As if Kele would have been able to sing the Republica song properly, anyway.

[Video][Website]
[4.90]

Jonathan Bogart: Not a Republica cover, worse luck.
[4]

B Michael Payne: I’d like to hear a particularly drunk person sing this at the end of a long karaoke session. That’s literally the only context in which I ever want to hear this song.
[1]

Michaela Drapes: Yes, yes, yes. I’m so glad to see Kele continuing to embrace his inevitable career path as a house diva with Solveig rather than icky old Tiesto. “Tonight I’m a different guy, forget about the things you know…” indeed. This is totally pressing the same erogenous zone in my brain that the entirety of Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Welcome to the Pleasuredome does. Take that as you will; this is definitely not a bad thing.
[8]

Pete Baran: Hold on Martin. Are you just nicking Coldplay’s “Clocks” as your backing?. Are we really in Jason Derulo territory here? OK, if “Clocks” is your “Show Me Love,” then your “Banana Boat Song” appears to be Republica’s “Ready To Go”. Thus we appear to have some bastard eurodisco version of Sky’s Soccer Saturday with a touch more emo. It would soundtrack the return of Andy Gray and Richard Keys if they were forced to have a sex change to make up for their sexist remarks, as distastefully fascinating as that sounds, I guess.
[5]

Anthony Easton: How ironic is this?
[5]

Edward Okulicz: Solveig’s got it all worked out – take elements you’re familiar with from other songs, chuck it into a sporting context via its video, and get a little cred with a cool singer. It’s been good for a massive hit before, and it will be again. But compared to “Hello”, the song is worse and it evokes not even a single feeling of excitement or needing to go anywhere, or do anything. Other than find a more thrilling single, natch.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: Digital “Clocks” with some guy shouting over it, as opposed to digital schlock with some girl squeeing over it. At this point Solveig’d probably do just as well by singing over the track himself like the other ambitious/delusional producers.
[5]

Zach Lyon: I could stick around, set the tone, I don’t know, hello. Doesn’t really mean that I’m into you, and I knew you were ready, hello. (Tonight.) I’m a different guy to enjoy the party, don’t get too excited I can see you coming whole (hey). Yeah I think you’re cute but really, yes or no? I just came to sayDY TO GOOOOO…
[4]

Sally O’Rourke: I understand why Martin Solveig is a bit of a punching bag: the English 101 non-lyrics, the transparent song construction (here comes the slow part!), his ambition to become your granny’s favorite dance producer. But I find Solveig’s goofy energy and eagerness to entertain kind of winning, and “Ready 2 Go” is the most purely joyous thing I’ve heard in weeks. A good share of the credit goes to Kele for turning endless repetitions of “I’m ready to go / if you say so” into a power anthem, but it’s Solveig’s house party beats and Numan-on-ecstasy synths that really boost the serotonin.
[8]

Hazel Robinson: I suppose it was inevitable that when the 80s finished being back the 90s would step into the void.
[5]

We like a bit of funky, brainy electropop, don’t we?

[Video][Website]
[6.86]

Anthony Easton: Dancing to forget, dancing as maybe an act of mourning, dancing to full and complete exhaustion, is this even dance–carefully constructed, beautifully repeating on itself, coiling and uncoiling, i understand the ripple, but not sure where the banana is.
[8]

Jer Fairall: I usually enjoy Junior Boys albums, though they tend to be so uniform that listening to them feels less like a collection of songs than a continuous mix that varies slightly every five minutes or so. The idea of a nine-minute Junior Boys single, then, hovers somewhere between redundant and pointless in that the only dissonance the listener may experience is when the song ends and more Junior Boys music fails to follow. “Banana Ripple” never makes its length noticeable, nor does it ever build to anything epic or expansive, rather it just does what Junior Boys do frequently and do well: pristine, downtempo grooves, austere synth blips and bloops, vocals tasteful and restrained enough to never upset the beguiling atmosphere of the music. I’m tempted to downgrade this out of spite for the fact that it really leaves me with nothing much else to say than “if you like Junior Boys, you’ll like this” but I do, so I do.
[7]

Alfred Soto: As I get older and my wimpophobia gets fierce enough to resist treatment, I work harder to appreciate acts like Junior Boys. The suppleness of their electronics serves a rather miserabilist ethos, and Jeremy Greenspan’s breathy tenor makes sure we don’t forget it; he sings as if frozen in astonishment, at what who can say. Nine minutes is too long for anyone to emote, but at least his castrati yelps evince a subversion they’d heretofore avoided.
[6]

