The Singles Jukebox

So Patsy Cline’s the new Eddie Murphy – who knew?…

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[6.55]

Martin Skidmore: Weirdly from a deep house veteran with a guest rapper, the opening sounds more like the theme tune to some vintage TV cowboy show, and then there’s a big sample from glorious classic country singer Patsy Cline reinforcing that feel. Cudi skips along on top of all this very brightly, and apart from one terrible voice briefly joining in (Sharam himself?) this is thoroughly enjoyable, and rather odd.
[8]

Chuck Eddy: “Pasty Cline,” as one Youtube commenter calls her, is clearly the liveliest thing here. Which, in conjunction with the Paperboys’ “Lonesome Traveller,” makes me wonder whether there’s been a non-U.S.-chart revival of cheeseball “Standing Outside A Broken Phonebooth”-style pop sampling American “roots” music, assuming it ever went away in the first place. Just wish this was half as fun as, say, Kon Kan’s “I Beg Your Pardon” featuring Lynn Anderson.
[5]

Frank Kogan: The country sample is inflated to the size of a balloon float and placed in a dark mountain cavern, but when the sample brings us Patsy Cline, she feels dead in comparison (which isn’t how she sounds on the original, before drenched in Sharam’s echoes); then when Cudi raps, he sounds clumsy in comparison to her. It’s all fine once he gets into his story, a gag about making up a threesome with his ex-girlfriend and her new girlfriend, good-humored enough, but the parts here feel depleted in each other’s presence. Three’s a crowd.
[6]

Martin Kavka: It’s inspired to set a tale of a man’s desire for a three-way with his ex and her new girlfriend to a sample from Patsy Cline’s “Strange.” But this is one of those inspirations that, even though it leads to a well-constructed song, produces nothing more substantial than a meringue. You listen to it twice, you get the joke, and you move on.
[6]

Anthony Miccio: Did Sharam pick the gorgeous Patsy Cline sample to garnish Kid Cudi’s puerile tale of losing his girl to another woman, or did the sample inspire the narrative? Docked a point for the grating vocal filter applied to Cudi’s climactic “oh baby,” which interrupts the pulsing elegance of the track even more aggressively than the rapper’s insipidity.
[5]

Anthony Easton: Like the percussion, sort of love the guitars, like how the track gets progressively louder, sort of digging the orientalist fakehood that creates a kind of sinuous edge, and the pseudo jazzy vocals, well constructed, but not fully overwhelmed, gets less and less interesting the more and more conventionally hip hop it sounds.
[6]

Michaelangelo Matos: As a longtime aficionado of the “Apache” beat, I swore that was what was driving this thing, albeit buried deep in the mix. But no, that’s just (likely) some programming. That doesn’t devalue it any, I’d just hoped I’d found an Easter egg that wasn’t the friggin’ Patsy Cline sample. Is it a good song? Hell if I can tell through Kid Cudi’s endless mumblemouth. But it’s a pretty fetching piece of sound, and the mumblemouth is part of why.
[7]

Matt Cibula: Slow start, gets better with the rap. Not quite justified, but far from ancient. My basketball blogger friends are all nuts for Kid Cudi and I’m starting to see why.
[6]

Talia Kraines: Five minutes of utter swooning, it almost transports me to the San Antonio sunset. The gentle hypnotic guitars and country twangs suddenly make Kid Cudi the grandparent’s choice of rapper. Sure – it might not massively go anywhere, but who cares when it sounds this dreamy. Bliss out song of the summer.
[9]

Edward Okulicz: If you close your mind to what the words are saying, this is pretty good. The sample’s glory is dulled a little by association, but the dreamy soundscape is very agreeable. Kid’s rap is less so, and you wonder what made Sharam think a rap was the right thing to put over this. I suppose he wants to be Mint Royale or something.
[7]

Hillary Brown: Is it okay to rate a song a 7 if I’m probably not going to bother to listen to it again? This is an exceedingly pleasant, chilled-out ride that makes for excellent background music, and its nods to the past feel organic rather than buffed into smoothness, but will I seek it out? I may, but it might be too relaxed.
[7]