Mia Martina – Burning
What do you mean, Canada can’t enter Eurovision?
[Video][Website]
[5.00]
Alex Ostroff: Mia Martina launched her career with a dubiously-legitimate cover of “Stereo Love” that eventually overtook the original on Canadian charts, so it’s appropriate that she’s continued to mine the fruitful vein of even-more-lightweight-than-actual-Eurohouse dance music. I’m sure everyone else will have made the obvious comparison already, but “Mr. Saxobeat” is, to my ears, far more robust than “Burning.” The biggest appeal of Mia’s songs (voice, production, lyrics) is how insubstantial they are. She doesn’t even bother to rhyme the chorus! (“Fire” and “tonight”, “up” and “drug”.) The whole thing has a vibe somewhere between Latin freestyle and Eurovision, and while “Burning” doesn’t do either well enough to inspire love, it has enough of each to provide me with some understated pleasure.
[6]
Iain Mew: This is incredibly lazy in every respect, but the lyrics are the worst. “I’m burning just like a fire”. “Your love is like a drug”. It barely even has any words, is it really that difficult to at least settle on one cliché and stick with it? I’m going to go back and listen to “Mr. Saxobeat” instead.
[2]
Anthony Easton: Oh, the vapidity of disco lyrics and the genius of disco beats. The electro-horns rise it slightly above average.
[7]
Brad Shoup: More light than slight, I think. I’d like this to be the year I start developing a knowledge of specific chords: there’s a wonderfully moody little drop when she intones “your love is like a drug/your love is like a drug”. I’d call it existential freestyle, but it’s not quite either, though it’s definitely my favorite saxobeat song to date.
[7]
Alfred Soto: Any songwriter credulous enough to use the fire/desire rhyme better luck into a singer who can make it shall we say signify. Martina doesn’t. In her favor: peppy horns, propulsion of the mildest kind.
[5]
John Seroff: Is it time for Eurovision already? Alright, can we get an untouchable, club-goddess type to coo banal sweet nothings? Do we have the rights to that drum preset? Is Epic Sax Man available? Great, get the DJ six Red Bulls and let’s get this over with. Wait, what do you mean Canada isn’t eligible to contend?
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: Mia Martina’s essentially Sandra marketed not with faux-French but faux-tropical allure, which, whatever: I’d swoon with someone to this on the right night, but behind my eyes I’d silently cringe at the yearning-burning cliches and facile saxoclone.
[5]
Jonathan Bogart: Remember “Mr. Saxobeat”? Remember “Your Love Is My Drug”? Remember every trance song ever? Well, you’re in luck, because today for the low low price of [PRICES VARY BY REGION], you can have your very own not-as-good-as-any-of-them song. But don’t take our word for it! Listen to this ringing endorsement from one of our many satisfied customers: “I mean, I guess. If you don’t have anything better.”
[6]
Michaela Drapes: I heard this at Sephora, and left without buying anything. (Also, minus ONE MILLION POINTS for attempting to be another “Mr. Saxobeat” and failing miserably at this pointless task.)
[0]
Matt Cibula: In the early 1990s, when house-pop was pretty much killing it on the radio, I taught junior high school in New York City. Pretty sure my students sang this song over and over again EVEN THOUGH IT HADN’T BEEN WRITTEN OR PERFORMED YET. So yeah, high marks, even though it’s about as deep as a puddle in July and even Zooey Deschanel thinks it’s a little too cutesy.
[8]