Michaela Drapes: It takes serious cajones to release a single nine minutes long (even on the dance charts, you know?); the last one I can recall that came close was Death Cab for Cutie’s egomaniacal “I Will Possess You Heart” (a soul-sucking 8:25). Luckily, Junior Boys are one of the only acts, outside of LCD Soundsystem, maybe, that can pull off this advanced level of epic, brainy electropop (sorry, but what do you call this?), deftly shifting the narrative along its wavy path to a charming denouement. Look, when it’s all said and done, I’m one of those people for whom Junior Boys can do no wrong, and they absolutely do not disappoint here.
[9]

Jonathan Bradley: More vibrant than one can reasonably expect from this rather buttoned-down band, and the song even works up a Phoenix-like lope over its nine-minute length.
[6]

Matthew Harris: As “In the Morning” feels ever more menacingly perfect every time I cue it up on my iTunes, I want to like this. But I have to admit that the song’s elements, a riff potpourri pulled from deep vinyl collections, never really gel.
[5]

Zach Lyon: I remember reading somewhere, likely from a contemptuous fan, that Junior Boys make their singles so damn accessible compared to deeper album cuts that they may as well come from a different band. (The subtext was “fucking sell-outs.”) Well, I’m the audience for those ones, and I wish they’d quit it with the boring songs the fans consider authentic so I could give a damn about their albums. And it’s strictly relative that a nine-minute song is considered more accessible than the rest, but here we are. “Banana Ripple” isn’t as perfect as “In The Morning” and I’m not going to revisit it too often, but it isn’t lacking either. You get the sense that they wrote it without a plan, beginning to end, and kept realizing that the song wasn’t over. And it’s a bit thin musically, but it’s also a showcase for their always-evident talent for vocal melody.
[7]

Does exactly what it says it’s gonna do, pleasingly.

[Video][Website]
[6.86]

Pete Baran: So this is all about that fuzzy bass and slow build, right?
[8]

Chuck Eddy: The indie world as usual is too ridiculously behind the curve on its own damn music to ever realize it, but this band peaked way back in 2004 (on Revival Of The Shittest and their self-titled album to be exact), back when they sounded — at their very intermittent best — like some oil-barrel-banged poly-percussive cross between Chrome, the Pop Group, and Einsturzende Neubauten fronted by a young Yoko Ono. Near as my ears can tell, they’re now more some sterile art-collage dance outfit with a performance-art Bjork imitator attempting to sound cutesy and/or pornographic on top. Okay, maybe that’s not all that remarkable a change, given they’ve had seven years to devolve. This mess isn’t entirely without energy. But it doesn’t exactly feel like an exciting portent of music’s future, either.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Not terrible, but not frightening like early GGD; it’s closer to eccentric. These days Lizzi Bougatsos is closer to Bjork than Yoko or Lora Logic. Progress?
[5]

Britt Julious: If you love GGD (I mean really love them, not just admiring their last album’s poppier moments), then you’re certain to love this perfect combination of a decade’s worth of weird tricks. Gang Gang Dance’s most interesting work has often been danceable, a sure contrast to their past psychedelic or even (and I hate this term) freak-folk origins. Lizzy Bougatsos’ squeal can sound so damn good.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: My god, it’s the Top Gear soundtrack combined with Knifery, a bizarre female vocalist and some euphoric synth scraps toward the end that can easily be disregarded. Someone out there has an imagination I covet.
[7]

Michaela Drapes: When a song like “MindKilla” comes along, I rejoice, because we’re all going to sound ridiculous when we try to describe what’s going on here. Sure, there’s that garage-y/grime-y/dubstepp-y/jungle-y beat, but I defy you to explain the rest with any terminology that we currently have at our disposal. Processed vocals, sure. Glitchy things, yes. Noise moments, always – this is Gang Gang Dance, after all. The power-down noise, perfect. I suppose I never thought that out of all the dreaded ca. 2002 NYC “hipster” bands, Gang Gang Dance would come the furthest, churning out slick dance tunes a decade trafficking in almost unlistenable, semi-pretentious noise.
[9]

Matthew Harris: This should be as pleasurable as a slice of slippery cheese pizza and a frosty cream soda for me. It has everything I love: weird lady vocalists, synths squelching out irritating sounds, a fast beat that kicks your knees up. As Bougatsos yelps through the song, it sounds like she’s laughing at me: “Mindkilla” is like a high school horror movie that’s all pigsblood and no redemption.
[6]

80s soundtrack soft-rock revival starts (and probably ends) right here!

