Age-inappropriate song is age-inappropriate.

[Video][Website]
[4.33]

Sally O’Rourke: Strange how Lopez, once so intent on reminding listeners who she was, is now content to sound so anonymous.
[5]

Alfred Soto: I expect Wayne to howl from the holding pen in which he’s been confined for five years, but for J. Lo not to acquire a smidgen of charisma or gravitas — never mind commercial sense — re-enforces the argument that she was always a tan, fetchingly legged blank. You’re past forty and still hanging with creeps like Wayne and using phrases like “I’m Into You”?
[2]

Jonathan Bogart: In most circumstances swapping out Pitbull for Lil Wayne would be a tradeup, but J. Lo neglected to read the fine print and got stuck with this damp squib of a like song (it doesn’t have the energy to be a love song) in place of the Lambada-fueled monster that was “On the Floor.”
[5]

Doug Robertson: I’ve never quite understood the continuing career of Jennifer Lopez. She’s one of those artists who seems to be unthinkingly hailed as an all-conquering superstar, even though her entire back catalogue struggles to be anything more than vaguely alright if you like that sorta thing. She’s the musical equivalent of a Wetherspoons pub: hard to avoid, not entirely unpleasant, but never your first choice. Her previous single, while being a complete mess in the best possible sense of the word, did at least have a sense of adventure about it, but this seems reluctant to get out of the shallow end. It’s a grey canvas of a song, and at least a blank canvas has an air of possibilities hanging over it.
[4]

Jer Fairall: Dubious credit granted for the truly puzzling “sharp shooter you can call me the zion” (though I doubt even she knows WTF she’s talking about there); for somehow reducing Wayne to aural wallpaper (though the existence of “How To Love” has rendered that far less shocking than it might have been); and for the jarring percussion break late in the song (though that only excites on account of the temporary pulse it lends this otherwise dullard of a track.)
[3]

Edward Okulicz: I’m not going to hold it against J. Lo that she’s always been some label honcho’s idea of an irresistible force, but prior to this song, you at least got the idea she wanted it. Cutting edge production? Not here, I’m sure I heard these beats over an Armenian Eurovision entry a few years ago. And here, she stumbles over lines both tame and terrible with nothing approaching charisma or hunger.
[5]

Mallory O’Donnell: Seriously, “love controller?” Anyone who thinks this idiot is even remotely relevant at this stage in the game, please raise your hands. That’s what I thought.
[2]

Josh Langhoff: “Got me hooked with your love controller” seems to stake out new territory in the realm of terrible J. Lo lyrics. I’m not sure if she’s singing about a fishhook, a joystick, a dick, or some hideous combination thereof. Meanwhile, in the realm of terrible lyrics about making women wet, we’ve got Lil Wayne. Who decided wetness would be this year’s big rap trope? But that’s way better than J. Lo’s previous infomercial barking (“What I need from you is not available in stores”), paranoid finger-wagging (“First of all I won’t take you cheating on me”), and the insufferable acceptance speech that constitutes “Jenny From the Block” (“Love my life and my public / Put God first and can’t forget to stay real”, arrrgggghhh). Her voice sounds warm and relaxed, too, so this may be my favorite J. Lo single. Weird.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: I don’t know which is more surprising: that somebody managed to find a minor scale that still sounds dangerous in 2011, that the somebody was J.Lo, or that the somebody in fact was Taio fucking Cruz. Sometimes it’s worth it to try really hard!
[7]

It’s a crossover extravaganza!

[Video][Website]
[6.08]

Renato Pagnani: Tom Breihan once (half-)jokingly wrote that Pitbull > Nas. One area where Pitbull bests Nas without question is crossover smashes, mostly because Pitbull doesn’t do anything but crossover smashes. He pulls off the sleazy-but-still-endearing rapper persona better than anyone these days, and it’s because he embraces his sleaziness. Pitbull knows the sleaze factor of the old come-on-baby-come-home-with-me-tonight-because-the-world-might-end-in-the-morning shtick, so he grafts some apocalyptic trance synths onto the four-on-the-floor beat and gets Ne-Yo to mispronounce “to-noight.” He doesn’t try to hide the fact he’s trying to get in your girl’s pants, and the strange thing is you don’t want to punch him in the face for it as much as do a round of shots with him, chuckling at his upfront audaciousness.
[6]

Anthony Easton: Pitbull’s hyper-performative heterosexuality here becomes quite hilarious when you realise how much of the bear community wants to fuck him quite severely.
[8]

Mallory O’Donnell: Remember when the idea of hip-hop and R&B artists collaborating on a club-friendly keyboard jam was exciting and fresh? I’m generally a fan of Pitbull, but this makes Usher’s synthpop sound positively edgy in comparison. There’s just something so dry and mannered about it — the unmistakable aroma of a professional music studio, the whiff of last year’s trends and the oh-so-naughties scent of a parcel of unnecessary guest artists.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: When Chris Brown did this kind of monoto-need you now bosh, the point was to distract you through sheer blandness from the fact that he’s an abusive jackass with a zombie career. What’s Pitbull’s excuse?
[4]

