Well who wouldn’t be in love with a man with such a lovely hat?

[Video][Website]
[6.62]

Jonathan Bogart: In which Anthony Hamilton channels peak-era Al Green and Jill Scott channels … Jill Scott, which is enough. The song is tender and lovely, laid-back disco for a not particularly energetic kind of dancing, but its low-wattage energy also means that it lacks much resonance beyond that particular use-value.
[7]

Alfred Soto: Closer to eighties George Benson than classic seventies R&B, this gets by on a groove so buoyant that second stringers like Scott and Hamilton can boast of a near triumph. Benson’s career is full of those.
[7]

Erick Bieritz: Lyrically it’s a little dull, a simple assertion of love that fails to create or resolve any tension. Musically, a key change at the 1:35 mark, moving the song from sultry to ebullient, is more engaging, and Scott is as always technically skilled enough to avoid scuffling even with mediocre material.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: I’m so in love with the chord progression, does that count? Yeah, fine, suppose not.
[6]

Alex Ostroff: I’ve always found Jill Scott to be a bit sleepy (Lupe’s Daydreamin’ aside) but here that relaxed tone is an asset, conveying the easy interaction and comfort of a lived-in relationship. “So In Love” is a epic midtempo disco love song released a few decades too late, and thus risks feeling like retro pastiche, but it picks up some genuine feeling at the end of Scott’s verse, and soars once she and Hamilton start trading off lines halfway through. They certainly aren’t Marvin and Tammi, but in the age of infinite remixes and features, it’s a joy to hear a real duet.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: The clicks of the beat and the tinkling piano suggest a classy seduction on the dance floor, but the lyrics paint a love further down the line. But I like the idea that an established relationship can still be coolly sexual, even if it’s a touch on the repetitive side. The song, not love, that is. The cooing at the end, I could live without.
[6]

Al Shipley: This is like a rom com where the male lead exudes sensual charisma but the female lead is chewing scenery and hamming up with the dialogue too much to make the audience care about the relationship.
[5]

Michaela Drapes: If there wasn’t already an anthem for the grown and sexy, “So In Love” would fit the bill nicely. A perfectly-executed, frothy slice of throwback R&B/brunch music that’s a nice reminder of how lovely music for actual adults can be (instead of, you know, tweens and opinonated pop critics like). Where’s my mimosa?
[9]

Canada: come for the socialized medicine, stay for the generic club hits.

[Video][Website]
[3.67]

Anthony Easton: Indian culture in Toronto is blowing up, as it is in Vancouver, and provides some pretty amazing music. Bollywood North, Bhangra club nights, something called Desi Lesi’s which is like all of this pushed together with faggy house and what ever P!nk is doing this week. So I feel like I should personally apologise and tell you this is not the Indo-Canadian genius I know.
[4]

Alex Ostroff: Raghav intrigues me. Canada has a homegrown pop industry that exists by dint of legal requirements that all radio stations play 25% Canadian content, and it produces interesting (sometimes wonderful, and often terrible) music that usually fails to venture beyond the country’s borders. It’s odd, then, to discover a song breaking into the Canadian Top 40 in its tenth week on the charts, and THEN to discover that, in fact, its Indo-Canadian singer has had five Top 10 records in Britain nearly half a decade ago and that he’s also done a Hindi cover of Gyptian’s “Hold Yuh”. I’m not sure if his sudden native success is a result of more marketing dollars or just dumb luck, but I’d wager that “Fire”‘s deceptively simple charms have something to do with it. It starts off like any other “I Gotta Feeling” rip of the past few years, but the squiggly electronic breakdown is impossible to resist, and the first half of the chorus pulls back on the THUMPTHUMPTHUMP where other tracks would lean into mind-numbing pounding. Raghav informs us in the bridge that he’s paid his dues and done his time, pleading that we turn the heat up. Like most CanPop, this isn’t jaw-dropping, but he just seems so polite and hard-working and only half-convinced that he actually is on fire, that I’m rooting for this to keep slowly crawling up the charts and become the summer’s sleeper hit.
[6]

Doug Robertson: Just because you’ve written something that sounds like every other song in the Top 40, it doesn’t mean it actually deserves to be joining them there.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: About seven years ago, Raghav seemed to be in the UK top 20 constantly with a roster of songs with boring verses and fun choruses – still dig “Can’t Get Enough”. He’s still around plying his trade, and Jim Beanz, who produced this, has no standards, let alone subtlety or more than a couple of tricks he’ll employ on everything ever. This time the song is the same sort of generic declarations of being ON FIRE you’ve heard literally everywhere, but it comes into its own with a likable burst of energy after each chorus — the beats kick in, cheesy synths bounce into the mix and by the end the effect is rather enjoyable in bursts.
[7]

