The Singles Jukebox

Nicholas offers us some questions bound for all French learning textbooks in 2020…

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Nicholas Hudson: This song went viral in Quebec and Canada earlier this year and has become a bit of a cultural sensation (people are doing lipsynch videos to it like its 2009 again). It’s essentially a comedic song about whether the narrator should wear a sweater or not (the chorus is him asking “Hey! Is it cold outside? Should I wear a sweater?” to some random guy on the street). What makes this song special though is the production, a throwback, vintage 80s sound with a piano solo, a booming beat and an instantly catchy chorus. If this was in English, it would probably be a TikTok meme.
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Ian Mathers: What could be more Canadian than a song asking whether you’re comfortable in your fleece jacket that became a hit during our long, cold, lingering winter near the beginning of the year? (Of course, here in Toronto that shifted things back far enough that I was wearing shorts in October and am still waiting for “real” winter.) Well, it could be that I’d never heard of it because there’s still a pretty significant gap between Français and Anglo music scenes. In this case it’s my loss; this might almost have a novelty feel to it, but that bassline is legit no matter the weather.
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Edward Okulicz: It was about 44 degrees in Melbourne today and so the idea of wearing anything more than shorts and a T-shirt was enough to make me sweat, but the jazz piano and disco bass are so infectious, I might have worked up enough courage to do half a strut. Honestly though, it needed to be a bit longer, and how many novelty songs can you say that about?
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Kayla Beardslee: A wondrously goofy song about asking passing strangers if it’s the right weather for wearing a hoodie (or a v-neck, or capris, or a bustier). Sure, it’s funny and mundane, but charmingly so. I can relate to the difficulty of choosing an outfit on those ambiguous spring and fall days, and the instrumental backing up the premise is genuinely fun, funky, and well-made — it’s hard to resist the urge to shout along to the chorus’s carefree “Hey!”.
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Ryo Miyauchi: On the surface, “Coton Ouaté” is yet more of the anonymous white-boy disco that filled up turn-of-the-decade indie music blogs; it doesn’t help that the song sounds like it isolated a snippet of “Another One Bites the Dust” with that “heille!” hook. The goofy lyrics end up elevating the track somewhat, though its “wear what you want” conceit doesn’t lend itself to a reading beyond novelty.
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Kylo Nocom: There’s a subconscious association between jazz piano noodling and the winter time for me — likely consequent of A Charlie Brown Christmas — so the keys here book-ending Bleu Jeans Bleu’s cold weather jam is lovely. In between these sections, the lead vocalist gives vim and vigor to a campy ode to people ill-dressed for the winter. It’d be SNL-esque if SNL could jam as hard as this; SNL can’t, so “Coton Ouaté” remains a perfectly funny bit of funk.
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