The Singles Jukebox

MEH!…

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[4.78]

Michaelangelo Matos: Club OTM.
[4]

Chuck Eddy: Put your hands in the air, and wave ’em like you just don’t care. A question: What if we don’t?
[3]

Erick Bieritz: Tiësto made an oafish but tolerable swing through the dance-producer-does-pop-rap nonsense earlier in the year, suggesting there was a bit of worthwhile music to be found in this often (rightly) maligned sub-genre. Now Flo Rida and French house veteran David Guetta have done him one better. Flo Rida, one must remember, is on the board for a dull regurgitation of Dead or Alive’s “Right Round” last year. So what changed? Guetta moved the retro dial from mid-’80s to early ’90s, a punchy, shameless sort of Modafinilized pop-house wake-up call.
[8]

Martin Skidmore: I suppose this combination is a guaranteed hit. I find Flo Rida rather lumpen and boring, and his lyrics are fatuous, and I’ve had far too much of Guetta’s electrohouse lately. On the other hand, this is a pretty solid attempt at a club banger/anthem, thudding along with some enthusiasm, so it’s hard to dislike. The conceit of the title helps me dislike it, but really it’s okay.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Thanks to Guetta, this boasts a creamy surface, like a car with a new paint job. But if Flo crows about clubs not being able to handle him, he better find a more rousing tubthumper.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: I like to think Flo Rida just lives in the club: already there once the doors open, pre-soused, throwing his money around with his bottles and models. Meanwhile, David Guetta lives in the same song structure, and this is a veritable checklist of “I Gotta Feeling” tropes: the soft-loud-soft-loud structure, responses without calls, that damn “shut it down” shutdown. How much longer can he keep bleeding it dry?
[4]

David Raposa: Hey, it’s Flo Rida with a relentlessly mannered and polite “club banger!” Range!
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: If there’s one thing Guetta’s good at, it’s tamping down the individual personalities of his ostensible stars. If there’s one thing Flo Rida is in need of, it’s a personality. Somehow the combination (plus another anonymous female voice on the chorus; Ke$ha 2.0?) makes for a bouncing club track that turns out to be more agreeable than otherwise. No personality means there’s nothing to hate.
[7]

Kat Stevens: Today I embarked upon a gruelling shopping expedition to the Oxford Street Debenhams, to help my sister buy an interview suit. Neither of us really wanted to be there in the first place. It was a thankless but necessary undertaking, and the lack of suitable jackets in my sister’s size compounded the mounting despair that accrued with each passing minute thanks to the hot, stuffy environment of the department store. The weight of the recession hung heavily above us, stifling our budget and expectations, yet demanding we invest time and money to paradoxically escape their constraints. Removable shoulder pads, herringbone tweed, flappy bits at the back — we persevered but the task was an uphill struggle, the new season’s stock not yet having arrived. “Club Can’t Handle Me” began to pipe through the shop’s PA system, mocking us for spending our valuable leisure minutes not in the glorious pursuit of euphoric hedonism through dance, but confirming our pre-destined roles as miserable slaves to the 9 to 5, capitalism, and ultimately The Man. I felt dizzy, flustered and close to tears, knowing that I too would have to shop for my own interview clothes in the near future with similarly harrowing results and no prospect of a semi-competitive dance routine to ease the pain. Then Alicia Keys came on, and we decided there and then to fuck the suit and bugger off for a cup of tea.
[2]