The Singles Jukebox

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[6.50]

Anthony Easton: I don’t know if this is a grating piece of adolescent  trash or a perfectly constructed robot intended for pleasures both known and only imagined.  Working through this is a roller coast of 0s and 10s, the angel chorus that opens is perfect, the introduction has been done a million times before, the chorus is meant to be screamed loud enough to pop a long, but how she sings satisfied and night are like fingernails on a blackboard, but the teenage drinker (coolers, Budweiser) is almost as entertaining as the Lil’ Kim quoting lollipop references–references that might as well be lolichan. Then we get to the expanse of electronic prairies, and the isolation of it all, with the listener wondering how allegorical the phrase around “screwing around is”, the final chorus which pushes past exhaustion and into free floating noize. I honestly have no clue about this. 
[5]

Alfred Soto: In 2012 a Dr. Luke production requires the brushing of a harsh electroglaze to dance tracks that are already juice on their own. Ke$ha, whose vocal performances usually incorporate the cost of living to die young, doesn’t need the stutters, doubletracking, and one-note synth figures as foils. Of course, skeptics will say take her and these tricks, put’em in a bag, and toss them in the ocean.
[6]

Jamieson Cox: The first few minutes of “C’mon” have their own special charms: the shifting digital choir that welcomes the listener, the inspired couplet of “Feelin’ like a saber-toothed tiger / sippin’ on a warm Budweiser,” and the fizzy, cartoonish colours of the eminently danceable chorus. But there are two specific elements of “C’mon” that make it one of my favourite songs of the year, and a new peak for Ke$ha: the transcendent bridge, and the woman herself, without whom this song would probably fall apart. Let’s start with that bridge: Ke$ha slowly fades in, unadorned by harmony or splashy synths, and her notes echo through space. The message is simple: “I don’t wanna go to sleep / I wanna stay up all night / I wanna just screw around / I don’t wanna think about what’s gonna be after this / I wanna just live right now.” She’s going to live life to the fullest, with or without you. Are you coming along for the ride? Then another Ke$ha zooms in and the resultant harmonies are gorgeously dizzying, and shortly after we’ve been shot into another round of the chorus with greater velocity than ever before. I’ve said her name a few times now: Ke$ha, Ke$ha, Ke$ha. Simply put, she carries this song to new heights with the versatility of her vocals and the force of her personality. She pseudo-raps the verses, sings the chorus with bratty confidence, and shines when most of the frippery is stripped away, leaving her voice stark. She’s witty, fun, and incredibly vital. She pulls off a saber-toothed tiger reference. She’s the glue that holds this song together, and as a result “C’mon” is her triumph. Give her your full attention. 
[9]

David Moore: On her second consecutive oddly low-key single from Warrior, Ke$ha splits the difference between the cartoon two’s-a-crowdism of album one and the kind of anthemic dance-commanding she does elsewhere on album two (and to some extent album one-point-five). The harmonies are great; she tiptoes into Imogen Heap territory by the end. But the track doesn’t really go anywhere, not that it needs to. Seems destined to keep Ke$ha 2.0 (2.5?) further under the radar than she deserves to be given her increasingly megalomaniacal tendencies. But at least she’s brushing her teeth properly.
[7]

Kat Stevens: I’m thoroughly sick of pop dudes going “aye-EEE-aye” (or “my-EEE-ine”, or “tii-EEE-ime”) so the chorus feels even more grating to me than Ke$ha (presumably) intended it to be. The garbled middle 8 where she is cramming as many complaints and excuses in as she can is much better.
[4]

Zach Lyon: Really, if this chorus were attached to a song on Victorious or some new version of S Club 7 or one of any Disney musical movies, I’d fall for it. But that’s going easy with the context and I’d have to go back and change a bunch of Katy Perry scores if I kept it consistent. It isn’t the most imaginative or not-entirely-generic chorus for a Luke/Max radio track, I know; she wants her saber-toothed tigrrr to be tame, but not toothless. It’s unfortunate that the chorus blends so well with everything else in the song, as it makes it that much harder to isolate from the verses, which are globs of pure Ke$ha-success in concentrate. Her character is perennially in her 20s, and it’s something new to bring us back to high school — not a high school life that ever existed, of course, but a wish, the same evocation from “Teenage Dream” but with even more faux adolescent basking. Production-wise, you can add “c. 2000s Flaming Lips” to the list of rock tropes that sound better in a Ke$ha song.
[7]

