Friday, November 7th, 2014

Nathaniel – Live Louder

Dance better.


[Video][Website]
[3.00]

Scott Mildenhall: “Live louder” sounds like a hashtag – a barren one, dreamt up by some multinational corporation with a far from firm grasp on social media. “Redefine a new kind of cool” sounds like a throwaway slogan created for a hair gel brand in a non-English-speaking market that financial constraints meant had to be used in the UK too. The whole song sounds like a rictus-grinned advert for a wholly ill-fitting product. Almost adept, yet the opposite of canny – in effect, uncanny.
[5]

Micha Cavaseno: One of my favorite things that crack me up is when cult leader Dr. Malachi Z. York’s compound was sacked, bulldozers discovered his pyramids were in fact made of Styrofoam. It serves to show that if whatever you’re selling lacks strength or quality, you need to sell it yourself with your own personality. Case in point with soul/funk that’s inherently artificial… You can make it work. Use the sleaze of the lounge lizard plasticity to make a statement (Bowie/ABC) or as a retro costume to tickle nostalgic (Timberlake/Thicke). But this kid Nathaniel, this unidentifiable funk pastiche and this generic slogan of ‘be yourself and be happy’… Well, it’s so bloodless I can’t help him and his song might just be made out of Styrofoam too!
[1]

Alfred Soto: In 2002 a dude taking the Jacksons’ “Shake Your Body to the Ground” with a wobbly Pharrell falsetto for a ride would have scared the shit out of an N Sync defector. Now the dude’s lucky to be mentioned alongside Karmin.
[4]

David Sheffieck: And the 2014 winner of “song most indistinguishable from its Kidz Bop cover” is…
[1]

W.B. Swygart: There’s plenty of personality on display here, and Nathaniel certainly throws himself into it… but then there’s that chorus.
[3]

Anthony Easton: I do not feel inspired to live my life louder. I feel inspired to turn the lights off and cuddle under the blankets, trying to avoid how he sings cool. 
[2]

Josh Winters: I can’t wait to see my uncles get down to this at a relative’s future wedding.
[5]

Reader average: [2.5] (2 votes)

Vote: 0   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10

Comments are closed.