[Video][Website]
[5.88]

Anthony Easton: I never got Bon Iver until Kanye, and I never got Calgary, though I have spent weeks off and on there, once or twice a year since I was born. Less now that I live in Toronto, but I went last year, and will go again next year. Calgary is a lot like Dallas — lots of oil money, lots of flash and bang, not a lot of culture, and intensely lonely. I don’t think that I have ever had a good time in Calgary, only ever got laid by boys I brought down with me. So we get this song, processed to pieces, not quite looking or sounding like the previous Bon Iver and it’s intensely, heartbreakingly lonely — but lonely not because it reminds me of some western culture’s nostalgic attempts to reclaim “our western heritage” (as the statue in the airport tells us to do) but because there is no place to break into it. The song is as hermetic as the city.
[9]

Kat Stevens: Pleasant, floaty, unmemorable. That’s not going to cut it in this age of short attention spans and 140 characters! What dude needs to do is punt himself out on a car advert or a sponsorship deal or something… you know, like that Moby fellow. To make slogan writing easier, perhaps Bon Iver could be the face of UK Bonving?
[5]

Alfred Soto: Limpid melancholy sung through a tremulous larynx brings out the Khmer Rouge in me, but this sad sack’s latest has some charms: the opening synth line evoking the Pet Shop Boys’ “Being Boring,” and the tempo change and ugly guitar in the last half bring the reality his platonic moaning too often avoids.
[6]

Michelle Myers: I actually prefer Justin Vernon’s wishy-washy falsetto when it is buried in layers of 1980s soft-rock sounds.
[8]

Jer Fairall: Can we now start calling 2011 “The Year Soft Rock Broke?” When Dan Bejar indulges in this kind of pastel haze, though, it is like exactly that: an indulgence of an artist who’ll be on to the next thing the moment his erratic muse takes him elsewhere. Justin Vernon plays it far more straight-faced yet the effect is far more amusing. For an artist who built his credibility though a 60s-style back-to-the-earth hippie naturalism to now dabble in 80s-style studio-honed schmaltz feels like a sly acknowledgement of the route that so many of the surviving baby boomer rock idols took through the latter decade, though I doubt that Vernon had any such satirical intent in mind.
[5]

Michaela Drapes: The frustrating thing about Justin Vernon is that he’s a pretty good songwriter, a compelling performer, and an obviously smart guy — but I think he’s gotten a bit lost in a fog of nostalgia lately. Look, if I wanted to listen to Coldplay (Travis?) songs done through a Peter Cetera/Steve Winwood/Phil Collins/Bruce Hornsby filter, I would. But the fact is, I just don’t. I’m sure this is charming for people who didn’t live through mid/late 80’s big production mainstream pop the first time around. And as much as I loved that (I did! I really did!) — I can’t help but think: Ugh, too soon!
[3]

Sally O’Rourke: Starts off like Enya without the Celtic mysticism, then turns into Peter Gabriel without the hooks.
[4]

Jonathan Bradley: Justin Vernon’s new adventures in hi-fi have blacked out the stretches of empty space he used to such excellent effect on For Emma, Forever Ago, but the keys he’s substituted have an airy beauty of their own. Rather than create thatch against which his mellifluous voice can stand in contrast, Vernon now allows his arrangements to enrich his vocal, and vice-versa. This approach risks eroding interesting ideas into formless foam, but “Calgary” mostly resists that fate, though its ethereal wash lacks the unexpected brutality of his best songs. The nearest it comes to transcendence is when Vernon works himself up to a scribbled-over tantrum on the lines “It’s storming on the lake/Little waves our bodies break.” He’s been known to make such vagaries seem like they mean much more.
[7]

What, no “laborious” jokes? For shame.

