There’s the Kreayshawn we don’t like…

[Video]
[4.07]

Mallory O’Donnell: And now for something completely the same…
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: Let’s clear something up. I don’t dislike “Rich Whores” because of Kreayshawn’s authentic or inauthentic or appropriating or organic or cool or wacky or viral identity. I don’t dislike “Rich Whores” because I’m anti-Kreayshawn, anti-Lil B, anti-underground rap or anti-viral videos (OK, maybe a little of that.) I dislike “Rich Whores” because it is fucking terrible, performed terribly and a reverse amnesty for all the women “Gucci Gucci” didn’t insult, which is also terrible. Joke’s over. We can start coronating the First World Problems Rap kid now.
[1]

Jonathan Bradley: It’s no surprise that Kreayshawn has sparked such controversy merely by being a white girl with pretensions to rapping. America often tells itself it needs to have a discussion about race, but that’s nonsense. America is always talking about race. Where the nation’s discourse really comes undone is when it’s forced to grapple with the complex crosscut that is the interplay between race and class. When a society so often pretends “black” is a synonym for “urban poor,” what is it to do with a white woman who at least has claims to being the same and yet doesn’t seem interested in talking about it? “Rich Whores” might have been the starting point for a compelling conversation about these issues, as it uses music traditionally made by young black men for a narrative about class tensions among white women, but it falls at the first hurdle by not being musically interesting. Kreayshawn sounds lost within the blippy faux-trap production, and her vocal presence is far too weak to make her repetitious bluster engrossing.
[4]

B Michael Payne: The opening of the song sounds like “See You in My Nightmares,” which is distracting, but luckily, some ridiculous bass soon plows through. But the first verse, the Spice Girls verse, is not particularly good, the second verse is practically the same as the first, and where it does deviate, it doesn’t stray far into inventive territory. Using a dollar bill to blow an expensive drug is not a particularly clever paradoxical image. It’s kind of (not really) funny when Kreayshawn makes fun of indie-rock mustaches and drops a year’s old Sarah Palin reference. She also starts and ends her rhymes with the same word, over and over. Maybe it’s supposed to be terrible, like a Gucci Mane song — she copies his tropes and rhyming style and mentions him at the beginning. But it’s a step back from “Gucci Gucci.”
[4]

Edward Okulicz: Not fierce enough to be a diss track, not loose enough to be a bit of self-glorification, it settles uneasily between the two. Any ten-year-old could rap like this, which would be a huge point in its favour if it didn’t have such weak rhymes.
[3]

Jer Fairall: My sources tell me she’s a controversial figure, mostly because of questions over her “authenticity,” which I can only assume is due to the fact that she raps badly rather than singing — which she would probably also do badly, albeit less controversially. I cannot imagine why anyone would even bother having this conversation over Kreayshawn, who just sounds to me like a Ke$ha also-ran in a world where Ke$ha has been acknowledged without hubbub as something that exists whether we like it or not. This is far less teeth-on-edge grating than any Ke$ha hit, mostly because this girl manages a sorta witty phrase every now and then — I like the bit about the indie rock boyfriend. But the thinness of Kreayshawn’s voice stands as a severe obstacle to her ability to land the punches that she so clearly wants to.
[4]

Alfred Soto: This “occasional librarian,” according to her Wikipedia entry, generates some interest based on the determined nasal squeakiness of her voice, which reminds me of not just Michel’le but the world-wise kids on M.I.A.’s “Mango Pickle Down River.” Maybe she’ll write the lyrical correlative to that voice someday.
[3]

Alex Ostroff: “Let’s get it bumpin’ bumpin’ yeah.” I can’t tell if this is a celebratory anthem or the equivalent of Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night” video or a straight-up diss track, but either way, nobody comes out of this looking particularly commendable. I mean, insulting mustachio’ed indie rockers? Isn’t this a bit tired? Also, the awkwardly nasal flow that somehow gelled on “Gucci Gucci” simply sounds obnoxious in the the midst of busier production.
[2]

Ian Mathers: See, the Lonely Island succeeds because in addition to creating credible examples of the genres/artists they’re mocking, they have funny material. “What up bitch? I see you dancin’ with no rhythm” is kinda funny the first time, but it’s not a good enough joke on which to hang a song.
[4]

Michaela Drapes: I very sincerely hope you’re never forced to spend extended amounts of time with fashion twit trusties in “vintage” thrift store clothes who date guys in indie bands and brag about their coke “habit.” We knew Kreayshawn could throw shade after “Gucci Gucci,” and she continues to do so here with aplomb.
[8]

Anthony Easton: I love how angry this is, and how angry it is about class tourism and destructive it is to those who pretend to be poorer than they are. It’s aggressive, and it is systematic. Even the line about dollar bills and cocaine, the idea of deglamourizing cocaine and reglamourizing thrift stores.
[9]

Kat Stevens: My favourite song so far this year is “The Juice” by Soulja Boy, which details Soulja Boy’s undying dedication to the acquisition and consumption of The Juice, with some half-hearted unintelligible ramblings about the awfulness of bitches and hoes chucked in to fill up the verses. For all intents and purposes “Rich Whores” is the same song as “The Juice”, but with the quest for the eponymous liquid replaced by an observational stint by Ms Kreayshawn in the local Marie Curie Cancer Care shop, where some hard-up ladies are consuming their very own “Juice” – on a budget! If you listen closely it even has its own SKRRP noise.
[9]

Hazel Robinson: I originally thought I might like this if I was drunk, but even after face-melting amounts of Day Nurse it’s just kind of lame. Which is a shame, since I genuinely think Kreayshawn has potential to be kind of great. Girl Talk will no doubt do something with this in his yearly expulsion.
[4]

Zach Lyon: Let’s just call a spade the worst fucking spade you’ve ever listened to.
[0]

There’s the Kreayshawn we like….