Brad Shoup: One of the funnier things about Spotify is the occasional presence of album commentaries – I don’t buy albums off iTunes, so maybe this is an actual phenomenon. Ke$ha’s commentary on “C’mon” focuses on her favorite rhymes; even her champions tend to exult in her “trashiness,” but she’s a wicked songwriter foremost. “C’mon” starts with a subtly-layered, keening choir à la Dave Matthews Band’s sneaky-great “Dreamgirl”. It’s an excellent fakeout, a feint toward sweetness that gets diced into an off-beat effect. The details are wonderful (the rhyme and cadence, yeah, but also the word “peachy”), and while the chorus can’t match the verses’ glee, that’s still a high bar.
[7]

Ian Mathers: I feel like Jonathan Bogart’s piece on Ke$ha in The Atlantic is a pretty good litmus test right now; it’s excellent, but if you dislike or disagree with it on some grounds, that’s not necessarily a problem. But all the people rejecting it out of hand without engaging with what Jonathan’s actually saying (or in plenty of cases, without reading it at all), well, that’s a pretty good indication that those people have little of interest or value to say about pop music, pop culture, and so on. Because being involved in those spheres isn’t about liking or disliking any particular act, it’s about getting involved with the conversation without being a reactionary jerk. “C’mon” is a good, catchy pop song, not as great as her best work but consistently pleasurable, self-aware and funny and warm and not particularly caring what she’s ‘supposed’ to be like. People who act like Vonnegut’s literary critic, putting on full armour and attacking a hot fudge sundae, are saying far more about themselves than Ke$ha or the state of pop music in 2012.
[7]

Alex Ostroff: Just over a year ago, when reviewing my favourite K$ song to not make the cut for Warrior, I suggested that Ke$ha’s next move was to make more explicit the quasi-spiritual apocalyptic YOLO ethos that underpinned everything from “TiK ToK” to “Blow“,  “C’mon” is a perfect example of how she’s managed to split the difference on the new record, with verses as delightfully hedonistic as ever, and a chorus and bridge that spells out her (and our) motivation for those who are too deliberately obtuse to get it. The sound of ‘Animal’ has been incorporated into Ke$ha’s party songs just as much as its ideology; the opening chorus of wordless Flaming Lips-esque vocal harmonies is lovely, but the best thing about it is how it’s chopped up and reassembled as part of the throbbing beat under the verses. Our dance commander is herself in top form, growling the final syllable of “sabretooth ti-GRRRRRR”, and providing us with the perfect couplet, “We been keeping it kosher / But I wanna get it on fo’ sure.” And it’s still not the best song on the album.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: Ke$ha and Dr. Luke’s idea of rock is “The One That Got Away.” I guess that one did mention Radiohead, but for fuck’s sake, the critical community needs to stop swallowing PR so easily.
[5]

Will Adams: What I like about Ke$ha is her specificity. From the bottle of Jack onwards, she’s traded in the vivid imagery that makes her songs so easy to latch on to. It’s not enough to repeat the pre-chorus verbatim, but continue to paint the picture; high schooler becomes saber-tooth tiger, wine cooler becomes Budweiser, and so on. It’s fitting, since in that span of time the setting has changed. Realism continues to be her forte. That said, I wish that the bass pulsed instead of groaned.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: More like “Karmin,” right? That’s a cheap shot, but the well’s poisoned and “C’mon” doesn’t have enough verve or thrill to sound like a high-priority single by one of the world’s biggest pop stars. Dare I say it could stand to be more annoying?
[5]

Andy Hutchins: At once prettier and less catchy than “TiK ToK” (despite some blatant recycling of melodies/cadences) until the fantastic bridge that echoes off into the sunrise. The rise of Karmin has meant Amy Heidemann’s Ke$ha-aping tactic of racing through a bar to a clunky end rhyme has been on the radio a lot more than it should have. The warrior princess is back, though, and so’s the absolute right way to inflect pop with rap and sweetness with strength.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: “TiK ToK” aside, I generally haven’t cared for Ke$ha’s single choices as much as I have for her project more generally (though I’d be an idiot to deny how effective they are, chartwise; if I were in charge of her career she would have crashed and burned long ago). “C’mon” tells us nothing new — she even did the massed-and-flanged voices earlier and better on “Stephen,” where they were even more explicitly an “O Superman” homage — and lacks even the desperate edge that has grown on me (as predicted) in “Die Young.” But a straightforward Ke$ha party rock anthem is still a Ke$ha party rock anthem.
[7]