go Bad.” You’ve gotta respect a good hard failure.
[5]

Will Adams: There are just so many little things about this that I hate. There’s way too much reverb on the horns. There’s very little commitment to the marching band sound. Same goes for the metaphor. The lyric, “Like a kid just wants a milkshake.” The female vocals evoke a much more fun song that I could be listening to instead. These boys sing the shit out of every line. The key change makes no sense. As a whole, the song isn’t bad, but each of these awful elements pricks at my skin when I hear them, and it happens too often for me to ignore it.
[1]

Jonathan Bogart: Sure, it’s the soft bigotry of low expectations that makes me pleasantly surprised to find the Brers Jonas sounding relatively capable of grown-up pop with massive hooks and big-time production, when one-time peers like Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato have accelerated light years beyond. But there’s a brass band part, and I am helpless against a brass band part.
[7]

Romney/Thatcher 2016!

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[6.08]

Katherine St Asaph: This is horribly US-centric of me, but my God, if only this existed for the Romney campaign.
[7]

Anthony Easton: Wang’s father is a major producer, and she has had some success in Korea, China and Japan as a singer. Growing up in Los Angeles, dropping out of a fairly prestigious public school at 16, sounding a bit like a nostalgia soaked Astrud Gilberto — but with more money and less to care about, with lyrics that might come from a character, but seem profoundly aggressive. This track makes me terribly nervous. It’s nasty and self-sufficient. Is there anything, right now, more passive, and more all consuming then “I’ll buy you out”?, unless it’s the truly serpentine line about corporate slaves. It could be ironic, but it doesn’t seem like it. 
[3]

Patrick St. Michel: Shibuya-kei, the globe-hopping musical genre that had a pretty strong run in Japan during the 90’s and even managed a slight cross-over into America, was obsessed with the past. The cool kids in Tokyo gobbled up old French records and bossa nova compilations and then created a hodgepodge of those sounds with an electronic edge. Many albums from that scene are fantastic…but most of them are locked into older times, never really facing the world they were actually made in. Based off her interesting-but-sorta-obnoxious Reddit Ask Me Anything, Taiwanese singer Joanna Wang probably digs Shibuya-kei (“Japan has a market for strange niche music”). She mines the same antiquated sounds for “Coins” – cheesy lounge synth, guitar lines only her and Spongebob could appreciate – but she flips the upbeat sounds of Shibuya-kei into a contemporary taunt, like if “It’s A Small World After All” were rejiggered into an oligarchical jingle. As political commentary, it isn’t revealing anything we don’t already know – but nails the hopelessness of it all wonderfully (“’cause in the end I’ll get what I need”). Plus, it’s really funny! “I can fire your parents, I can fire them all!” Try to escape into yesteryear all you want, but there’s Wang with a smile on her face but a sneer in her voice, reminding you of how things really are (“you should have already known”).
[9]

Crystal Leww: My mother tells me that Joanna Wang has a reputation on the Chinese message boards for being a bit pretentious, eschewing pop stardom and being for white-collar workers. This is definitely a bit weird with more American pop music influences of years past than Chinese music influences of any generation. The song itself sounds even more elitist as Wang inhabits the role of the capitalist, corporate boss who can just “buy you out”. The mean swagger is masked in the ironic sugary sweet coating of this bouncy, sweet sound music. Ultimately, it makes sense why Wang has such a reputation. The confusing amalgamation of sounds and messages that she’s put together just doesn’t sound very accessible or relateable at all, not even to the point where someone might want to be remotely like her.
[3]

Alfred Soto: It’s not hard: forget the vocal and concentrate on the pedal steel, organ, and electronics. Pretty, right?
[4]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Wang’s “Coins” revels in 50s style chintz and the accompanying ideas of exoticism, from the Hawaiian lap steel guitar, bossa nova tempos and a general pachinko-hall vibe. There is a lot of very specific muzak hallmarks being unearthed here, and Wang ducks in and out of the sounds with an indecisive delivery, stretching her vowels and making odd jokes in an attempt to ground old fashioned corniness in new age archness. At moments, she appears to be taking the Shiina Ringo model and running with it, judging from a push/pull relationship with analogue fetishism and her jumpy eccentricity. At other moments, she appears to be reveling in a showcase of what I will call Beautiful Unique Snowflake Syndrome, where she seems so impressed by her sheer individuality that she forgets to hang a song of substance atop of it. “Coins” is an interesting listen but you are left with a nagging thought as to what Wang’s talents mean exactly – you find yourself wishing she would draw, not doodle.
[6]