[Video][Website]
[6.77]

Katherine St Asaph: A meme, reviewed in meme: At first I was like 😀 but then Kreayshawn got a record deal and grizzly-hugged the authenticity-debate beehive and dropped “Rich Whores” so I was like -_-
[4]

Alex Ostroff: Things that elevate “Gucci Gucci” above pure novelty: (1) The “one big room” vocal hook, (2) the contrast between the squelching bass and the whining treble in the beat, (3) “baggie full of Adderall” (a university-attending hipster’s drug-dealing anthem would sound a lot like this), (4) the way she drawls “leisurrrrre,” (5) swag pumping out of ovaries, (6) “Gucci Gucci, Louis Louis, Fendi Fendi, Prada” is, in fact, a lot of fun to chant. The fact that “Gucci Gucci” also included a line about shitting in cat litter, the clarifying “Trump” appended to “Ivana,” and the gratingly half-sung editor/director/own boss line should have been an indication that nothing good would come of this.
[7]

Zach Lyon: The chorus is catchy. The sentiment is grade-school Hot Topic bullshit repackaged in an even more useless California hipster context — just replace Abercrombie, Hollister, whatever the kids are wearing these days. The swag ovaries line is alright. And then there are maybe two other lines people have earmarked as having some sort of value, when they really just sound stale and representative of our collective lowered standards, if that wasn’t already clear from the fact that three notable lines apparently make a good song. “I’m lookin’ like Madonna but I’m flossin’ like Ivana/Trump” makes me think “Jean-Ralphio you gotta end on the rhyme!” The rest of this is just me going “why,” but I take solace in the fact that this seems to actually be a 15-minute situation. I hope the tone Michael Ian Black uses in this segment of I Love the 10s will be “shameful.”
[2]

Michelle Myers: I get why the gut reaction is to hate Kreayshawn. White hipsters have had a very bad track record when it comes to making rap music, but Kreayshawn is not MC Paul Barman. I really do believe she is sincere in her love of rap, Oakland and blunts. I think she’s trying to make hip hop for people who actually like hip hop, not for nebbish indie kids. Is she succeeding? Sort of. Between all the swag pumping out of ovaries and big rooms full of bad bitches, there are some pretty awful lines. But even awkward Twitter references can’t keep me from liking this song.
[7]

Hazel Robinson: Man, this woulda been a 10 if I hadn’t seen the video and realised it’s a bunch of vegan crunksters. It would take like half a glass of wine, though, to have me standing on my chair gesticulating wildly to the horizontal cheerleader taunt of the chorus, even if they’d never let my fat ass in their party.
[7]

Kat Stevens: I like this song both more and less after watching the video and seeing Kreayshawn. Less because I was imaging someone less scrawny and zoned-out, not a mini Gaga after a night on the roll-yr-owns; more because now she reminds me of the traits I like best in Avril Lavigne. Despite the laziness, there’s a full awareness of how much of a shitstorm is about to kick up and not a hint of regret or self-doubt about continuing said shitstorm. She also has the same cadence that Avril has in the middle eight of “Girlfriend” (in a second you’ll be wrapped around my finger…) and the snottiness to pull it off. I am sold.
[8]

Jer Fairall: I’d already thought “bitch, you ain’t no Barbie, I see you work at Arby’s, #2, supersize, hurry up, I’m starving” was pretty hilarious when I read it on Anthony’s blog without knowing the source. My gripe about her voice remains, though, and will constitute a serious roadblock to my future enjoyment of her, even if she eventually acquires less rinky-dink production and learns to sustain her smarter lyrical ideas for an entire song.
[6]

Jonathan Bradley: “Gucci Gucci” succeeds because Kreayshawn understands the utility of a sharp catchphrase or two; in addition to the ovaries line, there’s the laundry list of haute couture forming the hook, which works whether you disdain basic bitches or are one. Kreayshawn is not a remarkable MC, but she doesn’t need to be. Her job here is to display breezy self-assurance, lazy contempt and an utterly unearned sense of superiority, all with wicked disdain for propriety. People don’t like it when women act like this, but it’s a lot of fun should you happen to be on the right side of it.
[8]

Michaela Drapes: Kreayshawn shouldn’t ____________ because she’s white. Kreayshawn shouldn’t ____________ because she’s a girl. Welcome to Riot Grrrl, 2011 style. Only Kreayshawn isn’t fucking around with guitars in a basement in Olympia, WA — she’s fucking around with mixing software. She isn’t making zines, she’s uploading videos to YouTube. The latest in a grand line of other Oakland-based artists who seriously do not give a fuck what you think, Kreayshawn is rubbing everyone’s face in the reality of being upwardly mobile in the ghetto these days, and she ain’t doing it by being a Barbie. And if she’s pissing off so many people in the process, then she’s probably doing something right.
[9]

Anthony Easton: I know all the qualifiers about hipsters and race and tourism, but Kreayshawn thinks pretty hard about class. And she’s sort of an American Lady Sov, which is awesome.
[10]

Edward Okulicz: I wanted so badly to hate this, because as a rule any Internet sensation has to be bad, but was won over in about 20 seconds when it became apparent she was like Lady Sovereign if she rapped badly but was actually funny.
[6]

B Michael Payne: Dubstep is funny, and so are cats. This song is funny. Kreayshawn is funny, which is something that gets lost among the debate regarding her context, culture and credibility. (Discussion of her is proceeded by so many Cs that it’s incongruous she didn’t spell her name differently.) Some people think she’s not funny, but rather a joke, a cred thief or plain insulting. I disagree. I think of her as being like that Snow Crash reality of cross- and pan-cultural chaos engendered and augmented by constant hyper-connectivity. What separates Kreayshawn from someone rocking parachute pants and a skintight hockey jersey — listening to a dubstep remix of Justin Bieber, of course — is that she presents as simultaneously smart, vulnerable and arch. Others may disagree, but her instincts and attitude suggest star power to me.
[9]

Ian Mathers: Blessedly I have no stake in the whole furore over Kreayshawn, so I can enjoy “Gucci Gucci” for the occasional funny line (“I got the swag and it’s pumpin’ out my ovarieeeees” and “I’m rollin’ up my catnip and shittin’ in your litter” are classic, surely?) and a solid deployment of that ol’ wobbly sound in the background, and then never play it again.
[5]

Mildly misleading band name ahoy!

[Video][Website]
[5.11]

Alfred Soto: Smokey Robinson, playing a tremulous iteration of the feminine mystique, sings Fleetwood Mac’s “Sara.”
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Entire minutes passed as I tried to figure out who the vocalist reminded me of — Austra’s Katie Stelmanis? A more quavery version of Louise from Society of Imaginary Friends? And then I realized Hayden Thorpe was a man. Impressive, as is the way this portions out its skittering beats and piano washes for maximum effect Easy beauty, but there’s never enough.
[7]

B Michael Payne: I’m usually not this much of an asshole, but I really should not have watched the video for “Albatross.” Hayden Thorpe looks exactly as he sounds, which is to say, kind of like a pillow that’s been cried into. I get that Wild Beasts are supposed to be kind of like Talk Talk 2.0, but, to be honest, Talk Talk never did it for me, either.
[3]

Jonathan Bogart: I was already not well disposed to the chiming swoopiness of the music, and then I saw the video. The one singing looks like my youth-pastor cousin, same facial hair and everything. Nice guy, but no rock star. And sure, that’s not in the least fair, but since the song doesn’t offer anything else to hook me, that’s all I have to associate with it.
[4]