Alfred Soto: This time last year Scissor Sisters failed to set the charts alight with a similar exhortation. I thought we wanted to cool down during the summer.
[2]

Zach Lyon: “Fire” makes Raghav sound like an attempt at being the Canadian equivalent to Derulo/Cruz/Iyaz — singers who try their darnedest to mentally transport their listeners to “The Club,” and they try so hard that they’re willing to sacrifice any trace of one of those distracting “personality” things. Raghav gets the second part right but replaces “The Club” with “The Recording Studio,” wherein the listener will mentally observe some producers and engineers and mixers pressing buttons, changing levels, and mumbling notes to The Singer between takes. The mesmerizing grey walls turn out to be the most interesting part of the experience.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: You know you have a limp club song on your hands when not a single person in the world is ever going to squeal excitedly “OhmigodthisismyJAM” when it comes on at the club. It’s probably technically too early, but I’ll make that particular prophecy anyway.
[3]

Michaela Drapes: Hey, Raghav. Your single isn’t supposed to sound like a ham-fisted club remix before it’s actually been, you know, remixed. If better executed, the disco laser, auto-tuned harmonies, and random postpunk guitar thingy might’ve been charming. However, I seriously might hurt someone if I have to suffer through listening to this song ever again.
[0]

Katherine St Asaph: If you’re on fire and like being on fire, why does your track sound like you’re dancing amid a thousand sprinklers of glitter water? Why would you show off your “fire/higher” rhyme instead of tucking it into the reams of tinder that make up the rest of the track? And why does this all make “Fire” sound weirdly like a controlled burn, meant to trim the dance floor to a manageable size from the wildfire it could’ve been?
[5]

Pete Baran: Sort of the aural equivalent of reading a romance fiction, there are absolutely no surprises, but it’s transiently satisfying none the less. That said, the aural equivalent of her going weak at the knees and accepting the rugged janitor despite him being a bit of a dick is always going to be a bit disappointing.
[4]

Mallory O’Donnell: There was a time when everything didn’t sound like this. But I don’t remember it either, so here we have the first Canadindian slice of dull autotuned schlock that fits the narrow economic criteria of what constitutes a pop single in 2011. Please kill me before someone comes along and tells me that I’ve paid my dues. Because, dude, these dues… are doo-doo.
[2]

Jer Fairall: Yes, “fire” and “higher” do in fact rhyme.
[2]

There’s a clever rhyme in this song…

[Video][Website]
[3.75]

Edward Okulicz: Rhyming “spaceship” with “facelift” is a horrible yet bordering on genius rhyme in search of a more appropriate home than a punchy but biteless pop-rap number in which absolutely nothing else interesting happens. Whereas “Number One” was triumphant and buoyant, this stakes out a comfortable pace and level of excitement and moves not one bit. To be honest, you’d be hard pressed to tell one verse from the next.
[3]

Michaela Drapes: There’s really absolutely nothing new or remarkable going on here, but Dappy’s line about getting his mom a facelift cracks me up every time. It shouldn’t, but it does. Gets the job done, mostly, but you can’t help but feel Tinchy’s grasping at straws.
[3]

Jonathan Bogart: Wait, so the spaceship isn’t a metaphor for huge leaping emotions, a sense of adventure, exploration, uncharted territories, speed, power, thrust, or even cosmic journeys of a chemical nature? It’s just the most expensive living quarters he could think of? Man, fuck capitalism.
[3]

Matthew Harris: A song about how you should get your mother a facelift when you’re rich, and also that she might like a spaceship? I don’t know. The rap keeps hitting unintentionally weird lines (“keep shit running/never get constipated”) that feel lazy rather than inspired. And the backing-track initially made me think of Taio Cruz: sparkling, polished synths stabbing out an okay melody, but lacking in any sex or power. Apparently Tinchy is trying to find a sweet spot between grime and pop. I think I would have been fine if he aimed convincingly for either direction, rather than try to claim everything for his own.
[3]

Jonathan Bradley: About that whole grime jawn. The thing UK rap had going for it around 2003 was that the abrasive production rubbed up against the knotty rapping, each complementing the other by making both sound unsettled. Now that those rappers, along with their descendants, have moved on to club-friendly pop-dance tracks, the jittery flow has transformed into a stumbling block rather than a selling point. On “Spaceship,” Tinchy Stryder isn’t smooth or charismatic or commanding. He’s lost.
[3]

