I predict a — well, no.

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[4.89]

Thomas Inskeep: I can promise you that this limp semi-electro-pop track will not start anything close to riots, anywhere. 
[1]

Anthony Easton: This song is unfortunate (and perhaps unreviewable) in the time of Ferguson when real, actual riots might actually be called for, and despite CNN’s misrepresentation, actually not happening.  This white woman from Sweden makes the talk of rioting a good time, and you just kind of glaze over on the stale production and the blatant privilege. Some other week, you could just give it a five and move on. I know this is an accident of timing, but for someone reason the awkward seems more egregious now. 
[4]

David Moore: A Swede, obviously, but suffers from the same limpness as so many other Swedes — or Swede-assisted others — performing “fun” in front of a backdrop of, in this case, canned horns and a four-on-the-floor bar mitzvah thump that would probably fail to cajole Pitbull into a feature on the remix, even with cash up front.
[5]

Iain Mew: “Take out the trash get rid rid of you” is an even more specific match for the best bits of “I Love It” than “Busy Doin’ Nothin’” was. How that maps onto the riot, though, I don’t know, and together with all the marching and bouncing sounds the songs ends up with a whole bunch of generalised material diluting the specific personal sentiment.
[5]

Will Adams: Funnily enough, she was a lot more revolutionary when she didn’t use the word “riot.” This is fun, grinding shout-pop in the Icona vein, but it’s loud-for-loud’s-sake and not terribly convincing.
[6]

Danilo Bortoli: She’s willing to start a riot without actually change the rules of the (pop song’s structure) game. Where I’m from we call this hypocrisy. Or just weakness of spirit.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: I DON’T CARE! I DON’T MIND IT!
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Wilder still has a way with a slogan (“I’m the full-blown destruction queen,” which was even better when I thought it was “distraction”), and the brass makes me imagine “Riot” mixed into something house and simpatico, Tracey Thorn or “Otra Era”; but Dawn Richard or Alina Devecerski have musically rioted harder, and honestly this was scuppered when I started hearing it as gender-flipped OneRepublic.
[5]

Brad Shoup: I was hoping for Endless Fanfare, like you’d find in a “Lola’s Theme” remix. But this is pop, with all the goofball myth creation — I’m pretty sure she’s, like, the best pirate — that entails. The bass buzzes like a defective massage chair, and the drums come from a folder marked Carnaval, and it’s fine, obviously.
[7]

Daisy, which teachers did you have in mind?

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[4.82]

David Sheffieck: I kinda want to see a cage match between Walk the Moon, Prides, Bastille, and the handful of other bands creating competent but unexceptional songs in the same hybrid arena-rock/dance-pop space, but even more than that I’m impressed that there seems to be space for all of them in a landscape that’s supposedly moving further and further from guitars. Maybe they’re just appealing to country fans looking to stretch out a little?
[6]

Will Adams: “Shut Up and Dance” has a wide-eyed dopiness (which is either endearing or obnoxious; depends on the day) about it that helps undercut the self-serious glitter-rock. It’s catchy, loud, and so harmless the iTunes single might as well come with a chocolate chip cookie.
[7]

Cédric Le Merrer: This is the kind of ultra-square rock that can only be impressive when you find out it’s what your high school English teacher does on the weekend. Walk The Moon’s only real flaw is to not be comprised of every high school English teacher ever.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Shut Up and Listen to U2 with Me
[1]

Iain Mew: Placing the words of the title in someone else’s mouth is a very smart idea. It allows one to sing along with a fun phrase without actually having to identify as the the person telling someone to shut up, and it’s quite indicative of how the song works. It goes off like shaken up fizzy drinks and is so stuffed with hooks that even its economical solo has to get pushed aside, but its “discotheque Juliet teenage dream” isn’t about confidence. If it wasn’t sung by a man who sounds like a less confident Mark Owen, if it wasn’t for its trembling, can’t-believe-my-luck vulnerability, it wouldn’t be nearly so appealing.
[8]

David Moore: Talk among yourselves. I’ll give you a topic: “Shut Up and Dance” knows neither how to shut up nor how to dance.
[4]

