Household chores your editor needs to do this weekend…

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[6.90]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: To certain pockets of the internet, “Dirty Laundry” is a Beyoncé diss, the song where Kelly finally addresses what we all knew: that her ex-groupmate’s success ate at her. We don’t need that song, and Rowland doesn’t need to make that song. Instead, “Dirty Laundry” uses that professional baggage to help the listener understand her fragile mental state, one that allowed an unhealthy relationship to flourish. It’s remarkably honest — far more inspiring than any gossipy muckraking — and genuinely cathartic for such an uncomfortable listen. Part of this is in the language Rowland uses. The chorus offers “let’s do this dirty laundry,” marking the song a shared experience. She’s speaking to the family she references throughout the song; she could be speaking to collaborator The-Dream, whose influence hangs over the song (the diction to “motherfucker” is a sure giveaway). Yet the experiences behind “Dirty Laundry” feel depressingly familiar enough to be dedicated to other women dealing with/surviving from similar ordeals to Kelly’s. “Let’s” is the important word here, with Rowland sharing her experiences and imparting whatever lessons she can offer — you’re not alone, the song says, I was there too.
[8]

Alex Ostroff: After the final notes fade away, the metaphors might seem too pat, or the content exploitative, but while “Dirty Laundry” spins it remains entrancing and arresting and somehow utterly unconcerned with the conversation surrounding it. Britt‘s already written magnificently about why this song is important, but it’s not just good for you or good for the public conversation — it’s good. Without sensationalizing, “Dirty Laundry” conveys Kelly’s experiences so effectively that — despite my love for the track — I’m legitimately uncomfortable writing about the song rather than simply allowing her music to speak for itself, putting it in a class with Janet’s “What About.”
[8]

Rebecca A. Gowns: Other people have written better things about the content of this song (my favorite example here). I find it touching and honest; like Dusty Springfield and Carole Pope’s Soft Core, unexpected, raw, and bittersweet. It’s not something I’d want to listen to regularly, like listening to your mom crying in the hallway. I applaud the risks that she’s taking with this one.
[8]

David Lee: This is some really dirty laundry, clearly exhumed from an emotional cellar where it’s been rotting and stinking for so long. At least, that much is made clear from the faint echoes and sighs swirling around Kelly’s exhausted voice — closure is leakier than we want to believe. It’s a dose of cruel reality that stands out from a pile of ultra-processed, inspirational mush (see: “Firework” and “Same Love”). Shit like this does not go down so easy. Which makes me wonder if this will get play on the radio. This does not make for a great driving soundtrack, but it’s one hell of a conversation starter. After all, “let’s do this dirty laundry” Kelly exhales. By baring her secret she’s asking that listeners open their — our — eyes to the many women who have to shove down rising pain in order to go on partying (“Like This”) and giggling (“Dilemma”). And given that the current culture makes it so that the person of interest in the song — correction, the one whom so many gossip sites have made a person of interest — can’t get through a concert without attendees slapping her ass, I couldn’t agree with Kelly more. Let’s.
[10]

Anthony Easton: The hype of this precedes the song itself, and it is a lot of hype. Is it biographical, is it about Beyoncé? It must be, because she broke down while singing it. (I mean, it must be about Beyoncé, at least a little bit — the first voices are pure A Star is Born/Sunset Boulevard shit, especially how she sings “you don’t know the half of this industry.”) The meta-context moves post-hype and pre-text. (A song about domestic violence that is not masochistic — is this a rejoinder to Rihanna?) But hype/meta-text moves out of the way, and the music comes through. The problem is that I am not convinced that she isn’t playing games — the song will go viral better on a cloud of specific scandal. The song itself might actually not be very good. The laundry metaphor comes and goes in ways that are clunky. The battered/shattered line is absurd. The stabbing synths are too literal a musical accompaniment. The sighs are a little Motown-leaning but seem too calculating. It doesn’t meet a cliché it didn’t like. The more I listen to it, the more I wonder about the specific details: working as a kind of social worker’s checklist to see the signs of domestic violence might be the only useful thing about it. That I am looking for a utilitarian moral good out of this suggests how confusing I find the whole mess.
[5]