Michaela Drapes: I feel vaguely used by this song, as if it were specifically built to push all my buttons. It’s like getting set up on a date with a guy with whom all your friends insist you have so much in common, but during the course of your first meeting you find out that he won’t eat spicy food, doesn’t like to travel, and hates cats. And then he keeps calling, even after you tell him you’re not interested in another date. “Albatross” is pretty much exactly like that.
[3]

Zach Lyon: Oy, they have good songs, you know? I guess I require hooks, and his voice is often a hook, at least when he employs his wonderful growly range. But if he’s just going to stick in this faux-dramatic, sleepy falsetto I see no reason to not just put on a Future Islands record instead — at least their Samuel T. Herring is reliably expressive and entertaining.
[3]

Iain Mew: This is rather slinky and the opening lines are almost enough to convinve me that Hayden Thorpe’s falsetto might work for something other than the dramatic derangement of their earlier stuff after all. Ultimately though, the song fails to take off anywhere from there, and there’s only so far unfocussed prettiness can get you.
[6]

Hazel Robinson: Having heard it was a total wet nindie, I’d expected not to like this, but was immediately struck by the pacing and the elegance of it. Even when weedyvoice singer started, it made me think more of some of the more sublime moments on JJ72’s debut; involving and evolving, that cascading piano and the occasional drop-into-deep-water splash of bass keep it tightly focussed. It kept me with it so much I was surprised when it stopped, suddenly jilted.
[8]

Jer Fairall: Lushly dramatic, with a genuinely impressive vocal melody that turns and swoops unexpectedly at several points, particularly when it plunges so fully and beautifully into the “I blame you” descent. Yet there is a kind of tasteful reserve to the singer’s performance that keeps me from embracing this as fully I should, like he’s working overtime at putting on his best Antony Hegarty rather than simply allowing himself (and us) to feel the song: keeping it at a cold distance when what is demanded is precisely the opposite.
[6]

Still not as good as this.

[Video][Website]
[5.20]

W.B. Swygart: Alexandra Stan is going to mash your face into pulp and sell it to Burger King. You are going to find it surprisingly difficult to care about this.
[5]

B Michael Payne: Hah, what is this? This sounds like Wesley Willis making “dance” music.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: The value of implacable rubber earworm Europop is always underestimated — and not just by critics. Ask the general population what they think of “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” or “Dragostea Din Tei” and you’ll get the kind of generalized loathing that makes you wonder how they ever got popular in the first place. Me, I’m just waiting for the Pitbull remix that will make me fall in love with it all over again.
[6]

Michaela Drapes: Everything you need to know about why this song is incredible is that it’s charted nearly everywhere in the world in a big way, but hasn’t rated an appearance in the Billboard Hot 100. BTW, if that sax noodle doesn’t make an appearance on every DJ set in the universe for the next two years (I’ll even suffer it used ironically!), I’m going to be extremely disappointed.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: Taken in the context of 2011, where sax breaks are currently the hottest thing, “Mr Saxobeat” is a charming little novelty. But if you’ve spent most of your life devouring tasty European dance pop, it comes across as rather less impressive; it’s better as a novelty out of the blue and into the charts than it is as a quality example of dance-pop. Also, every time that male “yeah” pops into the mix, I keep fearing it’s going to turn into an Enrique Iglesias guest verse.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: Forget Alexandra — I want a remix where the guy sighs out a beat for three minutes.
[6]

Hazel Robinson: The video for this seems to have Alexandra and her girl gang being arrested for including that terrible, sex-up-against-an-abandoned-Woolworths “aw yeah yeah yeah yeah aw aw yeah” male sample in this otherwise pretty great Euro-filter piece. Unfortunately, it takes very little to break the spell on something whose constituent parts are so loosely chucked together.
[4]

Michaelangelo Matos: Stupid and cheerful, just like the turn-of-the-’90s pop-house it recalls. Who said perma-retro was the sole province of the hip?
[6]

Jonathan Bradley: A title like this and a horn part like that deserve to be used in service of “Doop“-grade silliness, but Alexandra Stan just sounds so serious about it all.
[4]

Zach Lyon: Middle school sax players must feel pretty good about themselves right now.
[5]

So remember this next time you think we give country a free pass, eh?

[Video][Website]
[3.55]

Anthony Easton: Can we decree a moratorium on songs that mention tractors? Also, can we discuss the sheer purposelessness of shaking it for the squirrels? Or the awkwardness of rhyming squirrel with girl?
[4]

Michaela Drapes: Oh, no. This was doing so, so well until the chorus. The rest of the song is beyond incredible (I’d totally climb up on the hood of Luke Bryan’s daddy’s tractor and dance to it) — but that chorus is like a lead ballon that totally ruins the rest of the proceedings. How unfortunate.
[1]

Zach Lyon: He isn’t rapping, but he’s a better rapper than Jason Aldean. I really do love his cadence in the verses/bridges, but that doesn’t save the song from its own ill-fitting sleaze, and I worry that Country Girl would seriously hurt herself if she were to actually shake it at the level of force and duration of time Bryan commands.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: The title of the song is more honest than the chorus. I’m sure the catfish swimmin’ down deep in the creek appreciate the sentiment, but come on, dude.
[3]

B Michael Payne: While I can somewhat get behind the song’s sentiment, I also think it’s unpleasantly atavistic. As well, I’m a coastal elite. And I’m always afraid a redneck will shotgun shoot me Easy Rider-style, and it makes me pretty strongly resent any pro-redneck propaganda.
[1]

Sally O’Rourke: Any country song could throw in a few references to honky-tonks and rednecks and call it a day; it takes a true master to also work in catfish and grandma’s yarn. Add in the bridge’s conceit that country girls have the moral imperative to shake it for the harmony of the universe, and I’m starting to wonder if Luke Bryan is the most subversive satirist in country music. Even taken at face value, though, the tautness of the song structure and the crisp production rescue “Country Girl (Shake It for Me)” from the novelty ghetto. And despite its ridiculous lyrics — OK, especially because of its ridiculous lyrics — I can’t listen to it without a big stupid grin on my face. Guitar!
[7]

Chuck Eddy: As tragic as it may be, some musicians have to stoop to music that rocks and swings and has some funk to it, and that people might even want to dance drunk to on Saturday nights. Almost makes me want to boost this song’s points, but I have to be honest — even if country strip-club rock is a new idea, I’m not sure I actually need to hear the stuff. Maybe if I actually went to strip clubs, who knows. Then again, not everybody can be the first Big & Rich album, either.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: We wouldn’t bat an eyelid at a little lustful spoken word at the beginning of a song in any other genre, but we might expect it to have a bit more charge if it was a dance-pop hit or a hip-hop song. As it happens, it’s an interesting novelty to hear a trope underused in country in a song like this, but the song runs out of imagination pretty quickly. Streaks of fiddle and organ give it fantastic colour, and it’s got a pre-chorus to die for, but the song stops dead when the chorus comes in. There’s just nothing there.
[3]

Hazel Robinson: I’ll admit a lot of country sounds the same to me but this is basically the same song that appears every summer, in a very mildly altered guise, about a girl doing it for you in some way whether it’s their jeans or their hair or their, uh, shaking. And did he say “shake it for the catfish swimming down deep in the creek?” Needs a reggaetón remix.
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: This evokes roughly the same feeling as Blake Shelton hitting on 18-year-old Casey Weston on The Voice: Luke Bryan = puke, crying. Wish I could find a thing wrong with the backing track.
[5]

Jonathan Bradley: At least Cowboy Troy seemed like a nice guy.
[3]

Ah Robyn. Men love her, women think she’s a smug bitch.