Micha Cavaseno: The alternative world where U2 didn’t go into bro-rock during the 80s to hit their cash stride, but made a cheap dance-pop single that makes for a great staple of radio stations they play in the kitchens of restaurants.
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: It’s totally a Silly-Putty-ed take on a musical era long gone, and that can only get you so far. But the hook is so stupidly effective that it will be great to shout along at in concert a few beers back. 
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: That’s what you get for waking up in a Spotify ad.
[4]

Brad Shoup: Very happy that alt-rock is taking cues from Katy Perry. Air-tight sellout disco rock with a riff that grounds and doesn’t lead. If you close your eyes, you can imagine a world in which the Hooters were America’s U2.
[7]

Anthony Easton: This makes me want to buy an entry-level microvan and move to the suburbs. 
[3]

i.e. the Thievery Corporation

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[6.42]

Thomas Inskeep: Greasy like Timberlake wants to be but is afraid to be, this is the best James Brown single since “Unity” – though the best comparison is “Living In America,” with Ronson as the Dan Hartman to Mars’s JB. This is clean but it’s still funky, and Bruno Mars further proves that he might be the baddest motherfucker around right now cuz he can do anything he damn well wants. 
[10]

Alfred Soto: Of course it’s Ronson who resurrects one of the last uncelebrated eighties touchstones: the James Brown of “Too Funky in Here” and “Living in America,” the Time of “The Bird” and, more importantly, “Jerk Out.” Now this is how you employ a horn section, slap bass, and time signature shifts. Ronson also did the impossible: he sat this horn section atop Bruno Mars, preventing him from leaping to his higher register. There’s an air of necromancy though.
[7]

Crystal Leww: I have no idea when it happened, but at some point I stopped finding Bruno Mars exceedingly dull and started finding him somewhat palatable. But “Uptown Funk” is totally different: Bruno Mars on “Uptown Funk” rules. He’s done it with Mark Ronson, who doesn’t always land but can excel at reveling in the retro, from his legendary work with Amy Winehouse to this underrated jam. This toes the line between fun and excessive so hard, but the image of the girls (or Bruno Mars; the lyrics are unclear) in Chucks and Saint Laurent wins me over.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: In truth, this sounds unfinished and in desperate need of an actual chorus. What’s there in its place splits the difference between “Ladies’ Night” and “Le Freak,” which also tells you that we’ve got a wedding party banger on our hands here. I can see it as a global Number One  on what’s there rather than what isn’t. The “Oops Up Side Your Head” bits are deliciously brazen. What’s holding this back from a really high score is that while Mars is loose and funky , Ronson’s production is kind of stiff and laboured, and those guy-gang backing vocals are classicism but they’re not classic.
[8]

David Moore: Who’s featuring who here? This kind of retro-fetishist funk has been far more convincing coming from Bruno than Mark. But there are fussy Ronson fingerprints all over the tedious reverence — I can see Ronson high-fiving a bunch of session lifers — that ultimately dulls the spark Bruno Mars got out of “Treasure” and “Locked Out of Heaven.” Which makes this uptight, not uptown. 
[6]

Will Adams: I liked it better when deep vocal hooks rumbled the way they do in “Get Low.” I liked it better when Mark Ronson’s Motown signifiers weren’t as sycophantic. I liked it better when Bruno Mars sounded like Bruno Mars. I liked “Oops Up Side Your Head” better.
[5]

Micha Cavaseno: This is not the James Brown tribute you need to be hearing from Ronson right now, but tragically that one features The Rapist Right Chyeah, so it will undoubtedly fail as a single for a multitude of reasons. Instead, we get the serial stepfather of records (can always fill a role, but never the person you look up to) Bruno Mars as he turns in a great performance in a Godfather suit with a fake wig and dour Ronson placing the cape on him to lead him away. Terrible chorus, and the overly-poised nature of the record leaves this from embodying the energy it strives for.
[5]

