Eyeshadow!

[Video][Website]
[6.38]

Sabina Tang: Serebro seem to have conquered Italy with this, for what it’s worth, though Olga had to drop into English to explain the double-entendre to a TV audience (in the vein of Captain Hammer: “And by ‘gun,’ we mean the male — you know — [lewd hip motion]”). It’s not that it doesn’t lack frenetic verve, merely that they made better songs before they went full-on LCD raunch.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: I’m going to pretend the verses aren’t quite as clunky, and if that noise under the “Twist and Shout” (well, mostly just “shout” here) bit isn’t a surf guitar, then I’m going to pretend that it is, and also that it is mixed a bit louder. Having done all of these things, I’m also going to pretend that this is the new Girls Aloud single.
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: I can’t help it — that heaping-on-the-harmonies trick from “Twist and Shout” is embedded in my limbic system. The trash-glam aesthetic of the music is a lot better once you divorce it from the softcore-glam aesthetic of the video (at least if you’re as conflicted about porny posturing as I am), and the rise of a funk orchestra in the last minute is a great way to cover up the threadbareness of the lyrics.
[7]

Will Adams: If you’re trying to figure out the lyrics, then you’re not dancing hard enough.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: “Throw me on the dance floor like a bed.” That’s… not normally the direction this metaphor goes. Nor does it sound pleasant, for dancer or bystanders. But whatever: sometimes a gun is just a gun, sometimes club trash is just club trash. 
[6]

Alfred Soto: Appropriating the Beatles for the sake of unexpected contexts doesn’t get old, but it helps if the context isn’t generic Europep.
[3]

Anthony Easton: The way the harmonies scale into a fever-pitch grunt is almost as violent as the lyrics — and the violence of the lyrics is more fronting than genuinely dangerous. Nice mix, nice use of exaggeration. Extra point for the woo hoo. 
[7]

Brad Shoup: Bone-dry electro-pop verses and a not-all-that-provocative chorus worthy of first-phase Rihanna, linked, oddly, by doo-wop throatclearing. The guitar/brass interplay might be my favorite pop production moment of 2012. Serebro don’t have much to do other than ride this train (which keeps increasing speed, marvelously) and disembark with grins.
[9]