Brad Shoup: Blah blah Don Henley hey this is nice if only because people lost their mind over some squicky nonsense. “Let’s do this dirty laundry,” Rowland sighs, cos this is a joyless duty. It’s not really about Bey: it’s about her man, it’s about Kelly like everything is about us. I’ll go her one better: for all our blogging and fuckyeah Tumbling, we don’t know one-hundreth of the industry. Rowland’s pain, converted to cash, is the same as every musician’s pain. No pejorative. The-Dream introduces creeping low-end strings and bgvs like a taunting ghost, shepherding the narrative to some kind of strength. Asking for details is gruesome, I know, but the concept puts more on blast than the text. “Dirty Laundry” conjures a general grim mood, with the specifics left to the audience’s imagination. But you know how the industry works.
[5]

Jonathan Bradley: “Fix my make-up: ‘Get it together, Kelly, get it together’,” is notable because it’s the first moment in which Rowland approaches the narrative as anything other than a police report. “Just the facts, ma’am” is a dull way to tell a story, and “Dirty Laundry” evinces little interest in using technique — vocal or literary — to shape its emotional or dramatic contours. The third verse does get around to showing rather than telling, from “he hittin’ the window like it was me” to the sudden propulsiveness created by the artificiality of the tightly rhymed couplet “Don’t nobody love you but me/Not your mama, not your daddy, and especially not Bey.” But all in all, no one needed a 2013 revival of the A Grand Don’t Come For Free approach to songwriting, even a thematically worthy one.
[4]

Daisy Le Merrer: I’m the first to be tired of artists using their personal life as song props, but this isn’t Timberlake or Beyoncé capitalizing on us knowing about their wedding for added emotional weight. Rowland is using the song to help her personal life, not the other way around, and it makes all the difference. Or at least it sounds a lot like she does, and that’s all that matters in the end.
[8]

Alfred Soto: The-Dream exploits the human frailties of this uninteresting and very average singer; when she sounds aggrieved against minimal keyboard she’s not Rihanna. But the dirty laundry looks suspiciously like a telenovela.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: The-Dream churned up his old abyss of synths and real talk, the latter provided by Kelly. It shouldn’t need to be said how much it needed saying; as for the music, to get it you’ve got to realize it’s exactly the same idea as “Form of Flattery,” except with repressed pain in place of omnidirectional bile, more theater (which is not a pejorative) and more haunting pianos. If one works, so must the other. Also, if you hear this, support this and continue to make Poor Kelly jokes, you are a hypocritical shit.
[8]

I just won Find DJ Khaled!

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[5.00]

Katherine St Asaph: Tap out, phone in.
[4]

Brad Shoup: I saw the title and thought Birdman was finally wishing us adieu. Maybe you’re sick of us breaking these posse cuts down, so we’ll take it by gender. (Maybe you’re tired of people saying “pussy”; feel free to keep scrolling with my apologies.) The dudes aren’t putting that pussy on a pedestal, they’re putting it in a subreddit. By invoking the pussy melodically and repeatedly, Minaj elevates matters to a baseline of interest. Lex Luger’s coterie does its part with the right kind of ponderous synthbeds, pushing your greyfolds until you find this the right kind of bummer.
[5]

Patrick St. Michel: Future and Nicki Minaj shine (check the latter’s Birdman-hand-rub line, which would only be better if it weren’t on a song featuring Birdman); as usual, Birdman and Mack Maine are there but not really doing anything special; Lil Wayne opens with the line “if you hatin’, you just need some pussy” and it’s downhill from there.
[5]

Alex Ostroff: So is Rich Gang basically a more self-serious sounding version of that Young Money album? “Every Girl” was frequently eyeroll-worthy, but somehow endearingly so, while “Tapout” is utterly lacking in self-awareness — with the possible exception of Nicki. Even coated in post-40 production and Future, the entire affair somehow sounds significantly less lush than “BedRock” — again, with the possible exception of Nicki.
[4]