Scott Mildenhall: It’s a Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars record, so there are infinite reference points – “Let’s Dance” and “Oops Up Side Your Head”, “Super Freak” and “U Can’t Touch This”, “Rapper’s Delight” and “Apache”, maybe even The Art Of Noise and Scritti Politti – but neither have yet released such a pastiche, and in Mars’ case that’s saying something. Nary an element unwitting, it has something of a sincere insincerity. They know exactly what they’re doing and they know you know it too, but knowing’s half the fun. Even the nonsense title seems an attempt at creating a phrase timeless and unique, and while the song doesn’t quite match up, it’s diverting enough.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: It’s totally a Silly-Putty-ed take on a musical era long gone, but Mark Ronson is a master at these sort of sonic dioramas, able to capture a lot of small details without reducing them to a lecture. “Uptown Funk” is his “Too Many Cooks,” in that it gets all the little things right while also exhausting it’s idea by the two minute mark. 
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: A pastiche of a pastiche of a Grammy tribute of a pastiche led by Bruno Mars saying “hot damn.” And no, I don’t hate it. I blame the tryptophan.
[6]

Anthony Easton: Mark Ronson’s smart retro lust is grafted onto Mars’ pliable voice. It works better than it should, especially with those James Brown horns, but not enough to be convinced of Mars as a sinner or even that hot. It isn’t even that funky, more of a museum of funk. That said, how he sings “Jackson, Mississippi” is genuinely pleasurable. 
[6]

Brad Shoup: As an act of cryptkeeping, it’s fantastic: a cross of Zapp bounce with Kool and the Gang horn charts. Neither of those acts were dumb enough to ever sing “bitch, say my name,” of course. 
[5]

Happy Thanksgiving, brought to you by Canadian country music…

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[3.86]

Anthony Easton: The production of this is as terrible as the flatness of his voice, as are the lyrics, which verge on a whole mess of moral problems due to oversimplification, Kissel is better than this, but Canadians’ continued attempts to make country that sounds like Americans’ just embarrasses us. This is especially true in a year that brought us Dean Brody’s wryly self-parodic “Mountain Man,” and considering everything that Kira Isabella ever sang.
[2]

Thomas Inskeep: This Canadian country smash pulls in pretty much every “inspirational” country cliche.
[3]

Alfred Soto: The songwriters might have collected lyrics from a Hallmark card clearance sale, and Kissel can’t find a single surprising inflection, but his determination in the chorus to keep his cool is persuasive, like the C+ student who no doubt works hard.
[4]

Will Adams: The complex emotions I felt when I saw my own grandfather lowered into the ground at four years old don’t really match the complex emotions I’ve felt when trying to win a girl back.
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: Half of “Tough People Do” is welcome embrace-your-emotions pep talk, the other is awkward bootstrap rhetoric, but all of it…and any potential tension…is wasted on pretty boring music. 
[5]

Brad Shoup: You can tell when the song’s built around the bumper sticker. The second verse — which Kissel leaps into from the chorus — fucks up its verb tenses and offers a startling drop in specificity. He can’t make the song cry, and neither can the AOR guitar or the trailing steel.
[3]

David Moore: I assumed this was going to blossom into a staunchly masculine “suck it up” message, but instead it wavers — quivers like a lip, maybe. Turns out it’s OK to cry (a lot, even) before settling into vague affirmations to stay tough. How easily it could have been “ain’t no USE in cryin’,” instead of its kinda-brave “ain’t no crime in cryin’.” Which doesn’t make the song any less of a snooze, but points for trying, appropriately enough. 
[6]

 Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it. The Jukebox will be taking today off because we’ve all been invited to Taylor’s Thanksgiving feast at her Rhode Island mansion (in our heads, at least). We will return tomorrow, probably with no desire to make food metaphors.

Quick reminder that we are still accepting submissions for our upcoming Readers’ Week. Read here for more details and information on how to submit. But hurry — submissions close at the end of tomorrow!

See you then.

First proper song since the Clinton years. The Lox’s, that is.