Iain Mew: I have a thing for bitter songs delivered with an unbroken fake smile (this one by The Delgados, for instance). “Coins” is a rarity within that genre because it doesn’t do it with a manic grin but with a quiet calm. That’s an even more impressive balancing effect to carry off well. In “Coins” the effect is to create a world where buying out everything is just accepted fact, and where the alternative view is treated as a puzzling oddity, while making that world sound like a seductively friendly place. Lyrically it’s not great satire, but how it’s framed musically makes all the difference. The other song it makes me think of is Lily Allen’s “The Fear,” if it had gone further with both cuddly kitsch and the “weapon of massive consumption” stuff and hadn’t showed its hand sincerity wise. “The Fear” was awesome, but Wang’s cheery “good morning my corporate slaves” is even better.
[9]

Brad Shoup: I know Ms. Wang from her delightfully queered cover of Steely Dan’s “Dirty Work”. (Oh Pointer Sisters, what could have been.) She seems to have skipped to the next decade since last we were in touch. Now we’re in that NYC downtown phase, where things had been thought for forever but it was really important that they were said. Regardless, I would be quite pleased with just the instrumental. Nothing that sounds like Super Mario Kart can ever truly subvert.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: In the fanfiction I’m writing, I can’t decide whether Stereolab should sue for infringement or beam like proud parents. Maybe I’ll make it CYOA.
[8]

Ian Mathers: If you played me this blind, I would have put money on it being the Bird and the Bee. I’m not 100% sure it’s not, even after watching the video. Or Nellie McKay, during some of the verse parts. Like both of those acts, I appreciate what Wang’s doing here more than I actually enjoy it.
[6]

Sabina Tang: Adorable kids’-movie villainess waxes Shibuya-kei. (Joanna Wang is Taiwanese-American; my first guess would have been Singaporean, based on the tenor of the satire.) 
[7]

Edward Okulicz: Sounds a bit like Bird and the Bee, but sounds a lot like Wang’s the host of a bizarre game show where the host teases contestants with prizes they can’t have… because they didn’t listen to her. Satire it most certainly is, but if Thatcher had heard it, she’d have considered her life’s work complete. That said, Pay TV covered this ground better some years ago, albeit rather less adorably.
[7]

“Regarding the lyrical composition, Pharrell stated that the song is not just about a sexual conquest, but the fortune in finding potential chemistry with someone.” –Wikipedia

[Video][Website]
[6.82]

Edward Okulicz: This is perfectly pleasant, in the way that any of the old, expansive disco records that got electrified and turned into 2000-era dance monsters are pleasant, in the way that “Cola Bottle Baby” is a fun track, but when stuff was added to it, it was really fun. What I mean is, this sounds like the “before” in the process in which Daft Punk might have taken something with potential and made it transcendent, not the “after,” which is what it has to compete with on the charts and in our hearts. It sounds like an okay Nile Rogers track. Pharrell’s singing is okay. The vocoder bit is there because it has to be, and it, too, is just okay. There’s nothing transformative about this meeting of the minds, they all do their things, but the combination isn’t magic or more than the sum of its parts; it’s merely a pleasant 2am cruise around the suburbs at 25 miles an hour.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Even on Kendrick Lamar’s “good kid” Pharrell sounded thin. How and why he became a signifier of soul in the early 2000s mystifies me; he manufactures a feeling. It works here because the damn track is hologram disco anyway. Thank Nile Rodgers, whose chik-a-chik-chik has supported everyone from Simon Le Bon to Grace Jones, from blank to frank. As for the name above the credits, it knows from holograms.
[7]

Will Adams: Part infinity in the series Will Adams Not Getting Daft Punk.
[5]

Patrick St. Michel: I’ve spent all week turning around ideas in regards to this song, but ultimately simplicity won out. Daft Punk haven’t lost their ability to create incredibly catchy music, and Nile Rodgers’ guitar contributions are disco pomp crystalized. But I just really don’t like Pharrell’s vocal, which monopolizes the song. I…sorta just want to hear Daft Punk make vocoder magic.
[6]

Anthony Easton: Pharrell Williams has done some serious work this year. His writing here is just this elegant shimmer of cheap gold lamé and silver foil. As beautiful as it is disposable.
[8]