Anthony Easton: Minaj, who I thought impossible to like again, provides the smartest verse here. Thinking about sexual capital and economic capital as twin goals of political liberation isn’t a new idea, or an idea without problems, but she provides a feminist rejoinder to the rest of the actors here. Holding her own includes spitting her flow amidst lines like Wayne’s “hit it when I wake up, tell the pigs I say as-salamu alaykum,” or Birdman’s anonymous list of luxury goods, or Future’s ooohs. Minaj positions her soft/cultural power as a kind of feminist usurping of, or perhaps rejoinder to, Wayne’s phallocentric fronting. All of the politics aside, I like how it moves from singing to rapping, I like some of the production, and near the end, when it kind of sounds like Daft Punk doing Tron, it has some chance at being musically interesting.
[7]

David Lee: What baffles me is the production: a rolling prairie storm of triumph primed for “Started From the Bottom” chest beating. It’s so great and so out of sync with the mailed in performances that have been cobbled together into a sex rap Frankenstein. More maddening, though, is the colossal waste of an “International Players Anthem” reference. Shame on Weezy.
[5]

Josh Langhoff: Their Graceland will include a Pussy Room (all my Freudians and Fuddians say “Womb”): enveloping and cushioned, soundtracked by Brian Eno or maybe John Maus if things start getting sexy, and from which no one need ever emerge.
[5]

Named after either the Terry Gilliam movie or the Men At Work live album…

[Video][Website]
[5.75]

Alex Ostroff: A cavalcade of endlessly blooming, wondrous sounds, undercut so perversely and deliberately by the vocal sample that I’m almost tempted to award points for chutzpah.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Repeating the title as if it functioned like an incantation that summoned the exotic, this track takes a while to get past the percussive pitter-patter into Four Tet synth glide bliss while never quite shaking the aura of a New Age gift shop with lit incense.
[5]

Will Adams: The production here is wonderful. Gold Panda zones in on a synthetic woodblock and applies a rapid echo with heavy feedback. It’s an amazing trick that takes the woodblock from a tinny blip to something that fills the sonic field. But there are hundreds of better vocal samples out there, and the anonymous dude’s off-key blathering gets in the way of the all of the lovely sounds.
[6]

Anthony Easton: This is electronic in a way that is so abstracted from the organic, and so profoundly against any real sense of the inorganic it seems metallic or cold or abusive. It used to be that the decorative ornament was abstracted from nature, and it still seems rare that decorative ornaments can be abstracted from anything that is not natural. 
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: Years ago, in college the first time, one of my dormmates recited her family’s 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall variant for long car trips: (deadpan, in rhythm) “There are cows in the meadow. There are cows in the meadow. There are cows in the field. There are cows in the field. There are cows by the street….” (Rural car trips, clearly.) This is like a bored variant of that bored variant. And it’s suspect how these laptop landscapes always mention Brazil or Latin America and never, like, Lumberton.
[5]

Patrick St. Michel: Scattered across the Gold Panda song catalog are numbers titled after countries. “India Lately,” “Same Dream China,” “Greek Style,” even the vague “Long Vacation.” Then there are tracks like “Quitter’s Raga,” which use a glitchy sample of Indian singing to establish location. What’s impressive about these songs is how they never settle for simple cultural tourism – Gold Panda certainly incorporates sounds from each locale into these moments, but they always reminded me of being in an unfamiliar place and just being a bit overwhelmed by everything. It’s like dashing through a local market or riding a train through snowy, alien hills while drowsy. “Brazil” does not, to my knowledge, feature anything that makes it sound Brazilian, but instead just captures the rush of being somewhere new (conveyed by the skittering electronics and general wooziness, especially of the vocal sample). It’s a song frequently distracted…I like the sound of the water droplet falling, a tiny detail you might notice while running around a city…but also eventually in awe of it’s surroundings. Turns out Gold Panda is one of our past travel guides going.
[8]

Iain Mew: Gold Panda still has a way with hypnotic unreality. The beat here that rattles like video game table tennis speeding up past the physically possible is a fine example, and combines with harps blissfully. The vocal sample, though, keeps dragging “Brazil” back to dull reality. It’s a disappointing distraction when his music can conjure places in a way that mere word association can’t hope to.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Dude, Brazil hung up.
[3]

“Love really really really is the answer.” – Bob Marley…

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[2.29]

Daisy Le Merrer: Accidental Rasta.
[2]

