The Singles Jukebox

It’s the weekend! Time to relax KEEP WORKING

[Video]
[6.31]Iain Mew: OK, Fucking Tell Me What to Do.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: On a functional, unlit bare stage of a beat, Davidson pulls apart every meaning of “work” like Laurie Anderson on “Only an Expert.” A literally commanding presence, she unsettles and loves it; every time the listener gets complacent, she takes a new nail to a new nerve.
[9]

Thomas Inskeep: I don’t know who asked for an electroclash revival — let alone one with “clever” (read: not actually clever) lyrics — but I can promise you that it wasn’t me.
[1]

Katie Gill: I didn’t know that circa 2012 Scissor Sisters was a sound that I was nostalgic for, and yet here I am, enjoying the hell out of this. This is some beautifully minimalist electronic dance music that I fully expect to back a drag or dance routine sometime in the near future.
[6]

Alex Clifton: The “Work Bitch”/”Let’s Have a Kiki” mashup I never knew I needed, with deadpan delivery that is both threatening and genuinely motivational. I feel like a rich lesbian personal trainer has looked into my soul and told me I am not working hard enough, and boy is it ever effective.
[7]

Hannah Jocelyn: At first glance, this is the unholy hybrid of “Work, Bitch” and “Arnold.” On repeated glances, this is also the case, but that’s why it’s great. Over a beat I’m seeing defined as ‘electroclash,” it’s so off-putting that it wraps back around to being so universal, even Bob Lefsetz praised it. Part of that is due to how little Davidson’s cadence varies; it represents the need to work at the cost of mental health or interpersonal relationships, and that obsession with work defines living in late late capitalism for many. So with that in mind, I greatly appreciate the twist ending, where “working it” is specifically defined as practicing self-care. The only real issue here is when it gets too crude;  “is sweat dripping down your balls” goes slightly too over the line when the rest is tastefully tasteless.
[8]

Alfred Soto: A voice-free percussive loop is my idea of bliss, but Marie Davidson sounds enough like an anonymous late eighties house singer to almost sustain this four-minute novelty.
[5]

Ian Mathers: I’m genuinely torn, because for the first 70 seconds or so not only did I love this track unabashedly, but it never even occurred to me that vocals were going to show up; “Work It” was working beautifully as a showcase of tight, compelling programming (drum and otherwise). It could have kept up its pace for another ten minutes and I’d have been enthralled. Instead Davidson decides to start and then keep up a steady stream of patter that sounds a bit like the Egyptian Lover gone Young Republican. Maybe it’s satirical, maybe it’s sincere, but it’s a drag on the song either way.
[5]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Such deliciously stoic drum programming that gets diluted by Marie Davidson’s own vocals. I understand their purpose, but everything they hope to accomplish is either unsuccessful or bested by the drums and synths. The title is enough to inform listeners of how the instrumental should be read; if anything, Davidson’s voice is a distraction, sounding like a demanding instructor explaining what you already know you need to do.
[5]

Juan F. Carruyo: Marie Davidson is really lucky to brag that she only works five days a week and remains a winner. She also mentions sweat a lot, which is evocative but not hugely so. Now I feel a huge need to go to the gym and pump me full of ‘roids.
[7]

Stephen Eisermann: The song starts and my eyes instantly roll. Another Kiki, huh, well here we go. Marie immediately implies I’m a “fake ass worker,” and I should be offended but I’m just thinking omg drag me, kween. And I shouldn’t think that, because this song is barely even a song — but then that unique beat gets to me and I question myself — what is a song, really? The song continues and finishes with a laugh and I’m left in a puddle on the floor from all the working I’ve done; but being a puddle gives me perspective.
[7]

Will Adams: There’s a line to be drawn from “Work Bitch” to “Busy Doin’ Nothin'” to this, a Kübler-Ross-esque descent (or ascent, depending on how you look at it) one tends to experience under capitalism. At first there’s aspiration: you wanna live fancy? Live in a big mansion? Then rejection: don’t wanna work, I wanna make money while I sleep. Four years later and you’ve been conscripted into this life, no matter what. Over a spiky groove that builds like an assembly line, Marie Davidson guides you through the new mentality. It’s no longer enough to work to the bone, you have to love it, too. It doesn’t take long before she flips that aspiration into a taunt (“Well then you’re not a winner yet!”) and the colloquial notion of “work” into a menacing order. By the end, she’s just parroting the same platitudes (“You’ve got to work for yourself!”), the empty promises we’re told by others and ourselves to get by, knowing that in this system one cannot be a winner without crushing someone underneath. Perhaps that’s too bleak a reading. Perhaps we’re just in a funk, and all we need is to keep organizing and pushing and upending every system that got us here. But if it turns out we are marching toward the inevitable end, I’ll want it to sound like this.
[10]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Capitalism! Very clever.
[5]