Michelle Myers: I really like the beginning of this song, where it kind of sounds like that Black Eyed Peas song about tonight being a good night and where Pitbull rhymes “kodak” with “kodak.” And there’s something appealing about Ne-Yo advising you to “grab somebody sexy and tell ’em hey.” Unfortunately, the rest of the song is the average apocalyptic club-rap that has been dominating the charts during 2011. It’s strange times we live in, that a pop song this big and complex could sound so stale and uninteresting.
[6]

Al Shipley: Half of the song features the same rote Pit verses and squeaky skronky synths as every other dance pop hit of the year, but the unexpected beauty of Ne-Yo’s gliding hook and that gentle piano riff elevate the whole thing to serious summer jam status.
[8]

Zach Lyon: The performances rank as such: 1. Ne-Yo, 2. Nayer, 3. Afrojack, 4. Pitbull. Which isn’t to say that Afrojack’s production isn’t perfectly adequate for the song at hand. Pitbull’s bridge, for that matter, is crucial, though his verses are Just The Worst (“I’m gonna fall on top of your girl” is such a failed “punchline” that it’s difficult for me to listen to). And Nayer’s… bridge? post-chorus? is miniature both in length and voice but also crucial. But Ne-Yo! Maybe I’m just desperate for more of him on the radio, but this chorus is just one giant birthday cake with a stripper inside. All the song’s parts can be separated so cleanly, and its structure is so wonky (I’m no pop music theorist but I can count at least forty bridges, including that drum fill) that its consistency is impressive. Perhaps it’s because the four names it’s credited to are the only names involved in its primary creation (written by Pit, Ne-Yo and Afrojack, produced by Afrojack) that it sounds like a genuinely collaborative attempt at showcasing the individual talents of each.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: Most of the points come from Ne-Yo’s chorus, which is pure horniness over video game lasers, because that’s what sticks. I have no idea why you’d want to hear Pitbull’s agreeable but average raps, but you wouldn’t change the channel to avoid them.
[7]

Alfred Soto: With Ne-Yo singing a more fetching hook than anything on his last album, Pitbull should have stretched in kind, but all he does is remind me that he’s fast ossifying into the Lil Wayne of coke-fueled club bangers, Miami edition.
[3]

Jonathan Bogart: I can’t imagine that this song makes any sense outside of very specific atmospheric conditions; but fuck what Yankees or other weather-experiencing citizenry think, this is made for the broad stripe of hell that is Los Angeles to Miami in the summertime. A beat as hot as the pavement in the afternoon, synths as icy as a windowless warehouse pumped full of air conditioning, stocked with characters right out of central casting: the party-hearty Latino, the exquisitely-dressed romantic, the woman who’s barely there, just a low murmur and a smile and she’s faded. The sun’s setting, and the palm trees are on fire against the sky; the piano droplets fall like ice from a too-sweaty drink. It was a lovely fantasy while it lasted.
[8]

Doug Robertson: Everybody wants a slice of the Saturday night TV-soundtrack money that the Black Eyed Peas cornered with “I Gotta Feeling,” don’t they? This isn’t that good — and don’t argue, it was good before it was overplayed so much that the very atoms of the song itself turned to dust — and it’s reluctant to actually let go and celebrate the moment, but it’ll keep you going through the early evening, just long enough before the good stuff arrives.
[6]

Matthew Harris: When I hear this, I imagine it playing on some future episode of Jersey Shore. Ronnie and Sammi have gotten together again. He’s wiping away coke-filled tears with his gorilla paw, his voice squeaking as he vows against grinding. She’s apologizing for scratching his face with a flung cellphone. They embrace, a brown hand and pink nails across the silver spangles of his enormous Ed Hardy shirt. Memorial fireworks spritz over the bay. You don’t really notice the song. It punctuates the scene’s mild pathos just enough to keep you watching, but it definitely won’t be enough to heighten any sadness, later, when your worsening insomnia keeps you up.
[6]

Single handedly saving the music industry, apparently.

[Video][Website]
[4.75]

Pete Baran: “Daddy, what did you do in the Adele Wars?” a future child might ask, and I fear they will get the same answer they got when they previously asked me “Daddy, what did you do in the Coldplay Wars?”. I stood on the sidelines, not sure what all the fuss was about, finding neither act deserving of the massive sales or adulation, but admitting that they were quite good at what they do. “Set Fire to the Rain” benefits from an impossible central metaphor to make it interesting. Much like some other act noticing the stars were all yellow (even if they aren’t).
[4]

Anthony Easton: I keep trying to get Adele, and I think my problem with this, on a general level is that it doesn’t have any desperation — beautiful voice, but it’s not pure enough not to need the roughness, and it’s not rough enough not to need the purity. The advantage of something like “Rolling in Deep,” is that she skillfully works through a bombastic anglo tradition that weds the instincts of Bassey to the longing of Winehouse, and collapses the category into her own time and place. This song tries to do the whiskey soaked lassitude of Dusty and Marianne Faithfull — the yin to the previous traditions bombast — and you sense she could do it, but Dusty broke yr heart, and Faithfull was ruined — there is no ruin in Adele’s practice. Disappointing.
[6]