[Video][Website]
[7.71]

Michelle Myers: Did you ever see that episode of “Mad Men” where Peggy Olsen gets naked with that jerk art director, and he gets a boner and then he calls her the “smuggest bitch in the world?” That turn of phrase sums up my feelings towards Robyn quite nicely.
[5]

Jer Fairall: Robyn bleeds empathy, from the sheer warmth of her melodies to her ability, currently unparalleled among her peers, to wring genuine human feeling from the dramas played out amidst the throb and strobe lights of the dance floor. No surprise, then, that she ends up contributing what might the most compassionate “other woman” song ever written, a feat otherwise unimaginable in the wake of pop’s degradation at the hands of hacks like Dr. Luke and will.i.am. Snipe that she’s the hipster’s dance diva if you like, but its not like we’re getting anything like this from the charts (the North American ones, at least) these days.
[9]

Dan Weiss: I’ve witnessed Robyn’s ascent from feisty indie comeback story to heart-exploding hookmaster with awe. “Call Your Girlfriend” is one of her best even without the context. But the context sure is juicy. Last year’s three-part Body Talk EP extravaganza began with her greatest and least requited hit, “Dancing on My Own” and progressed through the fuckbuddy Rosetta Stone “Hang With Me,” both triumphant in electronic spirit despite their overwhelming postmodern lassitude. In the former, there’s no guy on the table. In the latter, she guards herself for a relationship that sounds more settlement than joyride. Completing the trilogy is “Call Your Girlfriend,” where she wins the guy after all — at the expense of an about-to-be dumped girl who might as well be another Robyn. Putting the sad news in her new prize’s mouth, the line that always gets me is “And it won’t make sense right now/But you’re still her friend.” She sounds a lot less triumphant on this one. When pop is this complex, idols are crowned.
[10]

Iain Mew: Weirdly, the other song this most makes me think of is “Dry Your Eyes” by The Streets — it’s the whole thing of deliberately using clichés presented to people when their relationship has ended in a really affecting way, by emphasising that someone is beyond anywhere where words can help. Except that while that song was platitudes offered to Mike Skinner by a caring but ineffectual friend, this one is platitudes ultimately meant to reach a (as far as we know) completely blameless girl, being dictated by someone she doesn’t know, in a manner akin to someone directing a hostage video while pointing a gun. It’s never quite clear whether the desperation in Robyn’s voice is down to guilt or concern that she might not be obeyed, but it’s a devastating performance and alternating the superficially kind words with revelling in her position of superiority, just makes them sound all the more cruel every time the song kicks up another gear.
[10]

Alfred Soto: As subtle tonally as Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” or The Pretenders’ “Hymn To Her,” Robyn’s tune directs sympathy towards the girlfriend about to get dumped yet manages, thanks to the singer’s hysterical high notes (“Yoooouu just found somebody neeeeww…”), to convey deep anxiety about the kind of relationship the singer presumably wants to start with the guy; he dumped one girl already, what would stop him from dumping Robyn too? A country music scenario if I ever heard one. Longtime producer Ahlund feeds those “you’s” into a sampler, playing with the keys as if it were 1985 and Scritti Politti’s “Absolute” remained the benchmark for conjuring the ineffable.
[9]

Edward Okulicz: Sometimes it feels like Robyn only has to burp and critics will fawn, and it’s not always deserved (i.e. “Fembot” and that awful Diplo one), but here it’s earned so many times over. The tune is as endlessly singable as that of “Dancing On My Own” and the lyrics have the same combination of simplicity and emotional resonance that makes not just Robyn’s best pop, but lots of the best pop of all time. But most of all, it has that one gorgeous moment of emotional punctum: “And now… it’s gonna be me and you” after the second chorus is one of those moments of transcendence that carries the song into world-beating territory. I know she’s basically created a persona which mostly appeals to nerdy boys who overrate their own sense of aesthetic, but man, is she ever good at what she does.
[10]

B Michael Payne: Robyn, more than anyone I can think of, is one of those “critical darlings.” I’m not really sure why, though. Her production is honestly just not as catchy as the work behind Katy Perry, Ke$ha, et al. Her lyrics are not that great. She doesn’t even maintain a constant level of sophistication like her buddies The Knife. What Robyn has going for her is fist-punching chutzpah and an inability to resist busting an awkward move. And, therefore, “Call Your Girlfriend” is one of her best songs. Just enjoy her music. She makes it easy to.
[9]

Anthony Easton: Expansive, epic, disco candy: reminds me of the emotional payload in something like Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” but, you know, a little more genre savvy.
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: Back when the world wanted to blog a Robyn-Katy Perry feud into existence, I wrote that the two weren’t so different. Here’s even better proof: just like Katy with “E.T.,” Robyn takes a gorgeous, sparkle-and-streamers production and makes it nigh-unlistenable. This is a song sung by a complete asshole persuading somebody else to be just as much of an asshole. Sympathy? Someone sympathetic would be staying away from other people’s boyfriends, and instead of luxuriating in her cruelty and giving the track a use, Robyn deploys Robyn! and, in doing so, persuades everybody else to be cool with it. “Dancing on My Own” and “Hang With Me” are just as ebullient without the bitter aftertaste. But hey, she PUNCHES the AIR in an EMPTY ROOM in her VIDEO, so it’s ALL OK!
[5]

Kat Stevens: I’ve mostly given up on Robyn. I feel I am never going to be able to connect to her emotionally, especially when she screws up her face like that, so giving a shit about her Just 17 photostory lovelife is just not going to happen. Nor am I likely to be charmed by her gormless playdough electro stuff like “Fembot”, which sets my teeth on edge. But the existence of “With Every Heartbeat” gives me hope that one day another talented producer will tap into her whineyness and harness it for good. This is not that day.
[2]