Pete Baran: Hmm, it suspiciously seems to me that Simon Reynolds might have commissioned this song, with its nostalgic callbacks to Tinchy’s epoch shaking collaborations with The Saturdays and Pixie Lott. But perhaps looking across the mike at Dappy, he needs to cheer himself up. The song (facelift gag aside) is a shadow of decent Tinchy.
[4]

Alex Ostroff: If you’re going to do an “I’ve made it” song à la Big Sean the least you can do is make it as ridiculous as possible. The chorus is too over the top to not love, especially in its final iteration, which features screams of glee and triumphant vocal harmonies on the concluding question: “My momma thought I wouldn’t make it/But now she’s living in a spaceship/She said, ‘Son I’m getting older’/I told her money buys everything — ‘Would you like a facelift?’” There’s not much to like here besides that couplet, but it’s enough to turn “Spaceship” from a nothing-y background club song to something I’d sing along to while drunk.
[5]

Frank Kogan: I’m watching the vid, and everything is puttering and bubbling and burbling along nicely, yet I’m straining to hear something more. Don’t know what it is, really, maybe some arms-raised exuberance, a rhyme better than “spaceship” and “facelift,” and… The problem is, there’s no T-Pain, and there’s no big sound, and there’s no one singing, sweetly, “I fucked a mermaid.” Not on this trip.
[6]

I hear this is some sort of indie punk supergroup?

[Video][Myspace]
[6.70]

Michelle Myers: Evidently Wild Flag is some sort of indie punk supergroup. I was too young to ever care about Sleater-Kinney, but this song makes me want to visit their back catalog for a few weeks. “Future Crimes” is hooky and memorable, and Carrie Brownstein’s vocal performance is totally spot-on.
[8]

Sally O’Rourke: Put off at first by the thin production, then won over by the low-fi keyboards and the resigned anger in Carrie Brownstein’s voice. I really am going to have to start listening to Sleater-Kinney, aren’t I?
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: I’m biased. I either like or love all the component bands here, liked spiritual precursor The Spells, and would thus endorse Wild Flag existing even if their first single was a lot of low-fi mumbling or “E.T.” or something. The world, for their part, would likely endorse them if they came out with a big, stones-out Announcement Single. Instead, they keep “Future Crimes” self-contained, filter-dripping all the excitement into the tinkly keyboard riff and soprano swoops, and it is excellent. And even though Wild Flag probably has about the same longevity of someone who makes jewel-encrusted Osama bin Laden figurines, at least they’re here in the interim.
[8]

Michaela Drapes: I guess I can admit this here: Wild Flag are rapidly turning into the vegetables I don’t want to eat, but I know are good for me. The chores I don’t want to do, but I know I’ll hate myself if I don’t dust all my white consoles this week and scrub the bathtub. Academically, I like 60 per cent of the elements at play here: Janet Weiss is a personal hero, Rebecca Cole rules big time, and Britt Daniel can, um, produce my single whenever he wants. But ugh, do they have to let Mary Timony sing lead? I guess it’s better than when Carrie does, but that’s not saying much.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Carrie Brownstein is an old friend, so I’m prepared to forgive the fire blanket thickness of her voice, which was made for dusky harmonies and contrapuntal interjections. Because the rhythm and guitar strum are American indie at its most basic, I want more.
[6]

Doug Robertson: I was about to dismiss this out of hand as being generic grumpy girl indie, but then it suddenly got really good in the last thirty seconds so I’ve had to reconsider. Admittedly by “Really good,” I mean “Got a bit faster”, so it’s not like they suddenly broke new ground and started swimming in an Olympic sized pool of inventiveness, but at least it’s a start.
[6]

Chuck Eddy: Saw two different people wearing their T-shirt at mid-June’s Austin Girls Rock Camp end-of-week show (best band: Hello, My Name Is Irrelevant), and couldn’t place who they were or where I’d heard their name before. Got home and looked it up; oh yeah: Sleater-Kinney nostalgia, got plenty of SXSW hype. Way, way too soon for me; my copies of Call the Doctor and Dig Me Out probably haven’t even been banished to one of the four big CD-limbo boxes in my office closet for two years yet, and the other albums are long gone. That neo-neo-new-wavish cheese-organ line (the Need nostalgia? Le Tigre nostalgia?) doesn’t exactly solve the problem, either.
[6]

Jer Fairall: Lacks both the confrontational and eccentric charge of the collaborators’ best known work, and I fear that I’m in danger of liking it more for the fact of its existence than for anything it actually does, but it still provides a decent object lesson for Kids Today on how to sound stripped down without sounding like shit. -wavers and -gazers, please take note.
[6]