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[4.43]

David Moore: What sounds like a feature on a tossed-off freestyle — or, at best, a forgettable deep cut from the next Lil’ Wayne album (which it is) — is apparently the first major thing from the LOX as a proper group since “It’s All About the Benjamins.” (It hasn’t even been all about the Hamiltons in almost ten years!) So forgive me for the initial impulse of speculating about what kind of bagel Lil’ Wayne would be.
[4]

Micha Cavaseno: If a GOAT finally comes back to life and nobody cares, does he make a sound? Despite a bit of rust, Wayne’s 2014 has been full of an inspiring return to form. Is he groundbreaking or inspiring anymore? No, but he’s truly enjoying rap again, playing with form and rhythm in a way he’d abandoned in exhaustion for the last few years while his progeny upheld his empire. Curiously enough though, it doesn’t matter, as most of the planet has written one of the greatest rapper’s ever off. It doesn’t help that obnoxious guitar, 2/3rds of The Lox punching in and a dull hook is making this song pretty dull. But with his supposed retirement drawing closer, its heart-warming to see Wayne wants to go out with a bang, even if nobody grants him their attention.
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: Jadakiss: 7. Wayne: 5. (And why does he sound like he’s aping Drake, now?). Verses: 5. Chorus (especially its production): 3. And honestly, I’m probably overrating this just on account of ‘Kiss.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Gotti references are so 2008, so Ross. What is Wayne doing with a go-nowhere vegetable metaphor and two dozen lines that go nowhere? Riding on Jadakiss’ authority, that’s what.
[4]

Anthony Easton: Gotti seemed to be a minor bureaucratic functionary who rested on the legend of his organization’s history to seem more menacing or more interesting than he actually was. It makes sense that Lil Wayne’s ’90s nostalgia quotes him. 
[2]

Crystal Leww: I don’t want to pile onto the huge wave of critics whose gut reaction is to write him off entirely, but this sounds like arrested development. It’s a common problem with rap’s old guard: Molly Lambert detailed Eminem’s manchild syndrome yesterday and there’s a wave of hip-hop loving folks that have complained that Jay Z hasn’t made new music in at least a decade now. Lil Wayne in 2014 is better at nurturing talent on Young Money than he is on his own material, which has quickly devolved into a collection of the same tired ways to talk about giving and receiving head and dissing his rivals (which is sure, a hip-hop trope, but you have to have new punchlines or at least new ways of saying it). “Gotti” is the most lucid that Wayne’s sounded in a while, and for the briefest moment, he even comes close to sounding urgent. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to sustain him these days, made worse by an intense desire to bring back The Lox to the track, whose line trading that opens the track sounding  tense enough to bring at least some energy over this mostly sparse beat. I can’t imagine a world where this ends up on a final album cut rather than a mixtape, much less a massive radio sing. We are a little over half a decade removed from Tha Carter III, but it feels like so much longer.
[4]

Brad Shoup: Jada and Styles split lines like on “If You Know,” but I’d even take a Swizz Beatz afterthought over the production here, which sounds like a horror movie filtered through a basement door. They’re doing a vintage crimelord thing, which is great; Weezy’s stocktaking works too. He talks about coming up early, but he also references late bloomers, and I wonder how much of that is wondering how much he’s got left. Leaving out the shit jokes is simple subtraction; I guess we’ll see if V can add anything.
[6]

and, pray, what DOES it want?

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[5.12]

Anthony Easton: I wonder if this works, (and it does work) not because the meta/paratextual hints (read: knowing that this is about Bieber does not make the song any more interesting) but because it sounds like pop music should sound in 2014. The height of fashion, and the slightly anonymous quality of the vocals, reward a production that is fast fashion milled into perfection. (It looks good, but will fall apart after a season). Extra points for the finger snaps. 
[6]

Alfred Soto: A smart writer alluded to Woody Allen’s (in)famous defense of his relationship with Soon-Yi Previn, and if the arrangement and Gomez had sung it with half his defensiveness it would’ve been tougher and more fraught. Tepid Ariana Grande won’t do.
[5]

Scott Mildenhall: Should you choose to squint your ears, it does sound like she’s saying “what the fart wants” in the distorted introductory parts. Nothing could be further from what the song wants, of course, not least with how much it seems to be relying on the emotional resonance of the titular line, laid bare. The slow down and strip back as Selena releases it are indeed the pinnacle of a pleasantly dejected four minutes, but if the connection to it isn’t there, much is missing.
[6]