Crystal Leww: The song is about getting lucky, but it’s not really makeout music so much as twirl-your-boo-and-corny-grin-in-the-club music.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: I’ve been spending a lot of time with original-recipe disco for reasons of my own, and only Pharrell’s relatively relaxed singing and the clipped edge to the robo-voice keeps this out of the 1977 hall of fame.
[9]

Brad Shoup: If you’re seeking the hammock hang of a funk rhythm guitar, you’re in luck. If you want something for the proles… wait for the album, I guess. This is perfectly calibrated for the friends-of-friends party blues, with the glorious throwback bit saved for the end when you just need one thing to focus on. Get wistful to the filter funk, then get gone.
[5]

Sabina Tang: Daft Punk and Nile Rodgers are key contributors to GPH (gross planetary happiness). The warmly goofy lyrics feel more Lindstrømian-terrestrial than interstellar, though the undeniable hands-up moment remains 2:20 in, when those robotic cut-up voices (finally!) enter on the breakdown. Hardly matches the architectural ecstasy of “One More Time” — Pharrell is set on maintaining the groove rather than sparking off fireworks — but this radio edit’s lack of beginning or end only makes it easier to Infinite Jukebox. One point withheld for the proper club cut, which will surely make more of that zigzagging synth outro melody.   
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: Allow me to restate: Nile Rodgers, featuring Daft Punk, Daft Punk’s sequencer lines and passable Pharrell. If the second half sounds acres better than the first, there’s your answer. (Well, unless you’re listening to a looped leak. Did those ever even happen?)
[7]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: As TSJ’s resident Neptunes stan, I shall refer to a passage from Pharrell Williams’ Places and Spaces I’ve Been where he discusses the effect that seeing the Jacksons’ “Shake Your Body” on television as a child: “Why was [Michael Jackson] so different in that two-dimensional world? Was he just different?” Williams has always presented himself as proudly individualistic and while this has (rightly) made him iconic, he has never seemed able to approach the effortless poise of his own icons — his music is too busy, a zone where all his fascinations simultaneously jostle for attention, where ideas are stacked on top of ideas. (Revisit this years’ “Nuclear” and “Blurred Lines”: both deceptively simple, both plump with Williams’ idiosyncrasies and musical diversions.) On Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky”, the weight of composing is lifted off of his shoulders and the clutter — great though it is! — vanishes, culminating in one of Williams’ best vocal performances. It is certainly his most poised, his most effortless, hell, his most Michael. His hosts don’t strain themselves musically, more a show of assurance than strained simplicity. As far back as Thomas Bangalter’s “Club Soda” from 1998, they pounded away at disco licks within the strains of house. One can understand them favoring a warmer sound, something more carefree, gleeful even. You would forget from their robot costumes or the Internet’s collective idol-worship streak that they are human, after all.
[8]

EVERYBODY SLAP YOUR HEAD…

[Video][Website]
[5.62]

Josh Langhoff: The video for “El Coco No,” with its lurid depiction of a line dance that involves patting your head and dressing up like the devil, leaves me with more questions than answers. When seeking answers, I usually turn to Jeff Godwin’s book The Devil’s Disciples (Chick, 1985), and sure enough: “How did this motley crew of brain bashers rise to this dizzying height of success? Through a combination of [YouTube] and fateful accident, they now find themselves with the ability to infect millions of new converts with their perverse primer of sneering sexual degradation of [coconuts], violent psychotic thrills, and bowing awestruck worship of hideous Luciferian strength… Far too many liberal proponents of today’s permissiveness feel that kids flocking to hear and [torrent] [Roberto Junior y Su Bandeño] is ‘no big deal.’ I truly feel sorry for these people. They refuse to see the danger right in front of their noses: the fact that their kids are being savagely brain-pounded and tricked into running away from God to the tune of [wtf, are they ripping off ‘Rock Lobster’???].”
[7]

Jer Fairall: “Macarena,” Gangnam-style.
[5]