[Video][Website]
[3.43]

Jer Fairall: If you say so.
[3]

Michaela Drapes: There’s always something in The Saturdays’ songs that make me cringe — from the weird sample of “Situation” on “If This Is Love” to the hideous cover of “Just Can’t Get Enough” to, well “my resume says I’m a bad girl.” This is lowest common denominator pop of the very worst sort: too remarkably bad to be easily forgotten, yet not rankly offensive or smart or charming enough to be great. Can’t they just, like, go away already?
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: “I’m a bad girl” is not an appropriate statement for a resume. The Saturdays should at least bullet-point it or list specific ways in which they’ve been bad girls, like public indecency inside a streetlight or cribbing from Ke$ha.
[3]

Iain Mew: “My résumé says I’m a bad girl,” they sing, and suddenly I realise what all their claims of outrageous outlawdom remind me of. They’re just like candidates on The Apprentice if they were competing for some kind of dancefloor management position, spouting all of the necessary received buzzwords but sounding like they’re barely even convincing themselves. Still, it’s tryhard in a fairly entertaining manner.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: I like the arpeggiated up-and-down-the-scale synth line, I like the faux-hardness which slips just enough to show the creamy, goofy center. I like the high oh-oh-ohs that break in behind the chorus now and then. I just don’t like the song.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: Girl groups need some combination of sass and quality songs. If you have enough of one, you don’t need the other but The Saturdays have neither. It’s really hard to hear “Notorious” as being anything other than meekly embarrassing. Here, they’re once again forced to sell a weak song with tinny, cheap production and a mountain of cliches of badness when they have no attitude or individuality to speak of. Just not good enough for a crowded marketplace, ladies.
[2]

Zach Lyon: Writing a song shouldn’t sound this difficult.
[2]

It gets better. Unless you’re Selena Gomez, in which case it’s ALREADY PERFECT.

[Video][Website]
[6.33]

Katherine St Asaph: If asked “who says you’re not pretty,” most kids who’ve actually been bullied would rattle off an explicit list of at least a handful and an implicit list that contains everyone; meanwhile, the reverse list would contain “Um, my mom? But she has to think so….” There’s a bigger problem, though. This is sung by Selena Gomez, who happens to be ostensibly popular and really pretty herself, enough to be dating Justin fucking Bieber (laugh all you want, this matters to people.) So while you don’t get the sense that Selena’s laughing at your loserhood post-song like Katy Perry, you do get the sense that she’s awfully blithe–especially on that na-na-na-na-I’m-so-beautiful-me pre-chorus, the “Pretty Girl Rock” that tweens didn’t need.
[4]

Jonathan Bradley: It’s a shame pop music is stuck on the It Gets Better microgenre, because Gomez’s circa-2011 Hilary Duff fizz would be quite suited to songs about So Yesterday ephemera. “Who Says” is brisk enough for the self-esteem fest not to weigh down proceedings too much and it skips along with girlish charm enough to make its singer’s thin trill of a voice endearing — even when she hits a particularly wheedling note on “Who says you’re not pretty?” Buoyed by mock-serious, stiff-limbed string stings and a jangling guitar line, it’s a sweet, albeit slight, diversion.
[6]

Zach Lyon: If we’re going to call this an It Gets Better song — and it was released in 2011, so that makes it one — it’s certainly one of the better ones. Or at least one of the more endearing ones. I don’t want to think too hard about it; I simply take great comfort in the genuine “Who said that? I’LL KILL THEM” subtext that I might be making up.
[7]

Michaela Drapes: I’m afraid I’m one of those people who’s a sucker for the current vogue for inspirational pop songs. I’m also terribly charmed by Gomez’ ability to really sell this song, all wrapped up in bubbly cliches, especially when the lyrics don’t entirely make sense in a few places. But, whatever, it’s the thought that counts, right? (I’m even more fond of the Spanish-language version of this one, btw.)
[7]

Isabel Cole: I have listened, many times, to “Firework” — also known as “a Katy Perry song,” also known as “not a very good song” — such is my weakness for inspirational songs about how great you are just as your special snowflake self. Lucky for me I feel so much better about liking this one! The warm, cheerful production is intricate enough to stay away from schmaltz territory (my first reaction was “awwww yeah, cellos“), and Selena bounces through it with utmost sweetness tempered by a delicacy that saves her voice from Carlton/Branch territory. She’s so sunny in her earnest pleas for self-acceptance that it took me a few listens to pick up on the unusual dynamic: anyone can reassure someone down on themselves, but it takes a not inconsiderable generosity of spirit to comfort someone harshing on you. Add some na-na-nas and I am more than sold.
[9]