Brad Shoup: Ruthlessly pursuing that vibe, Kenny reunites with the Wailers. Instead of the gawdawful country/calypso marriage of “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven,” he gives his full half-ass to a straight-up reggae track. (The Barrett brothers are credited as co-writers and players, but Carlton’s been dead since 1987, so I’m not sure if we’ve got a sampling situation or what.) He’s never been the strongest singer, but hearing him slip on a Marley mask for bits like “really, really, really” is definitely stretching that hammock. The mood is pretty downcast: Chesney seems to be gaining cares the further he goes down the beach. Perhaps he chose the key and tempo to thwart mayonnaise-company PR firms.
[2]

Anthony Easton: This means nothing, and it’s so mellow that it’s practically weightless, but Chesney’s voice just floats over it. For someone who has tried to work out the implications of the Caribbean in country for a decade (moving from Buffett to the Wailers), this raises questions of authenticity, but Chesney’s position never really rises to answer them.
[6]

Patrick St. Michel: Every bit as dumb as Snoop Lion, though he at least had the good sense to highlight current events when he made an obnoxious message song lacking a clear message.
[1]

Zach Lyon: Chesney could’ve collaborated with the ghost of Marley himself and he still wouldn’t have been able to hide away that “sweatily reciting a speech at gunpoint” vibe in his voice.
[1]

David Lee: Sounds like someone looks to Brit + Co. as a source of aesthetic inspiration.
[1]

Alfred Soto: Thanks to my sister, I associate summer with Kenny Chesney albums. Attempts to steer her to Jerrod Niemann have ended in failure. Of course they do — why would you listen to new music when Chesney’s fundamentalist, redundant version compensates for iPod gaps? He probably thinks he’s converting fans into Bob Marley listeners. But Legend is diamond-plus certified for a reason.
[3]

“Gerardo Ortiz escaped unhurt but unfortunately Ramiro Caro wasn’t so lucky.[8]”…

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[7.57]

Josh Langhoff: LIFE: In January 2013, the U.S. Treasury Dept. sanctioned and froze the assets of Dámaso López Núñez, “El Licenciado,” a top lieutenant in the Sinaloa Cartel. ART: Even before that, “El Licenciado” was a trope in Sinaloan corrido music, along with its variation “El Lic” and two variants referring to Dámaso Jr., “El Mini Lic” and “El Mini Licenciado,” with which Gerardo Ortíz ends the chorus of “Dámaso.” Translation services say the phrase means “graduate” or “lawyer,” but my awesome librarian Fatima says it implies a specific sort of power; in Ortíz’s words, Dámaso stands up for his gente and wears a pistola should anyone mess with him. Very coy. (The Facebook fan page for Dámaso López “El Mini Lic” lists his occupation as “Business Person.”) LIFE: Ortíz is a rising musical big shot who’s spent the past four years writing corridos and ballads for himself and other Sinaloan hat acts. In 2011, he narrowly escaped a shooting in which two of his companions died. ART: On Billboard‘s Hot Latin Songs chart, corrido singers usually hit with ballads, but “Dámaso” is Ortíz’s first top five hit that’s not romantic chart bait. It’s spectacular. Antiphonal brass warring across your ears, syncopated fills twining around Ortíz’s voice like carnivorous tendrils, and underneath all that activity a slow flow of chords that could outline a gorgeous ballad. ???: Knowing Ortíz’s history, watching him increasingly dominate his genre, hearing him embody this infamous public figure, seeing his publicity pix with guns, ammo, vests, and spiky shoulderpads — it all adds up to what Christgau, reviewing Eminem, once called “that funny feeling in [fans’] stomachs.” It’d be perverse for me, an outsider, to glorify the violence permeating Sinaloan music or to overstate its repulsiveness; but by strength of his persona, Ortíz has both ends covered.
[9]

Anthony Easton: The horn flourish at the beginning and the horn flourish at the end loop together in interesting ways, providing a frame for the work in the middle. It’s a tight and sophisticated way of musical storytelling. I also love how narcocorridos localize, extend, and estrange West Texas polkas for their own means. 
[8]