Matthew Harris: Sure, the Dusty-like way Adele can, at the song’s beginning, let her vocals cool to a cracked whisper is undeniably wonderful. But then everything balloons into a cavern recently hollowed out by a Coldplay song, with violins and pianos fluttering around the ascending and over-reverbed vocals. And the vague, confusing lyrics (how can rain “scream your name”?) sound like the type of teenage poetry you write when you long less for actual romance, but for the adult experience a failed romance brings. I’m the biggest fan of teenage sentiments, but not when they’re dressed in a sober pantsuit.
[4]

Alfred Soto: It takes stronger chutzpah and worse taste than Adele’s to transform fire and rain into powerful symbols again; the surprise is she almost does. Bits of melisma and her use of repetition are more suited to a dance track, but don’t tell the fans who’ve made her the latest avatar for British Good Taste.
[6]

Zach Lyon: Yeah, we’re still in the middle of Adele’s feels-like-four-hundred-weeks run at the top of the charts with a song that’s only there for reasons entirely unmusical, so I’m going to have trouble not judging this on a bitter curve. This doesn’t blow me away. It does nothing to rid my brain of the thought that Adele has turned herself into a vessel for self-righteous rockism and that she has done so by making supremely lifeless music. This is an exercise in posturing, lacking in urgency, even the urgency to communicate why such posturing could ever have a point. It doesn’t. At least Winehouse had enough sense to not act a martyr on everyone, and she did it with at least a millimeter of personality, too.
[3]

Chuck Eddy: Given that Adele’s got the Year’s Biggest Album, I naively assumed that, when I finally heard a song from it (this is the first — yes, I do in fact live in cave), it’d somehow feel like a major leap — concept-wise, hook- wise, middlebrow-turned-upper-middlebrow-wise, whatever — from what she was doing last time out. Didn’t expect to like it, but expected something. But this is just… wow. I basically hate Amy Winehouse, and I get how re-imagining Amy’s constipated faux soul revival minus her unhealthy aspects might add up to a salable commodity. But next to this nonentity, Amy is Aretha.
[3]

Jonathan Bradley: If you loved Dido, Joss Stone, Amy Winehouse, and Duffy, here’s someone else you’ll forget about next year who makes real music.
[3]

B Michael Payne: I’ve never heard Adele in a non-television context. Listening as I did through my laptop speakers, I think her voice was perhaps underserved. It’s certainly not bad, but it seems like an over-articulated champagne flute: There are a lot of details, but they’re employed in the service of something extremely insubstantial. Lyrics-wise, I dislike songs like this, a permutation of “Ironic.” The first verse’s poetics of postural juxtaposition leaves me cold. The titular hook makes me think of every bad movie I’ve ever seen.
[5]

Jer Fairall: This felt like a low point on 21‘s slapdash patchwork of superstar writers and producers (this time Fraser T. Smith, he of “Break Your Heart” and “Dirty Picture”) back when I wrote about it, and for a good minute I am able to forget exactly why that was. Then the bombastic, string-drenched chorus kicks in and sweeps away whatever elegance Adele had let build up until that point into a mess of overwrought sentiment, like an American Idol showpiece for those who felt “Rolling in the Deep” failed to offer the requisite potential for melismatic grandstanding.
[4]

Sally O’Rourke: An attempt to wed the faint-but-audible pulse of “Rolling in the Deep” to the dinner party piano of “Someone Like You,” “Set Fire to the Rain” succeeds only in suggesting that maybe Adele really is as dull as 19 sounded. Based on the title, I was half-expecting a Snow Patrol mash-up. At least those guys can engineer a memorable chorus.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: It was when I listened to this right before Beyoncé’s “1+1” that Adele came into focus for me properly: she’s indie not because the economics of her pop stardom are any different from anyone else’s, but because in her music passion, and nailing a particular, previously-uninhabited tone, trumps skill. Beyoncé has total control over her instrument; Adele is carried along by hers, and when it has the perfect setting (starts with R, ends with Olling in the Deep) it’s the greatest noise in the world. But when the setting’s more generic, as it is here — this could be a Pussycat Dolls song if the lyrics were smarter — she’s somehow lost in that voice, so much bigger than she is, and all the choking passion rings hollow.
[6]

Michaela Drapes: The construction of this song, like everything else Adele’s done to date, is impeccable: the delicately proportioned swell of the meandering verses into the explosive chorus into the heart-rending bridge into the suitably bleak coda into the please-baby-please outro. I’ve listened to both 21 and 19 a lot, and I’ve wavered on whether I find Adele’s suites of perfect songs bloodless and depressing or impossibly amazing; this song is definitely the latter. With a bow on it.
[9]

It’s best if you try to not imagine his face as he sings.. or ever, really.