Pete Baran: I wonder how easy it would be to make a song like this just using a sampler? Surely every guitar sound, every half-arsed indie word has been enunciated. All that would be left is the ghost in the machine, a track’s ineffable personality, which this sort of has. Sorry, that’s probably a bit of a big question to dump on Wild Flag.
[6]

Jonathan Bradley: One successful indie rock tactic involves holding back and coyly invite the listener to pursue pleasure rather than gorge on it. That method is not necessarily a superior kind, but it does offer a different kind of enjoyment, and one that must be approached differently. The pedigree of Wild Flag suggests the supergroup knows how to accomplish this task, and “Future Crimes” has a rhythm stiff enough and a melody apparent enough to suggest the tune’s plainness hides greater depths. It never quite bursts into bloom the way a properly anthemic single should and it has that same feeling of mistaken briefness as Elvis Costello’s “Welcome to the Working Week,” but that element of reservation just encourages me to play it again.
[7]

The brains behind our highest scoring song in 2011 return with what is not a Nicki Minaj cover…

[Video][Website]
[6.62]

Josh Langhoff: In this episode of Last Train to Paris, the role of Diddy’s Libido will be portrayed by Trey Songz, who makes better love faces. Diddy will be over in the corner, staying on his grind and barely acknowledging his longings except to lavish them with Polow’s magisterial production number.
[7]

Michaela Drapes: A sprawling, glorious fugue of freakitude, practically operatic or something! Rick Ross is Falstaff in a hot suit with a cigar, Trey Songz his filthy, dutiful Prince Hal. In a rare pop appearance of equal opportunity nastiness, Dawn Richard and Kalenna Harper ratchet up the dirty quotient considerably — everyone gets their turn, so to speak. The only problem is when Diddy shows up, all mopey with his wounded ego and unbearable fronting, he totally brings the party down. I’m not terribly sympathetic to his (brief) part of the story; let’s get back to the serious business of this track, shall we?
[7]

Al Shipley: “Ass On The Floor” partisans may sneer, but there’s a reason this is Last Train To Paris‘s late-breaking urban radio hit, and it’s not just that Trey is more popular than Swizz Beatz. Perhaps no song gains more from being removed from the context of the album, where it seems relatively tame. On the radio it feels bold and endlessly hooky.
[8]

Alex Ostroff: “Your Love” didn’t really stand out from the pack when listening to Last Train to Paris, but on an album that’s uniformly excellent, that isn’t necessarily a terrible thing. Hearing it on its own, it proves to be surprisingly filled with all sorts of interesting details that elevate its standing in my mind. The spareness of the opening verse, supported by the uneven clatter of the snare and brief snatches of harmony, is surprisingly effective, as are the M.I.A.-esque yodels in the background of the pre-chorus. By the time the chorus explodes in multi-part harmony, it feels so grandiose that I barely notice that the spareness of the instrumentation hasn’t actually changed. Dawn and Kalenna’s exultation of “Let your tongue walk on this puss-say!” is almost as ecstatic as The-Dream shouting “Fuck my brains out!” Diddy’s verse is a momentary distraction from the main event, and clearly the weakest bit, but the burbling bass keeps things interesting until Trey and Dirty Money bring back the interplay of their voices, and a touch of electronic distortion to wind out the track.
[8]

Zach Lyon: Packs enough forward momentum to feel half as long as it is, making swift jumps from a nicely energetic Trey to Dawn/Kalenna to Diddy to awesome robot voice. As such, it sounds more like a walloping transition than a walloping single.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: Here’s where Diddy’s career tactic of being the least talented man in the room falls down. With no one on “Your Love” suited to being the most interesting part of a song, the whole things sounds like the part before something great happens. That transcendent bridge, that jaw-dropping guest verse, that irrepressible hook, however, entirely fails to materialize.
[4]

Alfred Soto: How much more would it have cost Diddy to keep Usher for one more song?
[4]

Hazel Robinson: Not my favourite off Last Train To Paris but that’s a pretty high scale, so this is still something I’ve hammered through iTunes so much I’m surprised it’s not burned on there like a bad pixel. Like the rest of the album, it’s an intoxicating mix of cockiness and desperation — Diddy saying he’ll have you on the bed face down but begging he needs you right now: confused and hubristic and pubescently lustful. Not bad for an artist whose contemporaries are dead or chucking out remix albums, innit.
[8]

In which Terius indulges further his passion for saying naughty words.