Zach Lyon: If it weren’t for that middle eight in “Dancing On My Own,” directly followed by the sound dropping out and that HUGE I-will-never-not-air-drum-to-this drum smash, the song never would’ve clicked for me and I would have trouble listening to it more than once (as it is, it was one of my favorites of the year). “Call Your Girlfriend” is “Dancing On My Own” without the drum fill. Not that the production or song structure was ever the biggest part of her act prior to Body Talk, and this does come off like Robyn2005 more than the others, but the whole track is so flat, all the way through, that I lose interest a minute in. I’m not on board with Robyn being the most sympathetic pop star in the world, either — I think a lot of that actually stems from her fashion sense, her brand, and maybe even her nationality, more than her lyrics — and right here she just sounds immature. Wouldn’t surprise me on a Taylor Swift record; Robyn just sounds like she needs to grow up.
[5]

Pete Baran: Suppose an alien landed in your backyard, and demanded, in the inexplicable alien way that aliens think, that the future of the earth depended on understanding what Robyn was all about. And it gave you four minutes. You could do a lot worse than playing “Call Your Girlfriend,” and then using the 15 seconds left to ask “Any questions?” I’d give us an 80 per cent chance of survival.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: Pop’s Mary Sue does her frowny-face dancing thing over gleaming synths and a pounding four four beat. It’s beautiful and sad in exactly the same way as every other beautiful, sad Robyn song. And, oh yes, it is heartbreaking. “Tell her that the only way her heart will mend/Is when she learns to love again” is a line sung in the third person only as a defense tactic; Robyn’s voice quavers and it’s clear she is familiar enough with the sentiment to know how little comfort it is. But thinking Robyn is actually being nice about this? “Don’t you tell her how I give you something that you never even knew you missed,” she warns her new man. After all, it would be terrible for him to gloat to the old bint about how much better Robyn is, wouldn’t it? Not the briar patch, Br’er Fox!
[9]

Michaela Drapes: After months of intense thought on this subject, I have come to the Occam’s razor-ish conclusion that Robyn never actually intended us to take this song’s lyrics at face value. She’s sneaky like that.
[9]

Remember when all he wanted was total chaos and a holiday home in the east? Well…

[Video][Website]
[7.91]

Anthony Easton: I love this. I cannot even tell you why. It’s swoony, romantic, horribly lovely: sort of Pet Shop Boys doing a soundtrack to a reboot of Brideshead Revisited, but without the edge. That should sound horrible, but it’s amazing and wonderful and unjustifiable.
[10]

W.B. Swygart: Oh fuck. How dare you hit my buttons this squarely, you cunt. You fucker. Making me think about how “The Whole of the Moon” is awesome just for its fucking size, which is fine, because it’s enormous. You utter shit, Patrick. You fucking nob-end. I want to hug somebody and waltz slowly across floorboards and celebrate the music of my childhood – Semisonic, the Connells, “Linger” and absolutely no other song by the Cranberries. Bellow this fucking chorus. Be this happy. Be this relieved. Be this sure. Feel this comfortable. This song is wonderful even if I think the first time I heard it was on the in-store radio at the supermarket, which, as with all songs on said medium, made me feel a bit stabby. Now, tonight, I’m delighted that someone else gets it too, and I feel like putting this song on headphones and crying while listening to it on public transport. You fucking bastard.
[8]

Michaela Drapes: Patrick Wolf previously painted unbridled lust and growing pains and anger and heartbreak with the boldest brushes possible; it shouldn’t be so mind-boggling that he’s pulled the grandest weapons out of his arsenal to sing about the restorative powers of true love. In the opening moments of the song, a few seconds of slightly sinister synths echo previous angst but quickly slip away to a twining, organic arrangement of New Romantic-ish bombastic strings, sprightly guitars, and splashy drums. The thing that makes me happiest here, though, is that Wolf is finally taking his voice — that massive and wonderful thing –out for a showoff-y run spanning husky whispers to soaring, unreal yawps. I realize that all the sappy lyrics might make those allergic to sentimentality mightily ill, but I am completely helpless against the charms of this new, happy version of Wolf — and for his sake, I hope it lasts.
[10]

Edward Okulicz: The piano melody could basically be ABBA, which is why Patrick Wolf’s unique tremble of a voice is initially slightly jarring on top of it. But his is a rich emotional palate; when he sings he loves something, his voice quivers a little more over the words. He also breaks into a surer croon on the magnificently soaring chorus. And not one piece of the arrangement is gratuitous or superfluous – the strings in particular are sweet, not saccharine. In fact, where The Magic Position seemed forced on its happier numbers, here Wolf wears the contentment well. Lupercalia is stuffed full of songs whose one-two punches of emotion can catch you off-guard, and this is its most gorgeous.
[9]

B Michael Payne: Patrick Wolf has a proper single? Good for him! “House” is perfectly pleasant. Its very first opening moments recall Madonna’s “Express Yourself,” which tuned my expectations in such a way as for them to be defied. This is not a pop banger. It is a perfectly fine, slightly MOR, single. While I can’t really place it among Wolf’s best songs, it may serve to get more fans into the Patrick Wolf camp.
[6]

Alfred Soto: After years of earnest electro tinkle. Wolf swipes an ABBA piano line and records a full-throated ballad. Other than the vocal similarities to the guy from OMD attempting Luther’s version of “A House is Not a Home,” he sounds fetching.
[7]

Michaelangelo Matos: I bought a ticket to the world, but now I’ve come back again. (Hi, guys!)
[5]

Zach Lyon: I like this for its personality more than its sound or musicality, strictly as a distillation of comfort, peace (obv) and what sounds like a very genuine love.
[7]

Iain Mew: Patrick has always had a way with writing grand, sweeping songs which hit with an elemental force but are still believably intimate and personal. For his second go on a major label he’s dropped some of the more ornate detailing and written some comparably straightforward love songs, but this could still be no one else. There’s a great deal of sophistication and thought in to its hymn to the possibilities brought about by the security of a relationship, but more important is the heart-on-sleeve urgency with which he sings it: never has contented domesticity sounded so bloody exciting.
[9]

Jonathan Bogart: Lovely, galloping, straining to soar but earthbound in the best possible sense (earth is really great yo). I’m almost ashamed that I just don’t get any emotion from it; its pleasures are strictly sonic, strictly understood.
[6]