[Video][Website]
[4.50]

Jonathan Bogart: My “American Idol” recapper of choice described Scotty McCreery’s victory as being due to a “trick voice.” Just how trick I wouldn’t realize until I listened to the song: it’s the mellow, authoritative voice of a fourth-generation George Jones clone coming out of the grinning skull of a sixteen-year-old kid. He’s got all the details down pat, the little slides into sincerity and the warm chuckle that makes your thighs melt just a little if you take to that kind of thing; but he’s missing, as of course he is, any sense of a life lived. The song doesn’t help, it’s equal parts unmemorable and disgustingly soppy, but a great singer could save it. He just toddles around the words, chewing them like he’s not sure what they mean.
[4]

Alex Ostroff: Scotty has a smooth and deep voice that’s well-suited to country and he knows how to deploy it effectively in the name of all that is saccharine. What Scotty doesn’t know is how to write a song that doesn’t sound like a bad parody of every country ballad I’ve ever loved. It’s generic, and could be directed to absolutely anyone. There’s no sense of who he loves or how or WHY. The worst crime committed by this song, however, is that it conforms exactly to the prejudices of every person I know who has written off country without exploring it. This song is exactly as facile, as manipulative, as commercial and as corny as those destined to hate it expect. Country deserves better. We deserve better. Hell, American Idol deserves better. (Oh for the days of Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood, etc.) Love is “what words cannot describe, but I’ll try”? Try harder.
[2]

Pete Baran: Scotty’s ultra trad country delivery is almost completely salvaged by slipping in his own Emmylou Harris a-like backer on the chorus. Because beyond that this is nothing but country music radio filler, unremarkable outside of its somewhat odd title. Which is probably the secret of its success, because it’s not Country Radio filler, it’s actually CMT filler, where we can see how big “this big” really is. And its blandness suggests to me there must be something going on here for this to be big at all. (Scurries away to do research – scurries back.) Aha, American Idol winner, teen with the voice of a 45 year old country star, suddenly it all makes sense. Pity I don’t think he’s the Idol of even his own single.
[3]

B Michael Payne: It’s an object lesson in criticism: Even though country music is the music I’d be most proficient at making, it’s also the kind I feel least proficient at judging. I do know intimately, though, the “I love you thiiiiiis much” gesture with your arms wide and fingers stretching. And it’s precisely this relatability that makes music of any type good. The song’s instrumentation is innocuous, McCreery’s voice is generically nü-country, and the pedal steel drips lay like spun sugar across it all. Still, I like this song quite a bit.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: I’m not impressed when a voice bigger or older than the singer comes out of their mouth and doesn’t do anything that wouldn’t impress me coming from that older, bigger person. The story of this kid is basically just, you know, an American The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, and that’s what this is – a theatre of mimicry rather than compelling original product. The verses, pretty as they are, are mere scaffolding for the gaudy, cheesy design of the chorus, which is as awful as you fear based on the title. I don’t even think country would have been the most flattering arrangement for the tune, but I guess even Idol franchises must cut their coat to suit their cloth.
[3]

Michaela Drapes: As someone with a massive aversion to watching “American Idol,” I’m shocked to hear this rather remarkable voice coming out of that geek I saw in all the photos online. Yeah, he’s listened to way too much Randy Travis — but man, for all the despicable sentiment of the lyric, this is one hell of a song.
[8]

Anthony Easton: Can someone explain why the only real break out stars of Idol are country singers, and the country singers on Idol tend to be super stars, and the idol stories are often stories of working class poverty and family disorder — which country tells well — but they didn’t hire anyone at all from Nashville to be a new judge? (Which is why Blake Shelton on the Voice is so interesting, though Cee Lo coaching legit country singers might be the real story out of this year). McCreery has a beautiful voice that is mature for his teenage years, a sound that is capable of seduction, but this track is sexless, generic, bland, clichéd, over-produced, slick. If he is smart, he will be able to work out what Idol means, and how he can struggle out of it.
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: “I Love You This Big” is a love song, but it might as well be about fame or self-esteem or Anthony Weiner’s resignation. It’s less important for what it is than for its status as a referendum on McCreery’s future: will he be a Carrie or a Taylor (Hicks, not Swift)? Pro: The Idol demographic and the country demographic (not to mention the rural-ish North Carolina demographic) are edging closer every season. Con: That didn’t work so well for Bucky Covington or Josh Gracin or Kellie Pickler. Pro: He’s a fun novelty on the show. Con: So was Taylor Hicks; the show only lasts so long. Pro: “I Love You This Big” is a solidly built song, albeit in a bland way. Con: It’s bland with a title straight out of the “This Is My Now” factory. Pro: Scotty’s got an awesome facsimile of an inky, aged country voice. Con: He’s got an inky, aged country voice that’s an awesome facsimile.
[5]