[Video][Website]
[5.50]

Jer Fairall: Veers so close to a Prince parody that it feels like the work of a dirty minded Weird Al Yankovic.
[4]

Michaela Drapes: I guess it’s okay when The-Dream apes Prince, but I mostly find it really annoying. He’s got all the details right, but it’s such slavishly shallow homage that I don’t have any respect for him when all the heavy breathing is over.
[3]

Doug Robertson: What it lacks in subtlety it makes up for in… well, nothing, really. It’s a pretty unpleasant slice of self-aggrandising misogyny whose only real redeeming feature is that musically it sounds like it should be on the Top Gun soundtrack. Which is the sole reason why it’s getting a couple of points from me.
[2]

Jonathan Bradley: The-Dream’s trick here is in making sex sound like a suicide; “Before you leave, fuck my brains out” as a response to a cheating lover is so self-destructive that the immolation approaches the physical. By the second verse, the woman is in tears, mute, and left “laying in the sheets.” The nominal intent is to demonstrate the singer’s prowess as a lover, but it better demonstrates his prowess as a Prince disciple; as a character, The-Dream is practically absent from his own narrative. He is there primarily as a ruinous force, a demon embodiment of downfall stemming from temptation and pride. With this synth duststorm and that deliberately unfeeling vocal, the boudoir turns hellish.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Just when I thought he’d run out of shawties to fuck and/or fuck with, here’s more brains to fuck and/or blow. The guitar and vocal harmonizing all over the intro is a fabulous trick — a better one than the unfortunate one who has to receive his ambitious member.
[6]

Alex Ostroff: An update of “Fast Car” that’s dirtier, both musically and lyrically. Where the earlier track was an attempt at seduction that found Terius worried that his girl was “a little too sweet,” “Fuck My Brains Out” finds our intrepid Casanova servicing his soon-to-be-ex in between newer conquests, indulging her need for his sexual prowess “one more time for the road.” The entire scenario is palpably ridiculous, but this wouldn’t be the first time that The-Dream engaged in elaborate post-breakup revenge fantasies. In the past, these songs sounded tortured, with cries of anguish and betrayal submerged in heavy production. Not so here. Terius audibly relishes every word of “Fuck My Brains Out,” lasciviously declaring that he “done her round the clock, twenty-leven times a week,” “talking with [his] tongue ’til she couldn’t speak,” and even imitating her pleas in both the chorus and the coda. Meanwhile, he’s deployed every trick in his Purple box, from “Kiss”-style funk guitar decorating the verses, to panting, hissing and screaming, to an electric guitar line that grinds itself into the ground. That he manages to make “Fuck My Brains Out” sound like the most deliriously joyful phrase in music is merely an added bonus. (Cee-Lo, take notes.)
[9]

Anthony Easton: Pretty sweet little funk nugget, nothing as lurid as the title would suggest, but worthwhile none-the-less.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: The-Dream is like critical royalty so one must tread and listen carefully, but if this chorus had been the work of The Lonely Island it would be embarrassing, and really, it is. And you could be forgiven based on how awful some of the lyrics are — I mean, rhyming “lick it” and “stick it” pretty much is admitting you ran out of ideas. Musically it’s stronger than that, but overcooked as it bludgeons you with elements that on their own might have been sexy, but are a little hard to take together.
[5]

Country singer: “Cold beer is quite good.”

[Video][Website]
[6.00]

Chuck Eddy: Well, this clearly fills the same three-minute no-shoes country-radio summer pop-rock slot that Jack Ingram’s even better “Barefoot And Crazy” did two years ago, from the Tom Pettyness on down (opening power-jangle right out of “Free Fallin’” in this case). Not as over-sexed (or ornately heavy) as Owen’s incidentally obscene #11 country hit “Eight Second Ride” from a couple years back, but hardly prudish, either. In fact, kind of sexy.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: “The girls are always hot and the beer is ice cold,” he sings, and it might as well be “Paradise City” as rewritten by Bon Jovi and then rearranged by Mutt Lange. But more butch than that sounds, and stuffed with not quite indelible but irresistible hooks.
[8]

Erick Bieritz: Outsiders to country often struggle with the earnestness in the music, but what’s more earnest than power pop? Any listener to the latter can find a context for the former when it includes stadium rock imagery and some well-placed “woah-oh-ohs.” Like last year’s “Felt Good On My Lips” this is proof that hooks transcend genres.
[8]

Iain Mew: Those massive and triumphant “woah-oh-oh”s could be enjoyably infectious in the right hands. Here I’m already lost well before then, because this is specifically self-celebratory while offering little reason to justify it. The pause after “the beer is ice cold” that feels like it should be filled with canned laughter certainly doesn’t help.
[3]