Alfred Soto: A Tex-Mex “Hokey Pokey” that I assure you is too tinny to play at parties.
[4]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Years of songs introducing dances have taught us that hearing instructions bellowed out of speakers makes for terrible listening experiences outside of weddings, family gatherings and packed nightclubs full of shameless people. We accept them grudgingly in these contexts – outside of these situations, everything sounds as clumsy as the time Michael Scott taught us how to dance The Scarn. “El Coco No” fits into this lineage of novelty dancepop, but its goofy facade may be important in pushing Latino-origin electronic music onto a global stage. Where Junior’s previous cumbias have leaned towards the traditional Mexican norteña sound, “Coco” attempts to engage with the relentless digital pace of tribal guarachero/3ball. The track’s bubbling meme status appears to be occurring at a time when Mala follows Cuban muses, A$AP Rocky raps over global-leaning Birdy Nam Nam productions and 3Ball MTY win Latin Grammys. It is an interesting time for these sounds to approach a global breakthrough, and the right time for a throwaway hit to mirror it. Of course, people said that “Gangnam Style” would break K-Pop on a global scale and that didn’t happen. The difference there was that Psy’s gonzo megahit could stand on its own two and call itself a song. Junior’s instruction manual of a song just can’t.
[5]

Ian Mathers: It actually gets more infectious once he gets to the part where he doesn’t end every line with the title, but it’s got strong earworm potential throughout and the song makes surprisingly good use of the fact that a tuba, played correctly, sounds a little bit like a cartoon fart.
[7]

Scott Mildenhall: Tapping your head repeatedly with your hand. It’s not exactly Del Boy falling through a bar, but it’s also not hard to imagine enough people finding it sufficiently humorous to make this a hit in the UK at some point this year. Then again, “no te me subas al coco no” is delivered similarly to “dale mamasita con tu tacatá” and that didn’t exactly catch on in Anglophone areas, so it could go either way. (Almost certainly the same way.) If it did happen though, it would be in no small part thanks to the strength of its hypnotic power — after two minutes of undeniable coconut dearth it feels like it’s accidentally been put on loop. It hasn’t, but it would be quite nice if it was. For now.
[7]

Brad Shoup: I don’t mind dance instructions if they’re set to something not-shitty. Unlike the very shitty “Cupid Shuffle” — an aural death march — these guys clearly enjoy filling in the spaces around the steps.
[7]

David Lee: Did I just land in an 8-bit video game where I have to fight off zombies who fail at humor and do the Cha Cha Slide all day?
[3]

Call this a do-over. Don’t stuff this one up, Paisley.

[Video][Website]
[5.50]

Alfred Soto: Thanks to “The One with LL Cool J,” I turn to “Beat This Summer” breathing a louder sigh of relief. I’m tempted to overrate this typical evocation of Paisleyean pleasure, where a kiss sounds like a fleet-fingered guitar solo and Paisley’s voice is as cool as a pair of Wayfarers. Like any sun-kissed idyll though it goes on too long.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: Stephen Colbert made a joke last week about “Accidental Racist,” managing to unite people of all backgrounds to hate that horrible song, which, fair enough. But I pine for the alternate universe where anyone in the Brad Paisley machine slaps him when he suggests sharing his awkward Starbucks experience with the world. “Hey dummy, you got ‘This Summer’ coming out soon, let that bring people together.” This touches on themes that everyone should be able to relate to — summer love, the impermanence of everything, how flipping great the summer is (you like winter, get the hell out of here). Paisley actually sounds like a smitten dude rather than a counselor when he sings “hourglass,” and the whole song finds a good balance between country twang and warm-weather pop. Paisley has a long long way to go before he shakes himself of that other song — as it should be, geez what a nightmare that was — but dude is still super talented and this one is going straight on the summer-jams playlist.
[8]

Anthony Easton: The thing with Lee Brice or Luke Bryan or Justin Moore or Ashley Monroe or Carrie Underwood or Blake Shelton or even Kacey Musgraves — when they sing something that is ostensibly pleasurable, it doesn’t sound obligatory. Even with something like “Mud on the Tires”, Paisley sounds like he’s working rather than playing. 
[3]

Josh Langhoff: The trouble with Up is there’s always a Down, but just to be clear: when I criticized Paisley’s self-production of The Song That Shall Not Be Named, I was referring solely to the editorial guidance a producer provides. In terms of sheer sonics, though, nobody in 2013 beats what Paisley does with “Beat This Summer.” He can re-ascend his pedestal for orchestrating all the band’s little staccato elements into a groove, along with obligatory cries of “whoa” and a lead guitar as effortless as his fingers tracing yours atop some carnival ride, during those moments of mirth and jitters just before the fall. One of his best.
[9]

Sabina Tang: And four months later she died of typhus in Corfu.
[5]