Jer Fairall: Pop has now officially overcompensated for the apparent dearth of self-esteem among today’s young people, but Gomez is a blank enough canvas that this kind of message song can be projected onto her without the kind of baggage that makes Katy Perry and Ke$ha’s attempts at the same sound so fatuous. The real story here, though, is in just how much this song manages to get right in the mechanics of its construction, never mind the triteness of the words: the bright little acoustic refrain, the warm drum machine thump, the cheery “na na na na” hook. By the time she gets to the semi-raps “who says you’re not presedential,” I’m smiling too broadly to remember what I was carping about.
[7]

Michelle Myers: The key to enjoying this song is pretending Selena is singing it as a pep talk to Bieber. Who says you’re not presidential, Biebs? Who says?!
[6]

Edward Okulicz: The sentiments are fluffy but blissfully, so is the tune, so light and summery and addictive, and Selena swoons at every glorious hook as she lines them up across a killer chorus without even betraying the idea that maybe not everyone is as pretty as she. Which puts her light years ahead of Pink, for starters. I thought I was allergic to this kind of song, turns out I was just waiting for it to be done right before letting the defences down. When she asks “Who says you’re not presidential?” to the listener in that perky honey-sweetened voice of hers, I’m thinking, creepily ironic theme song for Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign, anyone? Come on!
[9]

Sally O’Rourke: Just what every depressed teenage girl needs: reinforcement that self-worth equals being pretty.
[2]

This is not exactly “doing a Timberlake” is it now…

[Video][Myspace]
[2.89]

Alex Ostroff: The hot one from the Jonas Brothers finally gets around to releasing his solo debut. It’s not quite rock, it’s not quite the rumoured dance album, it’s…well…nothing special, really. It’s a power ballad with all the guitars replaced with synths. ‘See No More’ isn’t actively awful, but there’s nothing, musically or otherwise, that suggests this a single, let alone something catchy enough to serve as an introduction to his solo career.
[3]

Edward Okulicz: Joe Jonas has been singing and performing his entire life, you’d expect him to be more than competent at his job, and here, he emotes professionally in a way I’m not cruel enough to deny might have actual emotion. The song’s in the same boat: with all the money and professional handling around him, you would at the very minimum expect a song that is competent and does the job. It doesn’t really do a lot more than that bare minimum, though. As career-sidestepping solo songs go, this is exceptionally conservative.
[6]

Michaela Drapes: There’s moments, especially on the bridge, where there’s a tiny inkling that a good song could be hidden in here somewhere, but it’s being held prisoner by the plodding and overwrought paint-by-numbers production. Not that I was expecting something phenomenal or revolutionary from Joe Jonas’ solo debut, but this is about as generic and inoffensive as a song could possibly be. (Oh, but look — Chris Brown co-wrote it. So much for that!)
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Chris Brown writes Joe Jonas a Chris Brown song: something inoffensively patted together from the scraps of non-offenders like Ryan Tedder, Shontelle and various post-Chris falsettists, perfect for dulling a past abusive or Jonas. Points for Joe doing what he can; more points for the (unintentional) Paula Cole reference.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Pushing and shoving his vocals into the adenoidal land where Ryan Tedder lives, the Cute Jonas records the aural equivalent of what J.C. Chasez looked like in 2001: hair growing out of the wrong places, jewels and studs on every finger, lips begging for a Botox. It does take talent to record so ugly a single.
[1]

Isabel Cole: “Not as bad as my possibly unfair anti-Jonas bias would have predicted” is not the same as “good.” The tinkly background and oh-ohs might accentuate another song, but it’s hard to notice them here under all the whininess. Marked down from a 3 for reminding me of the Dawson’s Creek theme. I don’t wanna wait for this song to be over; I want to hit right now the little red X.
[2]

Zach Lyon: Might be time to consider bumping the male pop star (dives timberlacus) up from “vulnerable” to “endangered.”
[2]

Michelle Myers: Reminds me of that time Nick Lachey tried to have a solo career.
[2]