Anthony Easton: People hold up cell phones instead of lighters now, which makes more sense, because I don’t know how to hold up a lighter without the light going out or burning your thumb. First meta-single of the summer; there will be more, but this is not unpleasant.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: It’s all about those masculine-chorus “whoah-oh-oh”s, straight out of Bon Jovi or Jon Mellencamp. The rest of the song hews as close to modern country-party conventions as, well, Jason Derülo does to modern city-party conventions, but that doesn’t mean the genre is incapable of its moments of transcendence.
[7]

Michaela Drapes: Ugh, just when I thought Jake Owen’s voice couldn’t be more annoying or the wafer-thin production more flimsy, that ridiculous choir comes in. You can’t force a song into being a generational anthem, dude. Don’t try.
[3]

Played over 300 gigs in a year, apparently. Musicians are lazy enough for that to matter, apparently…

[Video][Website]
[5.12]

Alex Ostroff: Much like Just Fishin’, I really wish that this song didn’t make me so angry, because Sheeran has a beautiful voice and the ability to paint entire scenes with a handful of words. Unfortunately, those words form a song that’s all about appropriating the experience of female sex workers, drug addicts and the homeless in order to elicit sympathy and pity and feelings from listeners. Some might argue that he’s calling attention to their plight, but he could at least pull a Gaga and donate a percentage of proceeds to one of the many organizations that help street youth in the UK. There’s a lot to like about Sheeran, so hopefully next time he’ll release a single that isn’t so emotionally manipulative and exploitative.
[4]

Iain Mew: Lyrically this is extremely clunky at times. The title pun is bad enough, but “It’s too cold outside for angels to fly/An angel will die” is worse, because there is literally no need for that second line to exist. What it loses in subtlety there, though, is compensated for by a rather gorgeous and startlingly spacious arrangement. It refuses to go for any obvious musical escalation or hysterics, and as a result if you don’t listen to the words too hard it manages to carry off a surprising amount of grace and depth of feeling. It helps that Ed sounds like a superior Damien Rice and stays sensibly well within the limits of his voice.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: Easy to dismiss this as too much James Blunt or Tom McRae, and definitely an out-of-nowhere bit of either grassroots or a superb bit of record company Astroturfing, but on its own merits, it’s not even remotely objectionable. That is, if you’re willing to tune out the lyrics and appreciate the fact that sometimes a tastefully arranged bit of acoustic moping can hit the spot if it’s not sung too preciously and the tune stays in your head. Just this once, I’m willing. But it’s this close to overkill when you have a nicely downtrodden little melody and you stage a sympathy/pity party on top of it.
[7]

Doug Robertson: This is not what a song called “The A Team” should sound like. I’m seriously tempted to get him charged under the Trades Description Act so that he can get sent to jail for a crime he did commit. Anyway, it’s acoustic whiny, yawniness which would be embarrassing at your local open mic night, let alone on an actual physical release.
[2]

Jonathan Bogart: Finally! A cute boy with a guitar takes Real Music to the debased slag heap that is the UK pop chart.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: The Script’s discarded footage finally sees the light of day!
[4]

Michaela Drapes: I was in the midst of writing this off as some kind of Plain White Ts-meets-Damien Rice photocopy with a dash of Lily Allen’s snarky phrasing, until I caught on to the lyric, and completely fell apart. That was a moment, which, I think, ultimately reveals the root of Sheeran’s success. “The A Team” fits right in to the canon of British downer drug songs; not to make light of the subject matter, of course. There’s a very fine line here between preachy and melancholy that’s very easy to cross, and Sheeran pulls off this modern day morality tale without a hint of hackneyed sentimentality, which is admirable indeed.
[8]

Zach Lyon: I will not try to vouch for the value of his individual lyrics, as I know they are quite bad. And the music is perhaps nothing more than one of the sweeter turns on the Scrubs best-of soundtrack. But I will defend the content itself, as, despite the slight fetishization of the addict, he seems to write as if he knows her well enough, personally, to write a sympathetic and desperately aching song for her. Maudlin, corny though it may be, it hits me hard.
[7]

But not before we suffer through “Day-O” as a Jason Derülo song…

[Video][Website]
[3.91]

Pete Baran: I am already poorly disposed to this record, as I lost a half heard bet over whether the backing was The Original or Robin S. (they do sound a lot alike). And well done slipping the namecheck in straight away Jason, else people may want the Robin S. track. Clearly he knows he is not being big or clever which is why he throws “The Banana Boat Song” in to distract us. I have always admired Jason’s chutzpah, and this is the ultimate statement of it. And a lot funnier than “Show Me Love” to boot.
[5]