Ian Mathers: He’s vastly overrated as a melodicist/songwriter, his actual voice is as anodyne as his metaphorical one (who gives an actual fuck about tanlines? That line signifies something much nastier than he thinks it does, or maybe something much nastier than he’s relying on it being taken as), and the guitar solo here feels bizarrely out of place. He’s the bland, “acceptable,” “skillful,” “charming” face of hegemonic New Country and his singles are almost worse just for being so ignorably radio-ready.
[2]

David Lee: Holy hell, there have not even been five days of consistently spring-like weather where I live, and yet Brad Paisley’s already moping about like Billy Joe Armstrong on “Wake Me Up When September Ends.” But then, this could be a memory, a song Paisley scrawled on a napkin in a diner after a near-utopian summer. If I had to make a bet, though, I would say Brad was drinking watery coffee and eating plain toast when he wrote this, because only in that context does this ode to a supposedly passionate summer seem anything other than terribly bland.
[3]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: I didn’t write about “Accidental Racist” because I decided to opt out and not listen to “Accidental Racist”. And I still haven’t heard “Accidental Racist” because I consider myself an adult that can make decisions as to how I should properly misspend my time. So does Brad Paisley, a forty year-old man who sings sweetly about summer romances as though he’s falling for the first time. This is not how men his age should act, but he lends “Beat This Summer” a gentle bittersweetness, accepting the ephemeral quality of summer affairs whilst reminding himself that he’s experiencing one. If his vocal performance doesn’t let himself enjoy the sensation enough, he lets joy boil over into guitar histrionics: slide guitars on the chorus skittering along like heartbeats, guitar solos working as bursts of giddy sunshine.
[7]

Brad Shoup: A minute shorter and this could’ve been his great pop moment. Here is one of his more nagging melodies — Top 40 cadence on a small melodic seesaw — seeded with stuttering steel, banjo earworms, and we-are-young howling. A singer half his age would be stuck on the endless summer; I’m sure the counterpoint would be a welcome shock. He doesn’t have enough lift for the chorus, but on the bridge, his yelp is a major plus. But yeah, this is too long. We get it: you solo.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: This would be excellent — as a demo. For Taylor Swift, three albums ago.
[5]

SCUZZ~!…

[Video][Website]
[5.29]

Alfred Soto: No one needs to be told about its holistic possibilities, not in 2013, not when MBV gave us an impressive reminder a few months ago. Feedback riding surly adolescent rage can barrel down the highway, like the motorcycle sampled at the end of the track. But that’s the problem: the end of the track is a long way.
[5]

Patrick St. Michel: A good-but-not great song that turns into something intriguing when Bradford Cox falls into a trance and just repeats the titular word over and over again.
[7]

Anthony Easton: The sound near the end of this is like a lawn tractor that’s hit a patch of decorative shale — a sound I would have never thought to put in a song, but between that and the feedback, it kind of works.
[6]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: It was the early hours of New Years Day 2012 when I find myself drunkenly teasing my friend for admitting she is a Deerhunter fan: “No, not true, their fans don’t exist!” The alcohol wore off but my somewhat irrational dislike of the Bradford Cox-fronted band kept going, and soon enough the joy I got from making fun of Deerhunter far outweighed the experience of actually listening to Deerhunter. From my point of view, they have always been a band to be endured rather than be enjoyed. Funnily enough, “Monomania” is better as an endurance challenge, decaying under feedback and motorcycle noise (!), than it is as a half-baked tambourine-shakin’ fuzz-rock romp. Even when they notch a win, they sound like they are losing. PS. Sorry Jules, I accept there may be Deerhunter fans, it’s cool.
[6]

Jer Fairall: A potentially fascinating tangle of queer angst, complete with unrequited love, calls for divine intervention and eventual hysteria, but it is outmatched by the tangle of ugly noise that not only stifles any hope for catharsis but then drags the whole ordeal out for an absolutely punishing five-plus minutes.
[3]

Ian Mathers: I’m sure there’s overlap between Wavves fans and Deerhunter fans, but this is closer to “Afraid of Heights” than any partisans of either would like to admit. “Monomania” (and Deerhunter) is better, partly because they don’t half-ass the scuzz and the end of the song actually builds to something that’s compelling instead of trailing off. But it’s telling that the best part of the song is when it shreds itself to bits.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Two-dimensional scuzz-rock topped by affected greaser howl. We’ve got whole jukeboxes with that down here. I’m good.
[4]