The Singles Jukebox

Flush with Beyonce royalties, we imagine.

[Video][Website]
[5.57]

Patrick St. Michel: You write one song for Beyoncé and suddenly you think you can pull off a song clearly up her alley. Feels flawed in an uninteresting way. 
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: Beyonce is an anomaly: a wildly successful empire-period album that few pop stars have attempted to emulate. Enter Chairlift, her sudden handmaidens, and Caroline Polachek marveling, “Who’d have thought it’d be me who got away with it?” while alternating her usual vocal style, like skipping stones over the melody, with demo-take phrases you could hear dropped into a Bey song. “Ch-Ching” works because that’s not their only idea. The percussion’s rat-a-tat drum rolls and bleacherstomp come off as pop, the pads and horns as Everything But the Girl. The whistles are like a spaghetti western, the mood like a victory montage on a misty movie set. And all that from a former landfill synthpop band. Beyonce really can do anything.
[8]

Micha Cavaseno: A friend claimed that Phantogram was in some way a superior Chairlift. Having only heard a few songs, I thought this was a sign the poor kid was starting to lose it, especially after enduring that Big Grams record a week when I felt like a shitty cashmere shirt from American Apparel had tried to throttle me, like some Freddy Krueger plot device. However, “Ch-Ching” kinda helps me get it. Chairlift are really good at the chameleon thing, to the point I’m not sure who this song could be comparable to; is it like the aforementioned comparison, or to Kimbra’s wallowing in excess, or is it even somehow their benefactor in Beyonce? Who’s to say. But for all the cheese in “Ch-Ching,” there’s a playfulness that implies a comfort that shows none of the vein-popping strident vibe starting to tense more mainstream pop into a “Superstar” Billy Graham style joke of dominance. Sometimes, you can win a fight by being veeeeery slippery.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Imagine Beyoncé singing over these claps, horns, and backward gewgaws. Much closer to the truth to point out what Caroline Polachek has learned from Beyoncé about harmonies and R&B enunciation. “I Belong in Your Arms” fans (I’m one), get ready for a surprise.
[7]

Brad Shoup: Success as a caper isn’t too rare a sentiment — I guess no one really cops to it in pop — but it’s almost never rendered this pulpily. The arrangement breathes, from the fantastic brass voicing at the end to the way Caroline lays vocal lines against the synths, when she’s not tracking the closest of harmonies. Impostor syndrome’s never been this vivid.
[8]

Thomas Inskeep: Gwen Stefani should sue for royalties for the lift of “ch-ching” from “Luxurious,” and the rest of us should get some compensation for having to listen to this mediocre indie-popt, close to Karmin in its annoyance factor.
[2]

Scott Mildenhall: This would be so much better if it had the vision to sample the Are You Being Served? theme, aka the greatest piece of till-sampling music in the world. There’s a fair amount going on. As is, it’s bafflingly inert. Shania Twain needn’t worry either.
[5]