Iain Mew: The best way I can think to describe the brass in this is to use a Brad Nelson comment on the synths in a different song a couple of years ago: “makes me think of the word ‘onslaught’ but it’s so goddamn pleasant”. When it comes even thicker and faster at the end it’s total joy.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Horns, tricky rhythm changes, and a pleasant voice — a closet full to bursting with mismatched furniture, but narcocorrido is a sound I’m still learning.
[6]

Daisy Le Merrer: Everyone’s racing to play as fast as he can behind Gerardo Ortiz, but his delivery remains steady. The effect is that of a guy who’s full of rage, ready to explode at any moment, but not until he decides to. He still calls you “señor”, but he’ll be just as happy to kick your teeth out if you don’t give him the respect he sings about.
[8]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: An intense narcocorrido celebration of carrying heat and walking past strawberries by someone who’s cocky enough to think he can sing. Hypnotic for all its goofed-up energy — someone give that snare drummer a publishing share.
[7]

Brad Shoup: It’s the second track on his album, but as a fine example of narcocorrido floss-and-stroll, it could’ve been slotted last. I guess that’s not how things play out in the real world. “Dámaso” is punchy and breathless, with Ortiz surveying how the trade has trickled down magnificently for his loved ones. I can’t tell if it’s a nose flute or an organ supporting the horn theme, but I love the timbre. Ortiz doesn’t pack the country roughness of a Goyo Gastelum, but I’m on record flipping for this kind of packed brass.
[7]

Guess how much we like Disclosure?…

[Video][Website]
[5.86]

Iain Mew: In retrospect, “Latch” feels like the breakthrough point leading to what has been a phenomenal year so far for great commercially successful UK dance singles. It’s more a quirk of release dates than anything that, of the two “Latch” collaborators, Sam Smith has managed to score a #1 before Disclosure. Still, the way he works up to a howl of denial is a big part of what makes “La La La” work, alongside some of the best childlike backing vocals since Jem’s “They” and the relief that the Naughty Boy who had the ability for “Heaven” is still around after all.
[7]

Anthony Easton: His voice sounds higher than it should be, but it’s not in falsetto and it’s not quite pitch-shifted. Trying to figure out exactly how they did that puts the listener off kilter; this might be a good thing, because the rest of the song doesn’t have much else to offer. 
[3]

Alfred Soto: Sam Smith’s vocal on Disclosure’s “Latch” was uninhibited in the best sense, and his melodic skills are at their best in the chorus. I haven’t decided whether the “la la la” loop suits a track whose dance potential is wedded to tentative R&B. Or maybe it’s got R&B potential wedded to a tentative dance track.
[6]

Will Adams: Watching Sam Smith’s star rise after his marvelous contribution to Disclosure’s “Latch” has made the past few months exciting. “La La La” can only help. Over Naughty Boy’s shuffling garage groove, Sam tunes out the bullshit with his powerful voice. In a world filled with assholes who have no problem in selling you their version of the truth, I need this tremendously.
[9]

Scott Mildenhall: The latest in a stream of off-kilter number ones this year, existing on its own terms, and almost uncategorisable. Initially it might seem to achieve that through gimmickry, but that does the sample more than a disservice — in the right mood it’s devastating, especially when paired with the video, something sure to traumatise a generation. The whole thing’s very close to the bone, unusually so; how many songs are there with the painful verisimilitude of the notion of hopelessly willing someone to stop from the heart?
[8]

Brad Shoup: Perhaps the worst hook I’ve heard in a decade. The rest is fine — good, even: existential R&B on a cultural scale. But I spent every second of verses and refrains in mortal fear of that botched, obnoxious hook.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: It took the UK scads of good music, but finally they’ve proven you can fuck up dance throwbacks. One way is making your hook Beatriz Luengo shoved through a woodchipper.
[4]

NEW HAT ALERT!