Sonia Yang: The contrast between her candid confession at the beginning and reserved singing throughout is jarring, but it almost works. The sparse music gives off that cold, isolated feeling of resignation – it’s the hollowness after intense pain, the kind where one has no choice but to move through life mechanically until they gradually heal. While I appreciate a more serious song from her, it’s not as compelling as it could be.
[5]

Will Adams: What do you do when your tell-all single is less interesting than the already uninteresting biography that prompted it? Selena Gomez doesn’t know, and despite giving one of her best vocal performances here, “The Heart Wants What It Wants” is about as frivolous as a mini-blurb on a gossip site.
[5]

Crystal Leww: Selena Gomez as an Actual Big Thing would be exciting, especially given the predominantly white landscape of her pop peers, but I’m almost wondering if we’re willing to shrug off actual quality because we want Gomez to be a Thing. This chorus is pretty awful from the stutter on “wants” to the weird chirping and “ey ey ey”s in the background. The verses just exist, not committing to a narrative or any amount of specificity. There is no release; this is just plodding and dry.
[4]

Brad Shoup: You know you’re an adult when a songwriter passes you a cup. Gomez’s clear-eyed though, on alert over a track that opens as glamorous downtempo and gets progressively more fidgety. She tries to hang the text from a suitable hook, and the twinkles and voices keep turning the lights off.
[5]

Mallory O’Donnell: Attractively-draped Ibiza sunset tune with a confident delivery. I question the need for any more songs in the world about dangerous love and how it’s like various kinds of drugs, but the world wants etc.
[5]

Our third time round covering him…

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[6.50]

Alfred Soto: One of the best contemporary balladeers winks, encourages, and draws back. He’s a flirt who won’t give until he’s good and ready. Or she is. His trick is to let her think so.
[7]

Will Adams: A lush and lovely horn arrangement surrounds the song, but it’s not long before you get to the condescension at its center.
[5]

Josh Langhoff: My Thanksgiving resolution is to ignore the patronizing opening line. (For further research: does “Niña” populate banda ballads as thoroughly as “Girl” does bro-country? It seems like “Mujer” shows up more often.) I will also ignore any possible ickiness involving Ortiz kissing JustAGirl’s extremities until she screams his name. (“HAY no más,” Gerardo soothed soothingly.) Starting… now! Because really this song is very romantic, and there’s little precedent for Sinaloan banda incorporating Dominican-via-Bronxian bachata guitar. Plus, Ortiz’s long-lined melody is beautiful, a way better tune than Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night,” speaking of songs about children letting their inhibitions run wild. Resolution starting NOW.
[8]

Brad Shoup: Instead of left or right, Ortiz has managed to position his mix down: I feel as if the brass players are standing on my antihelix. Ortiz has plunged a leg into bachata, and so the guitar must stand out. The lyric is filled with torn clothes and orgasms and bad boyfriends; Ortiz doesn’t fade into velvet — even his spoken-word bit is a little gruff — but it makes for good tension.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: So the difference between a dude who’s believable and a douche who just thinks he knows better than a girl’s taste in boyfriends to get what he wants is just language and a weirdly beguiling vulnerability. Ortiz just sounds like he means it to me. Quite a slippery slope, but down we all go.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: Right amount of time, and just the right amount of easy-going-ness, even if that’s all I can really get out of it.
[5]

That’s Urbani… we have no idea what Rush looks like…

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[6.67]

Micha Cavaseno: In a parallel world where Pornography-era Phil Thornalley is the person who gets ahold of Madonna’s first songs, we get these slabs of hell. The song striding atop the production feels cast aside, but I’m hoping Katie finds that perfect partner for her drooling downer clubland vibes.
[4]

Anthony Easton: I don’t know why I love this so much, but it is genuinely beautiful. There are hints — how that sibilant “S” rises like steam from the wet streets, how this kind of reminds me of Madonna circa “Justify My Love,” how the vocals add texture, how artificial the production sounds — but mostly I love it because of how well-constructed it is, how fecund it sounds. 
[9]

Alfred Soto: It sports neat distortion, especially in the last third, and Rush’s affectless act is persuasive. Not dangerous, though, and it’s not love, much less luv. 
[6]

