And it’s fuckin’ raining in Leeds…
[Website]
[6.69]
Anthony Miccio: The monoculture still exists, y’all! When I moved to LA back when I was thirteen, I was scared cuz I didn’t think I’d fit in at the clubs! But then they played Britney and Jay-Z! Man, I thought that was Nashville hick music! Common ground, y’all! Corporate hegemony rules! Woop, woop! This ringtone is my ringtone, this ringtone is your ringtone…
[7]
Anthony Easton: Is it weird that what bugs me about this is that it assumes that Nashville has no connection with Los Angeles at all? Billy Ray was priming Miley for some kind of fame for a decade before adroitly plugging her into the Hollywood machine. Her work post the second film, attaching an adult interest in allowing her two adolescent personae to flow past the genre signifers of pop, rock and country, continues here, but she seems to have dropped any sense of self awareness; it becomes generic, and for the metric ton of ego that is powering the lyrics, one would assume less of Billy’s power and more self-awareness, more alertness. It does not even unhinge itself in an interesting way.
[5]
Dave Moore: She’s been Hannah Montana for a while now, but none of that stuff ever really felt as much like our very own late-00’s Robin Sparkles. This song nails it — my issue with it, actually, is that it isn’t nearly shameless enough. Sure, we get Jay-Z and Britney, but where are the iPhones? The Red Bulls? The Barack Obama T-shirts? The Facebooks? The Rock Bands? The Roombas? The FlipCams? The Nick Jonas combination wallet chain and insulin pump tubes? The-Dreams? The Autotunes? The 808s? The 3OH!3’s? The WTFs, FTWs, FMLs, and FAILs? The Rickrolls? The Rickrosses? The Axe Body Sprays? The Priuses? The purity rings? That gum that you just stick on your tongue so it dissolves? Missed opportunities all.
[5]
Al Shipley: It’s somehow appropriate that Miley’s most confident step to date toward modern, Dr. Luke-produced chart pop has such a cheesy-ass Radio Disney title. Unfortunately, all the production sheen in the world can’t buff that Baby Alanis yarl into a good pop vocal, and I just keep wishing that killer synth riff belonged to some other song.
[4]
John M. Cunningham: On its face, this chipper single is about the ameliorative powers of music. But it’s also, as the title hints, a celebration of the common American culture, whose death was mourned alongside Michael Jackson’s two months ago. It’s true that there are no blockbuster albums like Thriller anymore, but in the era of Clear Channel, it’s even more possible than ever to hear the same Jay-Z song on the radio in L.A. as you heard yesterday in Nashville. And however you feel about capitalist monopolies, mainstream pop’s ability to elide regional differences is also a demonstrable comfort, even if it’s most deeply felt by the type of teenage girl who routinely jaunts off to Hollywood for a weekend by herself.
[8]
John Seroff: That Cyrus, as a reigning franchise herself, pulls this off without cynical sneering or fatuous genuflecting is mostly a triumph of the best production money can buy; you’d be hard pressed to squeeze more smiles out of space-age elastic bass, eighth-second multi-track echoes and sharply delineated tambourine. Give credit where it’s due though: what elevates “Party” to essential bubblegum anthem status is Cyrus’ joie de vivre; her sunny chirrup that so perfectly captures the spirit of eyes closed, hairbrush-as-microphone, dancin’ with muh-seh-helf ecstasy.
[9]
Alex Ostroff: Totally inane. The weird urban/rural class stuff is less authentic and grosser than when country music does it. The Jay-Z and Britney namedropping seems off — two past-their-prime giants emblematic of a mythical musical consensus past. But if this pop song about pop songs doesn’t quite manage to be a brilliant and ubiquitous cultural uniter, it understands and aspires to pop universalism — a worthy goal if ever there was one. And when the chorus drops, I almost want to Party in the USA too.
[7]
Ian Mathers: The Jay-Z/Britney references manage to play as winking nods to critics/pop-lovers and unselfconscious expressions of fandom simultaneously, which is a neat trick. But they also highlight what’s unsatisfying about “Party in the USA,” namely that this is a song that’s a lot more fun and interesting to theorize about (see, it’s about how we still have a monoculture!) or parse (the “memos/stillettos” part sounds like Akon!) than it is to listen to. A decent chorus would be a good first step to fixing that.
[5]
Alfred Soto: Miley’s voice is too nasal for me, but the clipped guitars (more Weezer-esque than Weezer’s capable of lately) match the clever Jay-Z and Britney references. She’s like the smart aleck invited to her first cool kids party trying to keep her distance.
[6]
Jonathan Bradley: The set-up is obviously and probably purposefully absurd: Cyrus has not been a clueless hick fresh outta Tennessee in a long time, if ever, and I’m sure even Southern girls know how to get dolled up for a night out on the town without attracting too many stares. But the scripted nature of the story puts the focus on Cyrus’s small moments and minor triumphs, preventing the narrative from devolving into an alienating life and times of the rich and famous fable. The weightless relief in Cyrus’s voice when she describes “put[ting her] hands up” because the DJ is “playing [her] song” is so commonplace and relatable that it belongs equally to a singer on the radio as it does to those of us listening at home in our bedrooms.
[8]
Jordan Sargent: With “The Climb” and “Hoedown Throwdown”, Miley was curiously on her way towards a sort of self-directed irrelevance. Both singles were major hits, of course, but her move towards teen-country had only placed her directly in the shadow of the towering presence that is Taylor Swift. This was magnified most at last year’s Grammys, when Miley guested on Taylor’s own “Fifteen”; though it was a nice performance and a sensical pairing, it seemed a bit odd that Hannah Montana was ceding turf in the war to control her maturing audience. Politically, “Party in the USA” doesn’t do much to wrestle the throne away from Taylor, but it does posit Miley back where she belongs: as the hairbrush-in-the-mirror party music for teen girls who find Demi a bit too punk and Rihanna a bit too out of touch. “Party in the USA”, though, is able to transcend teenpop trappings. It’s a true out-and-out banger, the sort of massive, stomping, attention-demanding single that we haven’t seen since Pink’s “So What”. The only thing it leaves up for debate is what Miley’s favorite Jay-Z song is.
[9]
Hillary Brown: While I still think Miley can do better (she’s got a more powerful and interesting voice than 95% of the pop starlets out there), this is an intriguing and catchy choice of tunes, with a Nashville message but not a Nashville sound. I guess it’s about crossover hits while also serving as one. And it’s kinda cute.
[7]
Additional Scores
Pete Baran: [4]
Chris Boeckmann: [9]
Michaelangelo Matos: [2]
Martin Skidmore: [8]