Time to update your Chuck Eddy In-Car Listening Squash Ladders, folks…
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[6.67]
Chuck Eddy: I’ve played this in my car more than any other new song this year, not just because I love it but because my two-year-old daughter Annika does — if she could vote for her favorite car songs over the past six months, I suspect she’d put it more or less on par with E.via’s “Pick Up! U!,” the Dirtbombs’ “Sharevari,” and Deviants’ “Garbage”, which is to say not far behind Juelz Santana feat. Yelawolf’s “Mixin’ Up the Medicine” (which she refers to as “the medicine song,” and requested every day for weeks), Kraftwerk’s “The Robots,” and all-time champion “Like A G6” (Yo Gabba Gabba/Wonder Pets songs disqualified; I refuse to play those while driving). The parts Annika always sings along with are that pitch-climbing “aaaAAIII!” right after the opening cyborg squeaks, and the “pie! pie! in the sky!” chant (well, that’s how she says it) — not “g-h-e-t-t-o e-l-e-c-t-r-o,” surprisingly, though that’s a bit hard to decipher I suppose. Anyway, “High High” pushes energy, hooks, bounce into the red in ways most hip-hop chickened out of forever ago, voices working off each other and everything. I feel very sorry for anybody who doesn’t adore it.
[9]
Alfred Soto: Squeaky, anodyne, anachronistic.
[4]
Martin Skidmore: There’s something appealingly ridiculous about a lot of South Korean music, a willingness to throw things at the wall in the hope that something sticks. This is very poppy hip hop, with electro beats and clumsy rapping that brings back styles of 25 years ago when hardly anyone could actually rap, but that didn’t deter them from trying. Imagine ’80s Dutchmen with no sense of embarrassment, in the best possible way.
[8]
Erick Bieritz: A group composed of will.i.am clones was a good idea; accidentally using the apl.de.ap DNA instead was a terrible mistake.
[3]
Frank Kogan: A dream of the club life, as reflected/refracted through Korean boyband ears, sounding less haughty and ominous and more liberating than the American version. Not that one dance track exemplifies all of South Korea (running counter to this there’s a tense mini-epic music vid by veteran singer Lee Hyori where the mob moves in on a low-rent independent club), and anyway, T.O.P. has a twist to him, the vocal equivalent of French actor Alain Delon: exquisitely pretty, with hard eyes and a marble expression. But the chant of G-H-E-T-T-O E-L-E-C-T-R-O sounds like utter joy and promise, the excitement of discovery – though I don’t know if it’s Korea making the discoveries or just me.
[8]
Edward Okulicz: It’s as if every single cliched trope of hip-hop-influenced dance music got miniaturised and put in a blender. The sum of parts is like a preposterous joke and an exhilarating sugar rush all in one. I don’t resent the “Le Freak” call-outs, the T-Pain in a mental asylum chorus or how dumb the whole thing is because that would be like stepping on a kitten.
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