We were into him before he still wasn’t famous.
[Video][Website]
[3.42]
Jonathan Bogart: How did what looks and sounds for all the world like the result of modern-day song-poem scammers who found a couple of Liechtensteinian rubes willing to pay a few grand to dick around for a day end up snagging a Grammy™ nomination? Turns out the scammee may be the scammer after all. Not that anyone should care; neither the self-regarding old farts of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences nor the self-regarding young farts who believe there’s an integrity to EDM worth protecting deserve to have their tender feelings massaged. Which leaves Walser and his lady fair; it’s no “Friday,” but they sure look like they’re having fun out there.
[7]
Anthony Easton: I love the introduction, and then it speeds up into awesome; the words are symbolic but the funk breakdown, deconstructed into a hyper-aware dance, is just gorgeous.
[8]
Will Adams: Both vocal tracks belong on an American Idol gag reel. The lyrics are no less coherent than standard Eurotrash, but no more, either. The drums are overdriven and out-of-the-box. The mixing is just horrendous. The music video is Mall Green Screen 101. I feel like I should be amused that this piece of shit trolled its way to the Grammys to stand next to the other, atrociously uncreative picks in the “Best Dance Recording” category. But really, my face turns red and I shiver with rage the more it dawns on me that this is the current state of dance music. Congratulations, everybody: we’ve reached the nadir.
[1]
Brad Shoup: Of course EDM contains the same earnest failures as any other genre. They can’t all be 17-year-old SoundCloud geniuses. Thus we have loads of gibberish interjections, hoary rock chug in the intro, a story no one gives a shit about, and the sudden shift to trance at the end. Walser’s Europop sensibility carries the chorus all right, but both singers have no idea of their limitations: good news for fans of schadenfreude, terrible news for people who root for people.
[2]
Patrick St. Michel: Kudos to the Grammys for stirring up additional attention to themselves by nominating this mostly unknown bit of goofiness for an award. It’s ridiculous enough that this exists in the same category as Skrillex and Avicii, but even nuttier that something with vocals that sound like they are constantly trying to catch up with the music got the nod for something hypothetically meant to celebrate the best music of the past year. But then again, it’s the Grammys.
[2]
Josh Langhoff: The Al Walser Story fits a classic narrative arc. He’s the outsider who strives for insider and hits it sideways, earning both fame and mockery while teaching us new lessons about life and the Grammy nominating process. It’s striking how well this nominated song embodies the real-life story: it’s catchy and competent, with a talented female lead and well-deployed synths. (I really like the unpredictable trancey stabs during the middle eight.) But the ringmaster is a hoarse weirdo who can’t sing and keeps making smarmy asides. The songwriting stays weirdly detached; the promising details of butterflies, a maze, and “30 years 11 days” are discarded like gift wrap, and you never sense that anyone’s life is at stake. All these incongruities make Walser’s innocuous cheese more interesting. Likewise, I hope he and Olga Levit reenact their video at the Grammys, because then the Grammys would suck less.
[7]
Ian Mathers: All points awarded are for making clear, again, to the mass audience for the Grammys just how ridiculous/pointless the awards are. There would have been more points, but judges are temporarily withholding some until we know for sure that this total nonentity isn’t going to get a pop culture career (including any possible reality shows) out of this farrago.
[3]
Alfred Soto: It’s even easier to close EDM than the NARAS thought.
[3]
Iain Mew: Worst Summer Camp song ever.
[1]
Zach Lyon: Etta would’ve had trouble singing life into “I can’t live without you/I can’t breathe without you”. These two never had a chance. (N.B.: this is sometimes a [10], depending on who I’m talking to.)
[1]
Edward Okulicz: As an impressionable teen who was so alt-rock it hurt, my only real exposure to European dance music was compilation CDs my brother bought released by a slightly dodgy and short-lived radio station called Wild FM. While “I Can’t Live Without You” isn’t great, it’s better than 50% of my memories of those CDs. What I’m saying is, it’s no Vengaboys or DJ Otzi, but damned if this isn’t worthier and more original than fucking Avicii.
[5]
Katherine St Asaph: It was inevitable: an institution that last year staged a “Tribute to EDM” that interpreted “tribute” in the warfare sense, and a nominations slate chosen by voters who interpret the genre’s already flimsy boundaries with all the finesse of Strong Bad, turns out to be easily gamed by opportunistic PR spam. There’s something admirably perverse about this. It’s the perfect underdog story, so deceptively possible even though it’s not. It’s a perfect gusher of schadenfreude, if you’re into that, and hugely telling: this is what dance music sounds like to those voters, no big deviations, and Al Walser’s recorded the EDM “Prisencolen.” What he’s really recorded is the EDM “Back Door Lover,” if that were serious: ostensibly a pastiche but just so wrong. The opener’s like a “Call Me Maybe” club remix from 2000; the vocalists are respectively snivelly and strained as if Natalie Horler tried even harder; the lyrics botch their shibboleths (“thirty years, eleven days?”); the buildup’s not even in the template place, the ad-libs are buried in the mix; and there’s no point itemizing more, as that’d make me no different than the blogs crying Ark, but trust that everything here is off. I still love everything about this phenomenon, mind — all except the song.
[1]