[Video][Website]
[6.56]

Iain Mew: Slice any three seconds out of “Wild” at random and, unless you hit the piano outro booby prize, you’re guaranteed to hit vocals. They frantically fill any space left from the main melody with raps, “oh oh oh”s and even more of the melody stuffed wherever it will fit. That it all works so well is credit to the singers being really good as well as versatile, but also to their ability to ride over the amazing whirs and blips that your slice will hit at least two of.
[8]

Daisy Le Merrer: It starts of like so many K-pop songs with the girls doubling a piano with their “oh oh oh”s and going into a generic couplet about going out. But the squelching synth line gets wilder and wilder, and when the first rapped bit arrives, the song starts living up to its title. This is still pretty unoriginal, but it gets more and more urgent with each new section, until the piano outro ruins things again with its blandness.
[7]

Alfred Soto: The keyboard melody alludes to Roxette’s “Listen To Your Heart,” one of the most quietly influential power ballads of the last twenty years, and a power ballad is what “Wild” sounds like, albeit at warp speed. 
[5]

Patrick St. Michel: This one demonstrates something that K-Pop artists do frequently that I really like – “Wild” sets soft noises up against really harsh sounds, and I like the ensuing sonic conflict. It’s not enough to make this one really stand out, but definitely gives it a boost.
[7]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: A fluctuating electronic buzz sits atop the main melody of Nine Muses’ “Wild,” crackling and beeping away, a surefire second away from bursting into the usual aural pyrotechnics. Interestingly, the group and producers Sweetune bypass this option, making the buzzing set dressing to a set of Daishi Dance-esque dance-balladry. The “no way” bridge is a nice touch, but it’s a mere digression. The conservative “Wild” is refreshing amongst an influx of recent idol groups’ penchant for more-more-more; still, conservatism doesn’t make for incredibly memorable listening.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: Pushing their voices to maximalist overdrive is one way of going wild, sure. It’s harder to take the heatseeking synth throbs seriously, though.
[6]

Anthony Easton: Most of the points are for the little island of piano sounds in the maelstrom of vocals and electronics.
[6]

Brad Shoup: It sounded like a sturming En Vogue track at half the length; turns out it’s got a heady, sensual message. The quick running time is no joke. There’s time for two rap breaks, and none for breath. The out-of-control brostep buzz hits like a game show alerting you to the wrong answer (not unlike the kettledrum/brass bursts in “Stop and Get a Hold of Myself” by Gladys Knight and the Pips); it hammers every sticky declaration, thrillingly t-boning the lyrical intent. 
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: I just heard this amazing remix of “Another Night.”
[7]

Wake me when 5ive release their single, k?

[Video][Website]
[4.70]

Katherine St Asaph: Not the Katy Perry we deserve, but the one we need right now.
[7]

Brad Shoup: So yes, it seems we did ask for this. Going the Kelly Clarkson/P!nk route made the most sense, I’m sure; this is not the pop moment to get jiggy again. (I would’ve voted to refine the “We Four Girls” formula: lovers rock and rubbergrunge.) It’s fine, with bubbly cadence during the refrain. But that watery vocal processing pulls the cord on the whole production. It’s as if they suddenly took their name literally.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: The popstars of 1998 are stuck in 2005, but if you’re already able to be nostalgic for B*Witched, then you probably love the first wave of Max’n’Luke girl pop (specifically Kelly and Marion), even if only the first half of the chorus hits as hard as any of that. But once they were young and silly and vibrant; surely removing the latter two removes a large part of the point? Still, every time Edele Lynch’s voice pops out recognisably in the mix, it triggers some fairly decent memories of “Rollercoaster” and “To You I Belong.” Whether that was the point or if it’s supposed to stand or fall exclusively on its own merits, I’m not sure, but it does mean “Love and Money” avoids the reunion pitfall of being completely pointless.
[5]

Alfred Soto: The “Since You’ve Been Gone” riff was so omnipresent that it took me a half minute to recognize a new generation permutation. I’d missed it! But the chorus doesn’t function as release — it sits there.
[5]

Will Adams: Quick tip: “Blow Me (One Last Kiss)” didn’t sound that fresh one year ago. Things haven’t changed.
[4]

David Lee: If you’re going to skate over a Katy Perry record, please make sure that your blades aren’t perpendicular to the record grooves next time.
[2]

Scott Mildenhall: The already-reformed Blue aside, B*Witched are the first Big Reunion group to release new material. They were part of the performance that best symbolises the cheap and cheerful era of pop to which they belonged, an era that’s almost as long ago now as the single release of the song said performance took its name from was then. So will many people be interested in new material? Well probably not, no. It’s a shame, because although its whole lyrical concept is best left in the 90s (70s? 50s?), “Love And Money” brings to mind Paris Hilton’s “Nothing In This World”, P!nk’s “Blow Me”, Samantha Jade’s “What You’ve Done To Me”… basically it could easily be the handiwork of an on-form Greg Kurstin or Dr Luke, and you can’t say fairer than that.
[7]