Jer Fairall: Few teen pop acts ever sounded like they were having less fun than the Jonas Brothers did, but at least someone involved (possibly them, most likely the producers and co-writers) back then kept their music on the glossier side of power pop rather than the faux white-boy R&B favoured by the boy bands of a generation earlier. This has some mildly interesting synth squiggles running through it, but mostly it displays how white pop stars have dealt with avoiding the potential embarrassment of trying to sound black in the recent years, namely with this dreary brand of Ryan Tedder balladic mush, typically used to denote soul without trying for Soul. It makes me all too happy to embrace the Reign of Bieber with open arms.
[3]

In which our plucky Canadian heroine ruins the ’80s for everyone…

[Video][Website]
[4.57]

Jer Fairall: I don’t know what her international profile is like, but here in Canada Fefe Dobson started out as a less shrill, less famous Avril Lavigne back when Avril clones were the order of the day. “Can’t Breathe” only represents growth if one’s idea of maturity is Kelly Clarkson power balladry, but this one builds rather nicely to a windswept guitar solo and a T’Pau-like muttered vocal part that is charming for the very fact that I never expected anything to ever remind me of “Heart and Soul” again. I do wish the route to this grand crescendo was a bit more interesting, though, or that someone involved with this expensive-sounding production could have done something about that stiff, predictable chorus.
[6]

Alex Ostroff: Getting back on the radio has apparently required Fefe to cut a deal with the devil. Her melodic sense and evocative vocals remain intact, but the gleeful and impulsive mix of heavy grunge riffs, synthesizer beats, and pop punk snarl have been replaced by radio-friendly sheen and shimmer. She does as well as she can with ‘epic’, but I prefer Fefe getting angry and getting even to sad and needy.
[6]

Michaela Drapes: There’s something about the mushy, dull production on this that makes this feel like it’s well past the sell-by date. I’m not inherently against Orianthi’s guitar solo, but it feels like an dreary afterthought to (unsuccessfully) toughen things up. I want to be excited here — I really do! — as I’ve been a Dobson booster from way back, but I’m just bored.
[4]

Edward Okulicz: Fefe takes a weak second-Avril-Lavigne-album-ballad chorus and melds it to a mildly Tedder-esque take on the “Nothing Compares 2 U” template in the verses, sung to, and possibly for, a wind machine.
[6]

Isabel Cole: One might think a song detailing how its singer can’t breathe if she’s not breathing with her ex might have some sense of urgency, or passion, or any kind of emotion, at all. One would, apparently, be wrong.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: What the fuck is this? I mean, I know: it’s genus All I Ever Wanted, species “Already Gone,” a track that preys on its once-great, once-difficult female rocker by cocooning her inside a windswept icicle so every feature and movement looks crystalline and muted. Which is to say, it’s reprehensible shit. Take it away, take it far away from here.
[3]

Zach Lyon: The only part of this I can be bothered to give a shit about is the drum riff, and that’s only because I just realized I’m finally tired of that drum riff. Thanks, Fefe. I can no longer listen to the 80s.
[3]

Hey, do you like accordions and durable crossover hits? Turns out we do.

[Video][Website]
[7.22]

Jonathan Bogart: Feels weird to be blurbing this after it’s been ruling Latin airwaves for a solid year, but if ustedes gringos are just catching up to it now, I guess I can’t begrudge you the party. So yes, this is 2010’s big kuduro crossover, Angola via Portugal via Puerto Rico, with a beachy reggaetón bump and a nagging synth-accordion hook and a chorus that, in the great crossover-dance tradition, is an instruction manual on how to dance it. Not that you have to do anything but shake your ass and holler along; if this is unlikely to replace the Macarena at dance-impaired weddings, it’s because it’s too much actual fun.
[9]

Edward Okulicz: Some savagely catchy accordion work here but there’s a curious lack of bite to the rest of it. Doubled beats move the feet and quicken the pulse but otherwise the rhythm is stilted and the vocals are just kind of there. I don’t mind being told how to dance, but I’d like to be forced onto the floor first.
[5]

Alex Ostroff: “Danza Kuduro” is a lot smoother than the kuduro I fell in love with a few years back — abrasive rave music by Buraka Som Sistema that wasn’t inaccessible per se, but wasn’t really Top 40 material. In retrospect, though, it seems obvious that South American dance music was overdue and particularly well-suited for another international crossover in 2011. The BPM is in line with most of the hip house that’s overtaken the charts, the accordion and violin lines are easily replaced with synthesizers and the vocals can be digitally manipulated. The end result is a song that smoothly fits into contemporary club soundtracks, but whose rhythms and energy remain distinctly of its context.
[7]

