Cascada – Evacuate the Dancefloor
Transatlantic hitmakers go head and switch their style up a bit…
[Video][Website]
[5.91]
Martin Kavka: Who decided that 2005 Britney was worth plagiarizing? Who failed to suspect that a song called “Evacuate The Dancefloor” with a lyric “I’m about to explode” just might give rise to a million juvenile scat jokes? And who thought up of this stupid title anyway? Aren’t songs that evacuate dancefloors *bad* songs? Sheer idiocy every step of the way.
[0]
Alex Ostroff: Miles better than Little Boots’ “Remedy”. Music as infectious disease that compels you to dance ’til you’re dead is both more interesting and rarer than “Remedy”‘s suggestion of music as cure to life’s ills. The guest rap is wholly unnecessary, though – is there another mix without it?
[8]
Anthony Easton: I really like this. I can point out who she is quoting (Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Britney, etc), and I know it is derivative, but not sure of what genre.
[7]
John M. Cunningham: In early 2006, “Everytime We Touch” felt rather anomalous. It was a big slab of Eurodance, and on American radio those rave synths stuck out amid the latest crop of snap hits. With “Evacuate the Dancefloor,” I can’t tell whether Cascada is now more in step with the Top 40, or whether the Top 40 is now more in step with her. Probably a little of both: there are elements of four-to-the-floor house these days in everything from “Just Dance” to “Love Lockdown” to “Don’t Stop the Music,” but the AutoTuned vocals and guest rap also make this sound more like a Black Eyed Peas production than her previous work ever did. Not that I’m complaining, exactly: I was never in love with the old sound, and this is pretty well executed, if not transcendent.
[6]
Martin Skidmore: Natalie tries to sing more soulfully, which she can’t quite manage, but the key point is that I didn’t feel at all like throwing my hands in the air and dancing like I just don’t care when it hits the chorus.
[5]
Michaelangelo Matos: Am I right to hear this as the re-entrance of Justice-style Euroblare into handbag chartstuff? Yay! What do we need up here on this dance floor? BLARE! BLARE! GIVE US MORE! WE DON’T CARE! What a chorus, too.
[8]
Edward Okulicz: I really wanted to like this, but I think the chorus is a little bit over-egged and overly busy. The jerky euro-R&B of the verses are kind of spooky more than boshing, and quite interesting at the same time, whicih makes the by-the-numbers synthiness of the chorus a bit of a comedown, and it’s not redeemed by much of a tune. Also, the rap bit is terrible.
[5]
Anthony Miccio: Anonymous mall-pop so lacking the sodden swagger of “star” acts like the Black Eyed Peas and the Pussycat Dolls that I wouldn’t be shocked to hear the copyright was 1997. Not sure if kids still dance to this or if it’s strictly TOTALLY HOT DANCE comp nostalgia (the macho-man break recalls the days rappers failed to receive “featured” status), but I wouldn’t kick it off my summer radio.
[7]
Hillary Brown: Oh my. Clearly this will have exactly the opposite effect, even in the swine flu era. Hotness.
[7]
Additional Scores
Chuck Eddy: [7]
Ian Mathers: [5]
Energetic. Maybe even Hi-NRGetic, and maybe even more so when the rapping starts. But I swear I can’t hear the title without thinking the toilet flooded. I hope the club has a plunger handy.
I liked this and would have given it an 8 – in response to Martin K, it’s much more reminiscent of Britney’s 07 work than her 04-05 stuff, i.e it sounds like it’s inspired by Blackout. Since Blackout is one of my favourite records of the decade I can only approve!
The Eurorap bit is unneccessary I grant you, but vaguely endearing.
I meant the _Blackout_ era, Tom. I suppose that my hatred of that album runs so deep that I’d like to think that it was released deeper in the past than it actually was.
Okay, Martin, you’re going to need to explain the Blackout hatred. Because wut?
Tom, this was my review of “Gimme More” in August of 2007:
I don’t understand why this has been getting praise from every quarter. Look, the woman has fallen apart because she never learned how to have a private life. Making her moan “They want more? Well I’ll give ‘em more!” just seems like a cruel joke; praising her for doing this is nothing more than joining in the bullying. On the plus side, Danja hasn’t hidden her in layers of background vocals; if I didn’t know about autotune, I might actually believe that she could sing.
[1]
I couldn’t get those thoughts out of my head when the album was released — and I still can’t shake the sense that in 2007, Britney’s handlers wanted to wring one last bit of cash out of their precious little commodity while she was (still) (barely) alive.
“Gimme More” was one of the weakest tracks on the album, IMO.
“Gimme More” is a standard “come here”/”fuck-off” move, which I loved in the mid ’60s when Jagger-Richard-Jones did it and in ’00 when Eminem did it and in ’07 when Britney did it. But I don’t think my loving it caused Brian Jones to die or Britney to crack up.
Also think that executive producer and star Britney Spears has plenty of authority/agency here; even if Keri or Danja or someone wrote the words, they match the (generally smart) acting out that Britney was doing on her Website.
If anything, Circus is the album that was made in an attempt to wring the last bits of cash out of Britney. Blackout seems like the work of a true auteur in comparison.
Frank, I would never say that liking “Gimme More” would cause Britney pain. But I would say that liking “Gimme More” is akin to bottlenecking at a roadside tragedy that has already occurred.
I simply cannot believe that she had the wherewithal to be an executive producer for _Blackout_; it seems more likely either (a) that the label gave her that title as a way to forestall gossip about the empty look in her eyes for most of 2007, or (b) it’s code for “no one can handle this crazy bitch; let’s get Larry Rudolph back for the next album.” Option B would explain how _Blackout_ drowns in its failure to edit anything (cf. “Perfect Lover,” which is just too *crowded*, as if it were a series of not-bad ten-second songs).
I like _Circus_ a great deal, mainly because of “Unusual You.”
Her vocals ruin this song for me, in a Rihanna on Disturbia sort of way. Her “the beat is killing me!” put-on angst doesn’t really suit her.