Jer Fairall: The sexual politics are pitched somewhere between the kind of cautionary tales regularly dramatized by 60s girl groups and the rampant materialism that has come to typify so many modern pop conceptions of “empowerment,” but the melancholy of those chugging guitars and the weariness in the delivery of the chorus suggest a consciousness that can only come from being a veteran of this game. Which these girls certainly are, even if a glance at their discography confirms that either they never crossed over onto North American shores, or I simply don’t remember what “C’est la Vie” or “Jessie Hold On” sound like. If this track is typical of their level of pop craftsmanship, I just might need to find out.
[7]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: You know how “Love and Money” is going to go, but it’s still insulting when it does exactly that.
[2]

Jonathan Bogart: Back when they had their moment, this would have been exactly the kind of song that a pop snob might have used as a stick to beat them with: about a Serious Subject, with Meaningful Guitars and No Teen Girl Fripperies. (Admittedly, Boshing Beats were still in their infancy in 1998, but we’ll admit them on the grounds of Portentousness.) Which is to say that this drops everything that made B*Witched great, or at least charming, in their youth, and doesn’t offer much to take its place.
[4]

It’s pastiche-o’clock!

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[6.17]

Will Adams: The conceit of “What Makes You Beautiful” set to “Rock With You?” Sure.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: Mars is at his best when he is at his most ridiculous (see “Grenade”). And after Sting and Bill Joel facsimiles, moving to a homage that could be to Michael or Prince is an undertaking ridiculous in and of itself. That he pulls it off with such zest suggests his gift for imitation can certainly be used for good (DISCO!) as well as evil (“The Lazy Song”). Basically, impossible to hate, even if absent a big stage its most likely listening environment is in a shopping mall. But face it, it’s funkier than “Get Lucky.”
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: Wait, are we sure Daft Punk weren’t trying to make a Bruno Mars record?
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: This is a pretty obvious bite of French artist Breakbot’s “Baby I’m Yours,” which Breakbot himself seems to confirm in this interview. “Treasure” could be a can of worms, and I admittedly felt weirded out hearing definite non-underdog possibly get himself a summer jam thanks to a less-celebrated musician. Breakbot himself doesn’t seem to care in that interview, though, and does point out that he has ideas “taken from here and there.” So instead let’s celebrate Mars’ great ear and his take, a glossier “Baby I’m Yours” that maintains the disco slink of Breakbot’s but blows it up into IMAX.
[8]

Scott Mildenhall: It’s the one the world was waiting for. Find out more in episode 9 of The Collaborators: Bruno Mars.
[7]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Mars is currently showing a knack for evoking MTV-era pop to a tee – it’s admirable, if slightly foolhardy, to recognise his dedication to emulation. “Treasure” electric slides in the name of the Minneapolis Sound, getting the stop/start bass and buzzy synth riffs so right that there barely needs to be a song under all the era-appropriate instrumentation. Mars recognises this, throwing quotation marks around throwback sounds and deciding the job’s done. So pardon my bias as I admit that he is explicitly quoting some of my favourite music. A Xerox is a Xerox, yes, but one with a bassline this groove-worthy is worth at least:
[6]

Jer Fairall: A Vegas version of Motown; between the slow death of the music industry and an aging boomer population, it’s reasonable to fear that all music will soon sound like this.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: “I’ve gotta tell you a little something about yourself” — that’s nice. I suppose now I should reward you with my smile, or my hidden treasure. If this were really the Prince song it begs to be, the metaphor would be explicit.
[5]

Alfred Soto: With his stratospheric pitch and unmitigated sincerity, Mars is a menace whether cribbing from The Police or pretending he’s a balladeer. I wince when I hear him. Here’s another entry in his magpie act: early eighties R&B complete with slap bass, synthesized sparkles, and a rhythm that actually does mitigate his sincerity, not to mention the ridiculous voice.
[4]

