The Singles Jukebox

Kind of like the inverse of Hilary Duff calling one of her albums Dignity…

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Jonathan Bradley: RT @SongzYuuup “Shawty sent a twitpic, sayin come & get this.” Hook of the year! At >140 chars, song is too long. #RnBFAIL http://u.nu/8cda3
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Chris Boeckmann: GR&D :-O
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Alfred Soto: :(
[2]

Briony Edwards: There’s something strangely joyous about the ridiculousness of hearing grown men sing “L-O-L smiley face, L-O-L smiley face” so many times in four minutes, and this song is catchy enough to make all the shameless references to social networking allowable. Pleasantly surprising.
[5]

Al Shipley: I never thought I’d like a shamelessly opportunistic pop song about social networking this much, but that melody is pretty damn irresistible. Radric rhymes “face” with “tape,” DeAndre rhymes “hers” with “love,” but I just can’t muster up much genuine hate.
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John Seroff: … or “How I Learned to Stop Hatin’ and Love Trey and Soulja.” I kid: Souljaboytellem won my heart with The Shaggs-like weirdness of “Turn My Swag On” (still the most outrageous hit of the year for my money) and Trey got his props from me already on “Successful” (as Chuck says, it really IS all in that “I suppose”). Even so, neither “Swag”‘s howling end-of-empire Tempest in a Cristal Bottle or “Successful”‘s future nostalgia anxiety attack quite prepared me for a lighthearted dancehall-meets-Frère-Jacques booty-text jam that twangs, cracks, chugs and pings like bullets bouncing in an aluminum music box. Trey’s autotuned player piano man purr announces his natural ability and naked ambition to steal the Smoove B o_O radio R&B throne from R Kelly. Souljaboytellem’s trademark flat delivery, half-veiled :P and nearly unrhymed couplets mesh weirdly but aptly on ‘LOL’s exposed gears. Gucci is more or less :\ but it’ll take more that rhyming “cuticle” with “cubicle” to scare me off this addled, screwball funfest.
[8]

Rodney J. Greene: As guilty of hackwork as Trey Songz is most of the time, he has this obnoxious habit of acquitting himself every so often. The title, playful nursery rhyme melody, and timely lyrics that will date at light speed are the most obvious standouts here, contagiously catchy and fun as they are, but just as key are the lilting synth chords and soul clap during the verses which allow the song to glide along in effortless fashion between singalong choruses. In lieu of a second verse or bridge, we get Gucci Mane, who takes well to less-than-clever goofball wordplay, and Soulja Boy, whose strength is strongly correlated to his inanity, and in being the most restrained performer here is somewhat useless. I would get annoyed at Songz for underwriting if it weren’t for the fact that this would have surely led to an overplaying of his hand.
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Anthony Miccio: An unresolved “Frere Jacques”? Guess that’s cheaper than interpolating Barney.
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Martin Skidmore: I’ve never liked emoticons or LOL, so perhaps I am biased. The nursery rhyme feel of it doesn’t help either. It feels sort of patronising, to be honest, and the performances of Trey and the guest rappers don’t help this impression. Also, I know I am old and hardly down with the kids, but is Twitter really the preferred way to send pics these days?
[3]

Martin Kavka: Like many pages in Samuel Pepys’ diary, this endows a mundane event — the sending of a text — with far more significance than it deserves, and is more interesting than it has any right to be. And so to bed!
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Pete Baran: I for one would say it was a good thing if it steered punters towards the excellent Anna Faris film Smiley Face. But OMG, and this shocked me, I rilly rilly like this. I wish it was a bit more danceable, cos it is dancefloor daft, but I’ll go with the playground on this.
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Kat Stevens: Best listened to on the top deck of the bus after four pints (I tested this out last Friday). Unlikely to be as lolsome once the hangover kicks in.
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