Michaela Drapes: Ok, that was weird. Jason Derülo was just singing “The Banana Boat Song” and then all of a sudden Robin S.’s massive house track “Show Me Love” (er, not to be confused with the other Robyn’s “Show Me Love”) is his jam? I literally have no idea what’s going on here. I’m so lost. There’s lots of other samples crammed in too that make sense in context of things you would hear in the club (I guess?), but as a party track it’s kind of lackluster. I mean, if you’re going to gank all this great material, you’d better blow it up widescreen. The weird thing is, every time I listen to this song, I can totally hear Ke$ha pulling it off more successfully, possibly with the assistance of Sean Kingston. Which, perhaps, is not the overall effect that Derulo was going for here.
[3]

Michelle Myers: Is that “The Banana Boat Song”? Is this a joke? Maybe this ridiculous chorus would be tolerable if the rest of the song didn’t take itself so seriously.
[4]

Doug Robertson: With recycling apparently being the only thing that can save the polar bears from a watery grave, I’m all for re-appropriating old tunes and turning them into something exciting for a new audience, but at least try and use a bit of thought, originality or something so it doesn’t sound like you’ve just thrown together the first two records you’ve heard because your time in the recording studio is just about to run out. But, unlike his previous singles, he doesn’t say his name in the first five seconds which has been ruining the music round in my local pub quiz, so he can have a couple of points for that at least.
[4]

Iain Mew: “Bitch, I’m a star!” notwithstanding, this does not proudly present Jason as a horrible person to quite the extent that “In My Head” did. Its charmless repetition of already old ideas does still make it seem to drag on for a lot longer than four minutes, though.
[3]

Alfred Soto: What do you get when you sample Harry Belafonte and “Show Me Love,” add rhythm guitar, and an average Usher clone? An above average dance tune.
[5]

Zach Lyon: This song has absolutely no positive qualities. And I like both “The Banana Boat Song” and “Show Me Love.” It’s got nothing going for it. Still, I’m unable to score this anything less than what I’m scoring it, as even a [2] might imply that this song is more noticeable than it really is. Nothing to see here, carry on.
[3]

Jonathan Bogart: All things being equal, I’m more in favor of a song that interpolates a hit from 1956 than one that doesn’t — but this isn’t all things being equal, this is Jason Derülo, who I’ve never had any affection for (because there’s not even enough there to hate, let alone love), and this is yet another entry in 2011’s The Club Is the Point of Life saga, which scholars of the future will someday compile into a single volume and call the definitive poetry of the age. Not because they understand what (if anything) was meant by it, but because like so many cockroaches it’s all that will have lasted.
[5]

Alex Ostroff: As the environment slowly deteriorates, and pop stars everywhere do their best to alert us to the oncoming Apopcalypse, it’s good to know that someone is being responsible and repurposing spare bits of old hits. By 2012, 97% recycled pop will be the only way to stave off complete depletion of the melody mines and a serious shortage of raw material for production production plants.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Among the last few years’ lingering meme-viruses: a picture of mechanically separated chicken, muscle and bone all pureed and swirled like strawberry soft-serve ice cream, grotesque in its artificiality but ultimately harmless. Similarly, here we’ve got a slurry of “Day-O,” “Show Me Love,” the Guetta-thump and unidentifiable filler, drained more of water with each new chorus, with a little “Jason Derulo” on top like margarine. You’ll dance to it when it’s around, tolerate it amidst other courses, but who’d specifically go look for it at the market?
[4]

Edward Okulicz: An unremarkable song with a remarkable sample and an annoying interpolation in the chorus and absolutely nothing to recommend it beyond some pleasingly stupid sirens. That said, any revival of THAT 90s sound, not just from “Show Me Love” but beloved of Livin’ Joy, Alex Party and not seen since Steps’ “Deeper Shade Of Blue“, has surely GOT to be good. I was all set to endorse this trend until I saw the new Taio Cruz single is a collaboration with The Nightcrawlers, eliciting howls of derision and face-palms. Raise your standards, 2011.
[4]

Now let’s all imagine “Big Green Tractor” as a Ke$ha song…

[Video][Website]
[6.30]

Chuck Eddy: This song has been puttering around the backroads ever since roly-poly hick-hopper Colt Ford did it (with co-writer Brantley Gilbert’s chorus-hook help) on his 2008 debut album; Brantley added his own version last year, and now this — finally a great big hit, but the way Nashville did it was by blanding it more each subsequent time it was redone. Diminishing returns, so by now the rap parts are only barely recognizable as such, even if Ludacris did do them on the CMT Awards. Truth is, the song wasn’t all that great in the first place: Even its rural petulance goes through the motions, and the namedrop making fun of George Jones’s riding lawnmower D.W.I. (I guess that’s what it’s doing?) just seems gratuitous.
[5]