Zach Lyon: Well, a fitting track for Li’l Scotty McCreery (that’s a “Li’l Sebastian” Li’l, not a “Lil Wayne” Lil) who we all know happens to be an eight year-old disease-ridden orphan with the voice of a golden lion god. In “I Love You This Big,” he successfully shows off the vocal chops discovered and hopefully exploited by the greedy fat cat record exec who happened to be sulking down just the right brick road, as he heard Li’l Scotty’s voice from a nearby alleyway, singing a song of lament to his loyal squirrel friend, Stanley. “Could this be?” the fat cat wonders aloud, his hand to his ear. “Could this voice so pure be my ticket to endless riches… and Cecilia’s love?” In Act II, we find Li’l Scotty, fresh in a new pair of knickers, singing a song based on the words his parents told him — “We love you this big!” — following a successful game of Peek-A-Boo, only months before they would both be shot by hunters. Indeed, things sure are looking up, fat cat record exec. “Well, joll-y!” he shouts, for that is his catchphrase.
[3]

Jonathan Bradley: Not anywhere near as bad as the twee title would suggest (the Lucksmiths barely got away with it), and he’s got a hefty voice for a ’90s baby. “I know I’m still young,” he sings, “but I know how I feel.” I’m not sure that he does though; after that strong opening, the performance slides into country balladry distinguished by proficiency rather than emotion. Romance shouldn’t be this bland.
[4]

Tremble in fear, Americans! It’s another Girls Aloud solo joint!

[Video][Website]
[7.12]

Pete Baran: The odd thing about Nicola’s solo debut is that whilst it seems like a surprising stab from a member of Girls Aloud, it actually sounds exactly like a Girls Aloud single could have sounded in 2006. Remember when Girls Aloud dazzled with interested stabs at the pop song? Well this is from the “Love Machine”/”The Show” stable, with the one caveat that it has just one voice, and a voice which, despite all the electronic frippery which staccatos it all over the shop, is clearly Nicola’s. Perhaps what is surprising is that it is actually so good, which again shouldn’t be surprising from a member of the 00’s most successful (critically and actually) British girl band.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: Nicola’s personal story of finding herself and gaining confidence is compelling enough if you like her, and I do, but this as a debut makes me worry that it’s a theme that’s going to be clumsily shoe-horned into everything she does. The verses which set up the story of a girl lacking confidence work well enough. The Daphne & Celeste-esque chorus of triumph is a winner. But the pre-chorus, where she boasts of having “turned this whole thing ’round” has an awkward melody whose seeming mismatch with the music shows, if anything, tentativeness. It’s maybe too twitchy for its own good, but when the production gets out of the way of the cheerleading, it’d have sounded fantastic coming out of anyone. And it’s a good pop song once its hooks have infested the pleasure centres of your brain in spite of the the iffy narrative-building threatening to bring it down.
[8]

Michaela Drapes: Bless! Not only is this the first visible evidence of Sleigh Bells trickling down into the mainstream, it’s also something to replace the Ting Ting’s “Great DJ” in the “earwormy hook about drums” footrace. Finally. An immediate frontrunner for Summer Jam 2011. Infinitely remixable and catchy; seems pretty undefeatable to me. Leave it to Nicola to save us all from our pop pretensions and deliver us from Gaga, amen.
[9]

Matthew Harris: It’s barely more than some video-game sirens, Major Lazer drum loops and high-pitched chanting, but it still hits every music-appreciation sensor I have. I also hate to admit it, but Roberts’ underdog gawky rap is probably a key part of the song’s adolescent charm. With “Beat,” the sulky one from Girls Aloud outshines the entire output of her former group-mates Cole and Coyle.
[10]

Katherine St Asaph: The gimmickry here is much and obvious, so it’s no wonder everyone (myself included) is selling this as “Run the World (Girls)” meets “Lose My Breath” by doing lines with the Vocoder Cheerleading Squad. But what makes “Beat of My Drum” a solid single, rather than just chintzy blogbait, is its conventionality. The verse drops away so that pianos can stab at the chorus in common time, the sonic fuckery arranges itself into a plausible dance break for the bridge, and Nicola’s 15 minutes get years tacked on.
[9]

Michelle Myers: It’s hardly Nicola Roberts’ fault that Diplo gave her more or less the same beat he gave Beyonce on “Run The World (Girls),” but I hold her fully accountable for the bored, lackluster sing-rapping here. Stick to singing, Nicola.
[4]

Jonathan Bradley: A squelchy racket too stilted to be danced to, no matter how much Roberts hectors us to do so. A pile-up of percussive elements does not, on its own, create rhythm, and while “Beat of My Drum” has an exuberance not entirely resistible, it doesn’t move.
[4]

B Michael Payne: “Beat of My Drum” sounds like Baltimore club music —like Beyoncé’s sure-to-be-a-hit “Countdown” and Kanye’s “All of the Lights.” But after its opening, it almost branches out in a few directions. Its chorus, for instance, is like a Spice Girls chorus, and the verses are, I suppose, pretty Uffie-ish. It doesn’t come together very well for me, though. It sounds like the aural equivalent of a copy, cut, and paste zine made by a particularly annoying friend’s annoying younger sister.
[3]