Alex Ostroff: I’ll admit at the outset that it is completely impossible for me to be remotely objective about Patrick Wolf. His music is interwoven with the past seven years of my life, having acted as balm, inspiration, steel and spine at various points in time. The feral teenager of uncertain and volatile desires of Lycanthropy was everything I wouldn’t or couldn’t dare to be in high school; the pastoral static electricity of Wind in the Wires was a calm escape from the harsh realities of my parents’ divorce; and the (apologies, Patrick) flamboyant and ambiguously queer pop of The Magic Position gave me an early role model when preparing to come out. Even my attempts to sort through my post-closet post-graduation identity were soundtracked by his frustration and depression on The Bachelor. All of which is to say that some people may listen to “House” and hear Radio 2 marmite, deliberately designed for contentment and pleasantness and mothers and Tesco, and some might hear selling out and growing up and abandoning his roots. But I hear sweeping strings (impeccably arranged, as always), and the resolution of a journey that started with Lycanthropy. Our hero has run run run as fast as he can with his bedroom-built theremin, away from home, school, sexuality, and the Childcatcher. He’s run to Paris to start it all again, to lighthouses in search of identity, to cut his penis off and let no foot mark his ground. He’s wandered through the British countryside with a green tent and a violin, gotten lost and enchanted with platonic artistic loves in secret gardens, lost himself in danger and dead meat in Los Angeles, Tokyo, Berlin. And now, finally, he has ventured back to the city, full circle, having learned how to battle and how to be conquered, and finally decides to lay down his weapons in armistice, to look to the future and mark time and ground together with someone else, to build houses and homes.
[10]

We live in a lovely world where Girls Aloud and Slipknot fit within the same parenthesis…

[Video][Website]
[6.60]

W.B. Swygart: This is fucking magic. It sounds like playing squash inside a tetrahedron – everything bounces back but never quite at the angle you’re expecting. It’s hook upon hook upon hook – remember how that was the thing in pop at some point, how it’d be bamboozling you with all the great ideas at once so you’d have to sit down and pick them all out and it felt tremendous to do this (I’m possibly solely thinking of Girls Aloud’s “Biology” – and Slipknot’s “Duality” – rather than this being an actual movement or anything)? Well, this is that. Celia ain’t in love, she’s in la-la-la-love. It stutters and glitches everywhere, with surprises and kinks at every turn. It’s sort of like “Beat of My Drum” in a sense, cos when it gets its claws in it pretty much swallows you whole, and when it ends you’re a bit surprised everything’s back to normal. It’s bloody great.
[9]

Hazel Robinson: Oh, this is SPIFFING! I thought it might be slightly cheap eurotrance in the style of Inna; it is slightly cheap and almost certainly eurosomething, Balearic guitars and plucky little filter beat but when you get those in the right combination it’s pure bliss. It’s even got a little middle eight breakdown and there’s an odd hoedown element bubbling under all the way through; sort of like what the Star Wars cantina band would make if commissioned to write for Eurovision.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: I’d love to dance to this, god, I’d love to find somewhere outside of Romania that plays this, even though when I tried in my living room it was so deceptively fast. The beats skitter and Celia commands above them even though her voice is barely above a breathy coo. The overall effect is effortlessly kinetic.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: I love the pitter-patter staccato that overtakes Celia’s voice and the way the beat sounds like a fritzing ice maker playing a folk dance. Then she glides cirrus-smooth high above it all, and it’s impossibly gorgeous.
[8]

Iain Mew: Not sure that the stuttering motif needs to be quite so all over this, but the intricate beat holds it all together even though the ideas start to become a bit of a pile-up and her “l-l-lovely” is just that.
[7]

B Michael Payne: When you say “computer music,” some brand of IDM or techno music may come to mind. But this song sounds like the coming robot rebellion. I can picture it blaring from speakers as the computers and machines stomp over the skulls of the fallen humans.
[2]

Michaela Drapes: A charming pop confection, the kind that can only come out of the wilds of Eastern Europe. The folksy guitar (or is that a kobza?), in particular, is really, really well-used in the mix. I honestly don’t care who’s singing, or what about — I just want to dance, which is obviously the point. And, I admit, this has made me want to dig deeper into producer Costi Ionita’s back catalog — please excuse me if I listen to nothing but Balkan pop for the next few weeks.
[6]

Michaelangelo Matos: I’m not much of a fan of Spanish guitar, live or processed, but I’ll take the latter treatment when it’s attached to a rather fetchingly disembodied pop-club tune. Emphasis on tune, one that’s cut and pasted as much as the six-string.
[7]

Zach Lyon: This requires a good speaker system. Wasn’t until I put it on in my car that I realized how utterly MASSIVE it sounds. It’s like a dance recital featuring elephants and little Spanish-guitar-playing mice. Or something.
[7]

Alex Ostroff: Should I assume that “D-D-Down” has the same baffling sort of appeal as “We No Speak Americano” did, except this time with bonus lyrics and flamenco guitar Nintendo fusion?
[4]

The Queen of the Jukebox’s crown slips ever so slightly…

[Video][Website]
[6.36]

Al Shipley: I always felt like Swift’s attempts at folksy girl next door narratives felt xeroxed from cheesy rom coms, so it’s nice of her to spell it out by cribbing a title from a Rob Reiner flick (and not even one of the good ones — minor Reiner!). And don’t even get me started on those spoken word announcements.
[3]

Pete Baran: There is something off here, it should work well, another Taylor Swift relationship fumbling country rocker. She can shit this stuff out in her sleep (she shouldn’t, but I reckon she can). And yet I am starting to worry if she is protesting too much; her made-up tragedies lose their lustre particularly over the relentlessly upbeat backing. But then I realise the real problem. Never ever name your songs over failed Rob Reiner films, particularly ones where Bruce Willis tries to do a bit of acting.
[5]

Isabel Cole: Vocals that are sweet without being simpering race through a melody that (with the exception of a dull middle eight) twists and settles in all the right places, while a few key inflections — the sardonic squeak on “lucky,” the plaintive fade on “should’ve held me,” the pleading catch on “pretending” — add a layer of further interest to a solid piece of high-energy pop. If I liked all Taylor Swift songs this much, I’d be a Taylor Swift fan.
[9]

Edward Okulicz: It wasn’t what I was expecting, but Taylor Swift has managed to put out the best Veronicas single ever. The chorus is as good an example of power pop as you’re likely to hear on the radio. As good as that is, maybe that’s all it is – as a story it lacks the wallop of “You Belong To Me” or “Back To December” – but her impish Shania-esque asides see her through. Oh and it’s a quality tune as well; catchy, propulsive and delivered with the charm that’s endeared her to country, pop, Disney – any audience you can name, really. Still, the girl’s lucky she’s not at college and being graded on a curve.
[8]

Alfred Soto: The only song on Speak Now with this inexorable a chorus is “Mean,” and this song rivals it for pathos. The way in which it apes a late nineties Mutt Lange-helmed production like The Corrs’ “Breathless” makes sense: its polyurethane coating protects the heart and brain. I knocked it down a notch because the verses are just okay.
[7]