Michaela Drapes: I’m sorry, I’m too busy dancing to write anything useful here, other than to just note that I’m shocked that it’s taken over a year for this song to blow up outside of the Latin pop universe. (Or jeez, 18 months if you go back to the original release of “Vem dançar kuduro.”) If nothing else, you kind of can’t get a better testament to this track’s longevity, huh? Unstoppable
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: Five dozen global dance hits corralled like atoms into a room so tiny they’ve only got room to pulse up and down on their tiptoes. Which is movement, just not the kind I suspect was wanted.
[6]

Chuck Eddy: The accordion is what most makes this stand out. Well, that and the “oy-yoy-yoy”s. And the parts where the rhythm doubles. That said, it still strikes me as kind of generic — I just can’t say to which genre, exactly. So good chance I’m wrong.
[7]

Mallory O’Donnell: I’m all in favor of improving relations between Spanish and Portuguese-speaking ex-colonists and always a sucker when it comes to an international collabo so relentlessly bouncy. This is decent fire, so I guess, well done, but give us more fire next time. To reiterate: next time, MORE FIRE!
[5]

Isabel Cole: There are things here I could point to that I like — well-used AutoTune turning the right number of scoops into grace notes without sucking the personality out of energetic singing; a male vocal in pop music I actually actively like for once (limited experience suggests it’s not quite a coincidence I’m finding this in a Spanish-language song, but I’m not versed enough in either pop world to make a definitive statement), by performers who sound like they’re having a blast singing it; enticing hooks and a sexy-ass beat — but really what it comes down to is that I refuse to say mean things about anything that makes me want this pressingly to get up and dance my ass off despite the fact that I dance about as gracefully as… well: you see the dudes in the video? That is about to be me, minus the boat.
[10]

Michelle Myers: Turns out Lucenzo’s “Vem Dancar Kuduro” would have been better had there been some reggaeton verses added.
[7]

Well, if you have to ask, Dierks…

[Video][Website]
[3.89]

Chuck Eddy: A sprightly/thirsty/horny-enough two-step as such things go, but it pales at least as much compared to its obvious thematic model — Hank Williams Jr’s “All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down” — as, well, “All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight” did. Which is to say, it pales even more than Bocephus did compared to his dad. Also pales up against most of Dierks’s first run of singles. But sadly, not up against most 2011 country hits.
[6]

Michaela Drapes: An extremely limp variation on the “All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down” theme. Dierks, no one wants to party with you because you’re, well … kind of lame. Sorry.
[1]

Katherine St Asaph: There’s something Dierks isn’t telling us, between the whine poured through a conversational-tone filter, the juuuust-off use of slang like “bros” and “get it on,” and the fact that Wild Man Willy is obviously lying because American Idol never airs on Friday. Another clue: he mentions “raising hell” by himself, but never clarifies whether it’s hyperbole or something that gets you permanently barred from the bar. Certainly that girl makes no further appearances. So either this guy doesn’t know he’s trying way too hard (likewise, Dierks is trying too hard for radio play), or the songwriting is remarkably self-aware. I wish I could tell.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: I don’t know, really, if Dierks’ exhortation to his friends to “raise hell” is as comatose as the lifeless chorus of this, it’s hard to imagine wanting to go out drinking with him. Aren’t his friends supposed to be the boring ones?
[4]

Zach Lyon: I’d like to hear the companion piece to this track, in which a group of guys go out drinking together and try not to run into that one annoying guy who takes his shirt off and passes out in front of the bar and always refers to them as his “bros”.
[3]

Anthony Easton: Isn’t drinking alone a sign of alcoholism?
[5]

Alex Ostroff: It seems unfair to write off a song entirely due to the singer’s voice, but Bentley’s voice isn’t heavy or gritty enough to convince me that he’s capable of raising hell — either in a group or all by himself — and his delivery is too blasé to suggest that he actually wants to have fun at all.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Other than the brief, torrid guitar solo, there’s not much fun here. Bentley sings like the asshole at the bar who hits on your girlfriend while you’re in the bathroom.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: If that abbreviated guitar solo is meant to be an example of “raising hell,” I can only mourn the poverty of his imagination.
[4]