Alex Ostroff: “Beat of My Drum” feels amateurish and a bit patchwork, especially coming from a veteran of the sleekest British pop outfit of last decade, and yet somehow this works in its favour. The verses stay in lockstep over Major Lazer’s whirring and whirling production. Their electronic breakdown two minutes in is a thing of wonder, chopping up and reconfiguring Nicola’s vocals into a sea of rhythm and noise. The chorus, on the other hand, is beamed in from an alternate universe where Gwen Stefani’s solo career is going strong, all cheerleader chants and schoolyard rhymes. This hodgepodge of fun is forced together by a bridge that is awkward at best, and utterly fails to render the song coherent. There are worse things to be, though, than a more frivolous M.I.A.
[7]

Iain Mew: An M.I.A. meets Robyn concoction (there’s a whole lot of “We Dance to the Beat” in there) which manages to sound in every way exactly like you would expect it to based on the pre-release coverage, but to be direct and fun enough to get away with it. I guess being shamelessly pandered to can be enjoyable when done well.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: For all the centrality which cheerleading supposedly has in the social organization of American high schools (I wouldn’t know, I was out of the country at the time), there have been remarkably few great pop songs that organize themselves aroud cheer conventions. Toni Basil, Gwen Stefani, and …? And yes, I know this is British and that I’m probably listening to it wrong, but I never got into Girls Aloud, so all I can do is hear with my American ears. And I hear pom-poms and high kicks, only bigger, flashier, and mutant-powered.
[8]

Frank Kogan: Half-frazzled frat girl gets uncertainly to her feet, sways intermittently to the rhythm, and, when the chorus hits, starts waving her arms for balance, shrieking something about the beat and inexplicably reaching transcendence. Sits down with a giggle. Remembers none of this the next day.
[8]

Zach Lyon: Near-identical to “Super Bass,” with verses that may as well not exist leading to half a glorious chorus. And bridge, in this case. I’m not a fan of “L-O-V-E” or any other case where a word so significant is used as a placeholder, but hell if “DANCE TO THE BEAT OF MY DRUM!” (in all caps, with at least one exclamation point) isn’t worthy of your adherence and worship.
[7]

Kat Stevens: I wish Nicola all the best (I still feel guilty about menacing her with a stuffed fox that time) but this doesn’t quite add up to a bona-fide banger for me. Diplo’s choppy backing on the verses doesn’t quite go with her schoolgirl vocal — which is skippy instead of snotty, like e.g. M.I.A.’s. The chorus has a gloriously meaningless hook but the synths sound washed out and five years old. Still, it’s a damn sight better than Nadine’s Tesco Value Nightclub.
[6]

Doug Robertson: I remember well the moment I first realised that Nicola was the best member of Girls Aloud and destined to be one of the greatest popstars who ever lived. It was an early publicity shot of them with “Doctor” Fox, the “wacky,” “zany,” local radio “DJ” and, while the other girls were smiling heartily, looking like they could imagine nothing more fun than spending time with the talent vaccuum, Nicola sat there, her face clearly expressing boredom, disdain and a desperate desire to be anywhere else at that point in time, just like everyone would be feeling if forced to be in the same room as him. It was moments like that, like the “Rude ginger bitch botherd” skirt, like the fact she didn’t fit into the obvious stereotype of what a girl band member should be and, on the few occasions they actually deigned to give her a solo line, the fact she possessed a unique vocal style that was crying out to be given more space, that caused everyone to realise that she was the true star of the band and about to be showered with all the praise and rewards she deserved. Well, I say everyone, what I actually mean is bloggers, forum posters and people who genuinely care about pop music, but whose opinions tend not to echo the real world in any way. Instead the media at large happily mocked her for being “ugly,” for being a bit moody and for daring to have a personality that didn’t exactly fit into either of the only two stereotypes allowed for female pop stars, namely supine shyness or bolshy bitchiness. And of course, as any psychologist will tell you, continually having your appearance, style, attitude and every single aspect of your entire being mocked unfairly on a daily basis by those more powerful and influential than yourself is exactly what a teenage girl needs to deal with and definitely isn’t the sort of nasty vicious bullying that the self same newspapers occasionally run strongly worded editorials against just after a schoolkid commits suicide. In short, it’s lucky that Nicola is still here, let alone releasing her debut single but, while she may have suffered the slings and arrows of outrageously unfair and unpleasant criticism, she has, as the surprisingly personal lyrics make clear, come out of this whole affair stronger, confident, and prepared to do what she wants to do, and thank whatever deity you may choose to believe in for that, as I can say, without hyperbole or over exaggeration (NOTE: Writer prone to both hyperbole and over exaggeration) that this is the single greatest track you will hear all year and that you might as well destroy the rest of your music collection now. All other music has instantly become irrelevant. Fresh, exciting, sassy and now, this is a clear statement of intent. A big two fingers up to anyone who ever had anything negative to say about her, this is personal in terms of both lyrical content and also being the sort of music she clearly wants to make, without falling into the realms of self indulgence or, worse, misery-fuelled ballad hell. This is music to play while dancing around the kitchen, or any room you may choose, in your underwear, a full on anthem that doesn’t feel the need to dumb down or play to the lowest common denominator. Intelligent, amazing and with the sort of hook that fish would voluntarily impale themselves on, it’s hard to imagine how she can top this with her next single, but with this level of ambition on display it’s clear that that’s not going to be a problem. I wanted this to be good, but even in my wildest dreams I never expected it to be this good. Humanity has peaked, we will never create anything greater, nor more culturally important than this. As a species we can now head towards our inevitable extinction safe in the knowledge that once, just once, in our grey and hopeless existence we achieved a brief moment of genuine perfection. Also, Nicola dances around in her pants in the video.
[10]