Zach Lyon: Of course, Aldean doesn’t commit to the idea of rapping, instead appropriating Colt Ford’s verses into some classic country talk-singing. No problem with that. The problem is that Colt’s verses only translate well for a couple lines before they start to sound off. That sing-songy “I know somethin’ you don’t know” comes off natural when Colt does it, because it’s not unnatural for rap to occasionally break into melody. When Aldean does it, he makes it less melodic than the rest of the verse, which makes the opposite of sense, and the weakness starts to show. By the time he threatens to knock your loud mouth out, the verse has lost any semblance of concord between what’s being said and how it’s being delivered. Would’ve been much, much better if Colt’s original were just repackaged as a single, replacing Brantley Gilbert with Aldean’s gorgeous chorus and the lush muddiness of this new production.
[6]

Michaela Drapes: I’m always a bit of a mess when a song goes on and on about the pleasures of night drives on out-of-the-way country roads (that was one of my favorite pastimes before moving to Brooklyn), so that may make me a bit biased to the treacly nostalgia of the lyric, but I’m also susceptible to falling for the smooth references to Lynyrd Skynrd in the production (so prevalent, in fact, that this borders on being a spruced-up Drive By Truckers song). And, in lieu of an “anything but country or rap” crack, I’ll just point out that to my ears the spoken bits owe more to Charlie Daniels’ delivery on “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” than any rap source material. I’ve definitely come to like this track more than Colt Ford’s original version; he always seems like he’s trying too hard, while Aldean managed to make a spoken bridge in the middle of a country track seem like the most natural thing in the world — even more so when you bolt on a cameo from Ludacris, too.
[7]

Josh Langhoff: Great to see Colt Ford’s country rap going Top 10 on both the country chart AND the Hot 100, but I wish Aldean’s version was better. He may sing it better than Brantley Gilbert — who wouldn’t? — but he lacks Ford’s authority as a rapper, so his “Dirt Road Anthem” comes across as a stiff novelty more than a real live genre fusion. Also, the big country radio production forfeits the originals’ dirt road-sy ambiance. In the song’s favor, it flouts the Nanny State’s open container laws and it doesn’t put me to sleep like Gilbert’s Halfway to Heaven album.
[5]

Anthony Easton: The chorus isn’t rock, which is odd, because Aldean has been a rocker for a long time. But the choruses, with their verbal acuity and speed sound more hip-hop then any of the talk-singing that country has its roots in. It is less well-written than Big K.R.I.T., but spends less time in a desire to match genre purity, and I think it’s better performed. But it’s exciting that they can be compared.
[7]

Alfred Soto: I keep waiting for an Aldean single to knock me out. Thanks to a semi-rap and how he makes you savor that cold beer, this one comes closest.
[6]

Sally O’Rourke: “Dirt Road Anthem” is the rare stab at country rap that doesn’t insist upon its own novelty. Unlike modern country artists who name-drop the greats, Aldean sounds like he’s learned a thing or two from George Jones. And unlike the ’80s cheese-rock fetish plaguing most of Nashville, Aldean’s band isn’t afraid to get its hands a little dirty. “Dirt Road Anthem” isn’t perfect – the jokier lyrics clash with Aldean’s intensity, and at times the instrumentation abuts Nickelback – but it maps out an intriguing alternative route for the future of mainstream country.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: I wish there was more lyrical acknowledgement of a musical debt beyond George Jones — and I don’t mean hip-hop, as the patter sections owe more to “A Boy Named Sue” and “Subterranean Homesick Blues” than to “Bring the Noise.” But this is a fine nostalgic reverie.
[7]

Alex Ostroff: The country-singer-rapping trick has been deployed before, but this is the first time it hasn’t felt condescending. Aldean’s not particularly good at rapping, but he’s not deploying hip-hop slang with a wink to his audience or making jokes about gangsters. He’s just saying his piece. For that alone, I’m prepared to give him some credit. In the pantheon of non-rappers rapping, he’s not as marvelous as LFO but he’s certainly not as cringe-worthy as Madonna.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: An anthem for the least anthemic hours: when the sun’s too hot for you to peel yourself off the porch, you’ve poured enough tar-heavy beer into your gullet to nudge your center of gravity toward the concrete, and your brain’s lurching between shutdown and wondering, all a-mutter, whether Jason’s flow reminds you more of T.I. or Ke$ha.
[7]