Brad Shoup: An ace reworking of bygone acts’ uptempo-R&B autopilot mode. Basically, Bruno is Wigan’s Chosen Few with a cuter smile.
[5]

Anthony Easton: Weaksauce remakes of ’80s Prince should be considered blasphemous, but full theft of work more interesting for commercial gains is basically Mars’ only skill. This is more competent than others, but not nearly as competent as thousands of cover bands playing at bars near the airport in every Midwestern city in America and most of Canada. 
[4]

David Lee: There’s a Detroit radio station that, from time to time, hosts a Reunion Weekend for the classes of yesteryear by running through a playlist spanning the BeeGees to Olivia Newton John. Here’s to hoping that when Reunion Weekend for the classes of 2005-2015 rolls around, this is the Bruno Mars single they play. Well, OK, this and “Locked Out Of Heaven.”
[9]

Big dirty stinking hook singer.

[Video][Website]
[3.89]

Scott Mildenhall: For the comeback single proper of a rapper who, as he acknowledges in the lyrics, has made lack of subtlety his stock in trade, featuring a singer whose last hit made his insatiable desperation for adoration clearer than ever, this is unusually unobvious; “Bonkers” it isn’t. The hook is undeniable, but the production it’s wrapped up in doesn’t do it full justice, and as with the rest of the song – mainly Dizzee’s partial repurposing of his “Dirtee Cash” verses, either indicative of a lack of imagination or a clever reference, given they now place him as their subject — it ends up taking a few plays to come through.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: “Not a care/going full throttle,” Dizzee raps. “Goin’ Crazy,” though, sounds suited for the carpool lane.
[2]

Brad Shoup: A bog-standard price-of-fame tune; Robbie and Dizzee could be anyone. I kind of love the budget-disco effect made from the 16-bit keys and bassline; they’re the only transparent things in this song.
[5]

Iain Mew: “Goin’ Crazy” harks back to another age, the time of Robbie and Kylie’s “Kids,” when this kind of partnering of star-power was an end in itself and enough of a hook to hang a promo campaign on. Both partners merely needed to turn up, demonstrably be themselves and not too anything too stylistically risky, and the thrill of hearing them in the same place and the gratefulness of radio stations would be enough to make up for any shortcomings. The problem is that guest appearances and duets have since escalated to the point where it barely seems like news. Madonna is an instructive case here; Dizzee himself is on the new Jessie J single. “Oh, they haven’t worked together and done this already?” is a reasonable response to “Goin’ Crazy,” and while it’s a better song than “Kids”, that’s not enough.
[4]

Alfred Soto: A few years after Dizzee and Williams’ biggest hits, the stars put the paces through a tepid eighties hi-NRG chorus and pneumatic perfidy-of-fame cliches, and in that it’s not charmless.
[5]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: *shakily cocoons self in the “Bluku Bluku” guest verse and pretends this never happened, sobbing all the while*
[2]

David Lee: Robbie Williams is the 40-year-old chaperone gettin jiggy with it (YO) at the high school prom. Or maybe Dizzee Rascal is the performer who needed to limit himself for a prudish charity dinner hosted by Robbie Williams and his pals. Or maybe Robbie Williams is an overeager member of a college student events committee that really wanted Macklemore to play at their Spring Celebration but ultimately settled for Dizzee, whom they stipulated had to stick with the most generic party music because last year people really weren’t feeling that rapper whatshisname.
[3]

Edward Okulicz: This is one overcooked mess of ingredients that don’t go together at all. Dizzee’s verses are a mix of the obvious and the head-scratching (though is that a Megaupload shout-out?) and his speed can’t hide his boredom, which is inexplicable because Disco Dizzee is a good thing. Disco Robbie is a good thing too (Rudebox is underrated) but the million-tracking of his vocals makes him sound even more bored than Dizzee, and the chorus doesn’t go anywhere in particular either after the “I believe, I believe” hook. “Goin’ Crazy” isn’t just a meaningless trifle, it’s two meaningless trifles served side by side.
[4]

Anthony Easton: No matter how much I worship at the church of Liberace, sometimes too much of a good thing isn’t wonderful, but so chaotic that one cannot process it. 
[3]