Alfred Soto: Robyn meets The Pipettes, to be played over the next Bring It On movie.
[6]

Very nearly our worst-rated song ever. Maybe next time, Bruno…

[Video][Website]
[1.87]

Katherine St Asaph: Ever wanted to hear three and a half minutes of Jason Mraz jacking off?
[1]

Kat Stevens: Jesus Cvnting Christ this is one of the worst things I’ve ever heard. One could generously interpret this self-satisfied mewling as a critical dissection of the devastating effects of full-blown depression: tales of being unable to pick up the phone or comb one’s hair, set to an ironically chirpy backing to represent the outsider’s perspective that the sufferer is just a scrounging layabout. It’s a stretch, especially as surely no-one in that situation would refer to “strutting in my birthday suit” with their “hand down my pants”. As it is, this teeth-grinding snapshot of Mars’ tiny universe gives no hint that said laziness is due to anything other than the trust-funded inertia of a true arsehole.
[0]

Anthony Easton: A song about laziness should not work so hard at ingratiating itself.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: It’s not often that a terrible pop song’s existence actually affects my quality of life, but now I can’t watch the opening bit of QI without getting “The Lazy Song” stuck in my head. This is a really big deal.
[1]

Al Shipley: I can handle Mars in light fluffy romantic mode on “Nothin’ On You” and “Just The Way You Are.” But his attempts at winking, naughty humor on songs like this, “Fuck You” and “Bow Chicka Wow Wow” are just so eye-rollingly lame, especially when the author gets to sing it himself and let you hear how impressed he is with his own corny jokes.
[2]

Alex Ostroff: An ode to low expectations, playing with your balls, coasting by on your parents’ cash and really nice sex with a really nice girl. Her ‘scream’ of “ohmygodthisisgreat,” sounds halfway between sarcasm and a yawn, and suggests that Bruno is just as lazy in the sack as he is everywhere else. ‘The Lazy Song’ phones it in over a ukelele riff that was tired when Jason Mraz used it, and if Mars isn’t going to bother, neither am I.
[2]

Edward Okulicz: Lazy song, lazily written. I mean, for god’s sake, “phone” and “tone” and that’s just the first verse. A terrifying vision of the past, because you know you can trace this backwards through Jason Mraz to god knows, maybe even Sublime. And if that doesn’t scare you, perhaps nothing will.
[0]

Alfred Soto: Where’s Sugar Ray now when we need’em?
[4]

Matthew Harris: Ah! That’s what we’ve been needing: a Sugar Ray-like song about getting bored and masturbating. And doing P90X, which I hoped was a drug, but is only a workout regime. And having “really nice” sex. Is there a marketing computer somewhere that decides which portions of our lives remain unsoundtracked? And does this song fit the “moments of gleeful self-absorption” daypart? If so, ca-ching, I guess.
[0]

Pete Baran: One must resist, resist hard, to not let Bruno merely review the song himself. And pop history has been littered with out of step syncopation merchants who aim at MOR and somehow pick up some fellow travellers along the way. But what worries me are the reports from the CBI about how much of the national GDP has been slashed by the direct and indirect effects of Bruno and his workshy rabble-rousing. Probably $4 billion. Not doing anything never sounded so unappealing.
[2]

Chuck Eddy: “This is not great!” (I just screamed out.) (Well, okay, I am glad he wants to learn how to dougie.)
[4]

Michaela Drapes: I cringe inwardly to think that this is someone’s concept of a “summer jam”, when, in fact, its rightful place is underscoring Carnival cruise ship commercials.
[0]

Jonathan Bradley: Bruno Mars is a smart songwriter, and “The Lazy Song” is an exercise in determined underachievement. This is the effort of a writer indolent enough to drop a Leno-quality Snuggie reference, but keen enough to follow it with a Fallon-worthy Cali Swag District shout out. (We’re still talking late night TV here, though.) Mars’s reggae lope is about as fresh as pajama pants on laundry day, but he’s so arrogantly talented that even his crusty novelty tune is more clever than it needs to be. He could try harder, but look what a smash that Travie McCoy collab was — and it didn’t even have baby scratches.
[4]

Zach Lyon: I keep trying to write a coherent sentence that includes the words “Bruno Mars aspiring to be Travie McCoy” but it’s making me physically sick and I want to throw up now.
[0]

Jer Fairall: Nah, too easy.
[4]

Yes, we do go on about her a bit.