Chuck Eddy: When Speak Now came out, I unquestionably would have taken “Mean” over this, no contest. But now that they’ve both been competing for airplay minutes over the past couple months, I’m not so certain. “Mean” clearly has a way more interesting lyric — in fact, the song here is all but non-existent; it communicates barely anything. But where “Mean”‘s music is as pat country-so-what as anything on the album (at first I just thought of it as Taylor’s “Miranda Lambert song”), “The Story Of Us” has that chorus, with its impossibly catchy/pretty melodic twists that make me wonder where or how Taylor could possibly have come up with them, the way Greil Marcus used to wonder about “Rent” by the Pet Shop Boys. And in fact, just like I thought from the beginning, “The Story Of Us” still sounds to me like nothing but a chorus — the verses just bide time between. So I was probably right that “Mean” is the greater track. But I might actually change stations on this less.
[8]

Michaela Drapes: I love how Taylor Swift songs — the production, the too-clever lyrics, her vocal stylings — bludgeon the listener. But, you know, it’s an awesome bludgeoning; I almost always unequivocally submit to it. That being said, the breakneck speed at which this song progresses gets superfluous and exhausting around time the last chorus begins at the 3:30 mark, and I find myself wishing, for all the ecstatic release of the coda, that she’d just wrap it up already.
[6]

B Michael Payne: The song is the storytelling equivalent of an episode of How I Met Your Mother, but that may be more a condemnation of CBS’s pablum than this song. Actually, the song’s focus on the way tiny miscommunications can erupt into cacophonous misfortune is more reminiscent of Seinfeld than any other TV show. And of course, that may say more about what it means to be an adult (popularly conceived) than about Swift’s music, itself. The two are related, though. What I find pernicious about Swift’s music (exemplified by “Story of Us,” of course) is how it’s a narcissistic tidal wave of self-regard. Romeo and Juliet has a body count: It’s a tragedy. Lacking the courage to flirt with your crush is not a tragedy. I simply disdain everything about this song. Its music has the confidence of catchiness without any of its other positive qualities. Its lyrics should bear the label “Now with 50% more cliche!” Even the video, a visual mashup of Gossip Girl and Harry Potter, plays down to the lowest common without any of its attendant (and still repulsive) populist tendencies. It’s just a cheap ploy to get the world to root along with her own triumphalist march over the hearts and minds of those young or foolish enough to indulge her.
[0]

Zach Lyon: This is the point where I admit to officially being tired with Taylor’s lack of lyrical breadth. This reads like a thesis statement for a good 90% of the songs she’s already written, and it certainly doesn’t take us anywhere we haven’t been for three albums. While I love Speak Now‘s directness and after-the-fact confrontational spark, I’m going to have serious problems with the next album if it doesn’t start to branch out more (which means I’m going to have problems with the next album). But this doesn’t make “The Story of Us” a bad track; it sounds exactly like a wonderful track stuck in a world with very little freedom. The lack of country sound isn’t a problem when it’s replaced with a very mid-80s mix of new wave and… J. Geils? and just a shit-ton of energy. Taylor is admirable in that she devotes herself to the track completely, performing it without a trace of “performance,” which is really the highlight of any good Swift track. But still: COME ON.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: Even though Swift has a playbook more enviable than most any singer-songwriter working today, she calls a few audibles on “The Story of Us” — and, no, I don’t mean the inter-verse ad libs, which are forced here to work as connective tissue. Extended metaphor and intertextuality are classic Taylor, but she’s used similar framing devices more naturally on tunes like “Love Story” or “Our Song.” Here, the storybook conceit seems forced. It’s enough to almost distract from the telling observations Swift includes in her songs as a matter of course. She is a visual writer, and “See me nervously pulling at my clothes and trying to look busy” exemplifies her ability to escape her own head and capture the emotional tenor of a scene as if she were filming it rather than experiencing it. “I’m standing alone in a crowded room” is beginner level paradox, but “I’m dying to know is it killing you like it’s killing me?” is more devastating than the pop-rock chug accompanying it is willing to allow. As compact, concise and charming as this tune is, Swift’s best songs make room for her ideas to occupy center stage. Here, they exist as asides.
[8]

Alex Ostroff: I’m genuinely shocked that it took this long for ‘The Story of Us’ to get released as a single, because when I first gave Speak Now a spin, it was the one song that immediately jumped out as the hit. More pop than even ‘You Belong With Me’, the only touches of country remaining are the quiet occasional strums of mandolin. It’s nothing we haven’t seen from Taylor before: structured narrative, intratextual album references (sparks fly!), the final chorus meaningful rephrasing, the Shakira-esque awkward similes (held your pride like you should have held me), the bridge as song highlight. But then suddenly ‘The Story of Us’ is all guitar riffs and disco drumbeat, and Taylor is letting loose with a infectious chorus, belting cliche and elevating it to pop glory, and nothing feels more emotionally true than “We’re standing alone in a crowded room and you’re not speaking.” As a bibliophile, I approve of the titular metaphor; it bobs and weaves and gets muddled as college students make out in the stacks, ex-lovers land on different pages, and Taylor tosses her hair in the middle of libraries, but when she insistently exclaims “Next chapter!” I can’t help but smile. (Plus, Taylor has never looked better than she does in this video, the moment where she’s dancing and fixing her hair is hilarious, and the dude drumming along to the song in the middle of study hall is completely adorable.)
[9]

Ever wondered where Internet memes go to die?

[Video][Website]
[5.07]

Katherine St Asaph: Review without the video: Real nice sound, but no surprise from a Katy Perry track; real nice sax, but no Clarence; real ni– no, “epic fail” doesn’t get a compliment. Real edgy debauchery, but no fun when your credit’s wrecked from those maxed-out cards, your criminal record’s wrecked from those warrants, and your mind’s wrecked by trying to figure out what you did or didn’t do last night because the only witness you know of is a townie stranger named Julio whose car, a partygoer finally says, you entered with someone else who won’t talk to you. Review with the video: Fuck you, Katy Perry, and fuck your circus-freak geek characters. The only way to regain your morality is to delete and burn every hypocritical copy of “Firework” that exists in the universe. Or at least yank it off Vevo, like your pal Rebecca Black did. No? Thought not.
[3]

Jonathan Bogart: This is a rating for the song, which was my second-favorite off Teenage Dream way back in August and remains the second-best song Perry’s ever done. The video is like totally whatever (nerdface minstrelsy as practiced by the rich, beautiful, and famous is always going to be problematic), but the song, with its bouncy, swinging guitar strums and Ke$ha-lite proclamations of party-as-hedonistic-ritual, is glorious. And with all respect to the Big Man, the sax solo on “T.G.I.F.” is way more liberational, transcendant, and Fun™ than on “Edge of Glory.” Or maybe that’s just my old no-wave-loving soul peeking through; there haven’t been nearly enough James Chance homages in the Top Ten lately.
[8]

