The Singles Jukebox

Today is not actually Brad Shoup One-Liner Day, nor is Neon Hitch pictured, but they’re both much more appealing than reality…

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[3.00]

Brad Shoup: Doormats are sexy!
[2]

Michaela Drapes: I always like pleasant surprises — here, that Neon Hitch, despite being some sort of Florence-meets-Rihanna concocted by the Star-Maker Machinery Behind the Popular Song ™, is actually not terrible and has quite a lovely voice. I can’t say the same for the ho-hum filler lyrics between the choruses, though. Travie isn’t sympathetic or affecting or much of anything. Can’t imagine why she wants him to come home from tour when she’s got the Manhattan apartment to herself for a few months.
[4]

John Seroff: “Ass Back Home” is best understood as two songs unceremoniously Frankensteined. One, the standard and execrable Gym Class Hero smarm and pluck, is no better than a [3]. The other, an above-average, sugar-dusted, clubby lark by the intriguing Neon Hitch clocks in at around a [7]. That should average out to a [5], but you know that old saying about what you get when you mix a bucket of ice cream and a bucket of bullshit?
[3]

Iain Mew: “Half of these birds would have flew the coop.” Adoption of slightly unpleasant British slang, or just coincidence? Either way, the narrative of how great it is that Neon is going to wait around for him to come home doesn’t do much for me, although I suppose that the keys under the doormat do at least imply that she goes out sometimes. Her hooks sit uncomfortably between wide-eyed sincerity and knowing humour, and his verses are as clumsy as ever. And “We put the us in trust, baby” is just the worst.
[3]

Jonathan Bogart: If I never hear another “life is so hard on the road, but with the love of a [mumble mumble] I can make it through” song — especially one that so nakedly wants to be “Coming Home”, only without the reflectiveness, inventiveness, emotional engagement, or sense of musical history — it’ll be too soon.
[4]

Alex Ostroff: This rises above execrable only because I was pleasantly surprised to discover that “ass back home” is a girlfriend’s demand and not her description.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: I don’t know what irritates me most. There’s the crassly provocative non-sequitur “ass back home,” reverse-engineerable as the decision of someone who, given these lyrics and months of sneering at those damn kids’ tweets and tumbles, decided “emotional resonance? Fuck it. THE SONG WOT GOES ASS.” There’s the fact that nobody involved knows the word “bogosity.” There’s the mechanically separated dubstep. There’s Travie, everything about him, wisecracking and gaslighting like some bizarro protagonist of “Love the Way You Lie” who’s supposed to be sympathetic. Nah, I’ve got it: the premise of this entire song rests on someone wanting Travie McCoy to come back home. That’s a load of ass.
[2]

W.B. Swygart: This may be a sign that I’m listening the radio a bit too much lately, but you know that bit just on the last line of the chorus? Does it not feel like it’s bottled out of having a dubstep breakdown there? Her voice is running through the flarg filter (technical term), everything drops out for a second, she intones the title and then the song picks up again by… sounding like OneRepublic Exclusively At Tesco jamming on UB40. And the other bits sound like David Guetta having a nap. Still, for some reason I couldn’t stop wondering if it would be worse if it was by Plan B (“She says she wants me to come home/Cos she’s feeling lonely at home/woman why is it you are DOing these actions which I have just descriiiibed/Oh, no no no, no“). And I decided it would. So points for that, I guess.
[3]