Thomas Inskeep: This is all downtown-NYC post-punk no-wave angles. This is ESG on ice with a Kylie injection. This does sound dangerous. This is electronic pop that’s neither electro-pop nor electronica, and only barely pop. This feels subversive. This sounds like what Robyn’s fans think she sounds like. This would’ve been huge at Danceteria in ’82, but this doesn’t sound like 1982. 
[8]

Brad Shoup: Rush has made a sort of dystopic take on the PC Music aesthetic, recruiting Urbani to help make a Paula Abdul gloss over melting ambulance sirens, F train bass, and wooden percussion that clops like a warning. It took a few listens to locate something more than a punchline, but I don’t think this is supposed to transport so much as cow you.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: A surge of sound, like how music sounds a few drinks in: music for going out to, alone in streets that feel like wind tunnels and in outfits that feel like pulp-heroine costumes and in the grips of first love/first mistake, for feeling unstoppable and terrified and thrilled. It’s not quite a song for going out to, but the atmosphere’s almost enough.
[7]

Once again following the “throw every song out there as a single and see what sticks” approach…

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[6.00]

Thomas Inskeep: Build-and-release EDM-pop of the laziest variety, fronted by one of the UK’s most annoying, whiny vocalists. Kinda hard to believe this is from the same man who just six years ago brought us “I Created Disco.”
[2]

Alfred Soto: “Lights” shook its post-Robyn twinkly melancholy as soon as it stuck itself on top forty playlists in 2011 and 2012. I wish I’d rated it higher. Calvin Harris’ last interesting work involved Dizzee Rascal, but the track’s ambition to achieve a classical simplicity gets realized thanks to Ellie Goulding’s key shifts in the verses and despite those bleating synths.
[6]

Crystal Leww: Music criticism’s olds (even poptimists) love to hate on EDM as a genre, especially how it removed the visible elements of artistry during live shows and replaced them with a laptop and lights. They’re the same (terribly misguided) criticisms that have faced EDM since the beginning, and Calvin Harris is the face of it all. Criticisms of the EDM live show seem to come from people who haven’t ever been to one, though — just angry folks who have time to sneer before trudging off to The Black Keys at the opposite stage. It’s too bad; an EDM live show is aggressively dead-feeling when someone bad is playing and electric when a good DJ is performing. Harris is the best at uniting a field full of people having a good time. I’m not surprised; someone instrumental in creating the people-pleasing pop tracks on 18 Months (whose hits were on radio for about that long, too) would also know what pleases crowds of live fans, too. Motion‘s rollout has been overshadowed by Taylor Swift, but it’s inevitable that these tracks will be big anyway. Hate all you want on Goulding’s vocal, Harris’ tinny strings, or his formula — I can’t imagine the crowd do anything but react automatically when the EDM king drops this. It is gut-wrenching and massive and it wants you to believe in the obvious and the heartbreaking. Welcome back, babe.
[9]

Iain Mew: It’s remarkable how much a typical Calvin Harris build is enhanced by just a slight change in its instrumentation. The sound of strained strings gives a sense of not only grandeur but also physical weight, especially coupled with doubled up drums. It’s effective enough that it doesn’t need much from its singer, which is fortunate — Ellie Goulding is best at dealing in a specific uncertainty and “Outside” is all about vague certainty.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Harris’s melody is so strong, Goulding’s verses become a de facto duet. On the hook, she sounds a bit like Sophie Ellis-Bextor: a royal experimenting with abandon. And then there’s that string bit with which to contend: serrated and wheedly and more than a little pissed-off. As pop texture it’s bad taste, or maybe just avant garde.
[6]

Will Adams: Those abrasive strings gnash their teeth through the majority of the mix, while Ellie Goulding gets pushed upstage. The song’s another serviceable EDM-pop trinket that’ll whet radio’s appetite, but Harris seems to be at the final stage before entering the zone of diminishing returns.
[6]

Scott Mildenhall: There’s a missing link from good to great here, and much of it lies in the lyrics. None of them are any good. None are any bad either; they’re just the vaguest, most non-committal suggestions of sadness Harris or Goulding could come up with. The only time she deviates vocally is in the quickfire, two-line pre-chorus too. All round there’s a deflating ignorance to any of the drama so deftly developed instrumentally.
[7]