Michelle Myers: In which Katy Perry discusses a wild night of partying in such vague and trite terms that you wonder if she’s ever been to a party in her entire life. I liked this song (marginally) better when it was called “Waking Up In Vegas.” At least that had some lyrical specificity.
[2]

Zach Lyon: Think I need a ginger ale. That was such an epic fail. Think I need a ginger ale. That was such an epic fail. Think I need a ginger ale. That was such an epic fail. Think I need a ginger ale. That was such an epic fail. Think I need a ginger ale. That was such an epic fail. Think I need a ginger ale. That was such an epic fail. Think I need a ginger ale. That was such an epic fail. Think I need a ginger ale. That was such an epic fail. Think I need a ginger ale. That was such an epic fail. Think I need a ginger ale. That was such an epic fail. Think I need a ginger ale. That was such an epic fail. Think I need a ginger ale. That was such an epic fail. Think I need a ginger ale. That was such an epic fail. Think I need a ginger ale. That was such an epic fail. Think I need a ginger ale. That was such an epic fail. Think I need a ginger ale. That was such an epic fail. Katy Perry, I’m only going to say this once: when you overenunciate every single word, that means people actually have to listen to what you’re saying.
[1]

Dan Weiss: Like hashtag rap or Autotune, once you’ve adjusted to a world where the phrase “epic fail” marks everyday songwriting, it’s not so bad. Like when our good-enough hedonistic pop queen rhymes it with “Think I need a ginger ale.” But when she mumbles the lazy-not-(pr)evocative “Yeah I think we broke the law,” I demand to see the charges.
[6]

Michaela Drapes: I think I’ll always find this song endearing for rhyming ginger ale with epic fail. Yes, binge drinking is terrible, and people who party on Fridays are amateurs, but how can you possibly resist this ridiculous catalog of bad behavior when it’s so charmingly executed?
[8]

Anthony Easton: The never-ending sea of referents and ironic kitsch is a bait and switch in a song that seems more desperate than pleasurable.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: It’s impressive how, in keeping with Perry’s songwriting persona of being the sort of CRAZY girl who will do the first thing that comes into her head, she maintains consistency by throwing onto paper the first lyrics that come into her head. The woman is all fearless impulse, a wayward pleasure-seeker who doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing, what she’s saying, what she’s drinking and little things like narrative consistency – did you really have a ménage à trois and forget about kissing, Katy? – don’t bother her. Nor me, but I don’t need to hear the brain-dead “T.G.I.F.” bit or that awful plinky bass sound again, thanks.
[6]

Jer Fairall: The video is admittedly a hoot, or maybe I’m just relieved that its not another “Firework” or “E.T.”-grade atrocity, and the song itself is similarly elevated by severely diminished expectations. Which is to say that this is more easy-to-ignore bad rather than “ow, my freaking ears!” bad, cookie-cutter even by commercial pop standards, but just as easily digested and not nauseating if taken in tiny bites. But please don’t mistake this for progress.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Yet another song in which Perry is either the passive agent for someone else’s fantasy or refuses to accept responsibility, and her voice stinks like cigarette butts in warm beer.
[2]

B Michael Payne: “Last Friday Night” is like a feel-good version of every Ke$ha song, which makes it 100% awesome. Not really paying attention to the album’s singles release schedule, I can’t believe this song hasn’t been out for months (years?). It’s one of my favorite on the album, even if it continues to capitalize on the gross sexualization of Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl.” Withholding it until now also proved prescient, since it gets to enter into the Summer of Sax series of singles.
[10]

Matthew Harris: I’m still waiting for an apology from Katy for “UR So Gay,” so until then, I’m never going to look forward to one of her songs. Like “Teenage Dream,” everything starts out well in “TGIF” with its nice, organic guitar strum and hiccupy bass. Dr Luke and Co. are always careful to make you feel the weight and flick of the strings, and that love for detail tickles some delicate part of my reptile brain. But for all of the pop voltage that Luke commands, “TGIF” has the same sort of chorus-that-feels-like-a-pre-chorus that always makes me zone out on the treadmill when my gym plays “Teenage Dream.” I blame Perry, mostly. Her voice is plenty identifiable, but I’ve never been involuntarily disarmed by her ability to show hurt or rush risks. And Perry’s committee-written lyrics often seems to be describing places that market research has mathematically determined are “cool” to males and females aged 18-24 (“Epic fail,” “Ménage à trois,” seriously?). I know giddily describing nothing is pop music’s birthright. But Perry, baby, I want you to have a little more attitude doing it, gosh dammit.
[4]

Alex Ostroff: “Last Friday Night” is one of the handful of Teenage Dream‘s irritatingly catchy tracks that end up on the side of ‘catchy’ rather than ‘irritating’, but it doesn’t have the surprising funk of “California Gurls” or the unstoppable chorus of the title track. What it does have in its favour is one of Katy’s least awkward vocal turns in recent memory, with phrasing that nearly manages to convey an understanding of the song’s plot. Unfortunately, it also tries to rhyme “dark” with “ménage à trois,” and uses the phrase “EPIC FAIL!” Plus, after “I Gotta Feeling,” I harbour vague resentment towards any song that attempts to ensure its ubiquity in clubs and house parties by constantly repeating days of the week. Plus, I honestly think I like Rebecca Black’s “Friday” more.
[5]

Jonathan Bradley: I don’t particularly believe Katy Perry is supposed to be a real woman; her persona is better understood as our collective propensity for idiocy made corporeal. So! “T.G.I.F.!” spouts our drunken id, a corny blathered catchphrase that might also be the name of the chain restaurant in which this stupidity starts. It is the weekend, we are like “So what I’m drunk?” and we sha’n’t be judged, for tonight we have Perry as our patron saint, reassuring us that neither responsibility, nor self-respect, nor even simple human decency are reason to button ourselves down. Damn those who would say pop should be enriching. Tonight, we will not allow the world to persuade us that pleasure is wrong, even if that pleasure involves five-minutes-past-its-use-by-date Internet slang. Perry is our pink glitter golem into which we can pour our dumbest selves, an Übermensch of ill-advised behaviors, a dazed, grinning reminder that even when we are at our most unforgivably indulgent, we will regain sense and sobriety. Katy Perry, on the other hand, will be Katy Perry forever.
[8]

Hazel Robinson: With this on heavy rotation on the music channels, I found myself watching it five times yesterday morning and every fucking time I thought “Oh, you know what, Katy Perry’s quite fun, isn’t she? I’d probably go on a night out with her. Oh look, Rebecca Black — aw.” And then it would get to the “T.G.I.F.” and that new friend you’d made would turn out to be a total fucking moron.
[5]