[Video][Website]
[6.55]Michaela Drapes: I kind of love how this song is trying to be all things to all people; like the other hybrid pop/hip-hop songs on Pink Friday, it’s a ready-made mashup: an updated take on “Cars That Go Boom” meets a crushing crystalline chorus beloved of pop starlets. I’m still not sure that the bridge works, but it’ll sound great as the buildup in the club mix. Or, you know, whatever, just post a viral video of yourself dancing around your bedroom ASAP, singing “boom ba boom ba boom boom bass” into a giant pink hairbrush. That’s the spirit!
[7]

Mallory O’Donnell: This would have gotten at least another point or two if it had been called “Super Treble.”
[1]

Pete Baran: Having come late to the Nicki Minaj party I’m never quite sure when I am supposed to be recognising awesome flow, comedy accents and wittily filthy rhymes, when actually half the time she is often the dullest thing on her own record. And sorry Nicki, that’s the case here. But then it is quite a good track: the warm electropoppery that takes over when the chorus kicks in is what makes this a properly fun pop record. Nicki doesn’t make the track any worse, and carries us to the chorus competently, but she is a passenger on her own track here.
[6]

Alex Ostroff: This is the kind of pop song Nicki should be making all the time. Pink Friday as released was a handful of rappity-rap songs, and a lot of cookie-cutter Autotune ballads, which proceeded to shoot up the charts. ‘Super Bass’, relegated to the bonus tracks, outshines every track on the actual album. Nicki deploys double-time rapping and her trademark accents sparingly, keeping things interesting but not obnoxious. Her enthusiasm and personality shine through, and for the first time since Roman’s Revenge or Monster she sounds like she’s genuinely having fun rapping. Ester Dean’s chorus is custom-made for summer, and the production has a lightness of touch that suits the material. The awkwardly sung bridge drags the momentum and holds it back from perfection, but ‘Super Bass’ is a renewal of Nicki’s early promise, and a sign that she’s still a talent to keep your eye on.
[9]

Jonathan Bogart: The bubbly chorus, bubblegum dancehall that yearns more than finds resolution, is what sells it. It’s not often that Nicki Minaj is upstaged by a singer, but her pattery verses amount to an entertaining way to pass the time before Ester Dean comes back with the sugar-rush. If she could make an entire album like this, she’d achieve the greatness she’s perpetually on the brink of.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Look at that: Minaj beats Ke$ha at her own game. The “boom badoom boom” hook is what I want from a summer single.
[8]

B Michael Payne: The song rattles a lot less than I’d expected. I can’t help but try to track down fairly literally the symbolic order of songs like this. It’s for the guys with good sound systems in their cars, which helps them hear the booming bass of the song, which is also the way Nicki’s heart booms when the guys are near. That’s incredibly sweet to me. This is a sweet song, and it showcases Minaj’s strengths. I still wish it had more bass.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: A summer jam, but not just that; this is a jam for any time of year, any positive emotion or any activity you can imagine. Love? Lust? Bliss? Yes. Dancing? Rollerskating? Beach? Driving with the top down? Hell yes. Nicki’s outsize personality comes out to play on something fun, poppy and commercial that still plays to her strengths and her wit.
[8]

Zach Lyon: Is the world really so desperate for a great Nicki single that a song like “Super Bass” — consisting only of a decently catchy chorus she had nothing to do with — gets built up as the great pink hope?
[4]

Asher Steinberg: Leaving the hook aside for a minute, I suppose it’s unfair to hold Nicki’s tendency to lapse into really traditional heterosexual narratives against her. Nothing requires her to be the standard-bearer for gender role bending; nothing says she can’t try to be the mildly racy 2011 equivalent of the Chiffons. The trouble is that she’s just no good at it. To pull off something like “He’s So Fine,” one needs to actually sound attracted. Nikki, notably, isn’t capable of doing the song without framing it in some odd fictive world in which she’s an English girl who has a “thing for American guys,” as if she can’t even rap about liking guys of her own nationality without employing a Brechtian distancing device. As for the hook, it continues pop’s dully self-reflexive trend, pioneered by Britney, of likening throbbing hearts to musical instruments. A comment on the history of the trend: decades ago, rappers started rapping about the aphrodisiac powers of 808 drums, or the ascetic virtues of their DJ’s record-scratching. When rappers did that, it wasn’t this cute self-reflexive reference to the means of their music’s production; rather, like classic rock homages to guitars, rapping about 808s or scratching was a way of talking about the cultural history of those instruments, and about the values they embodied. But when a Britney, or a Nicki Minaj, neither of whom have ever touched an 808 or bass synth, liken their beating hearts to bass, they trivialize the sentiments their similes supposedly are meant to evoke, in the same way that locating every song in the club saps the sentiments contained in those songs of any ramifications outside of the club. Both implicitly send the message that a song is “just music,” in the same stupid sense that defenders of a bad film say it’s “just a movie.” But whereas Britney’s 808 talk is ultimately tragic – “I am reduced to a digital mimesis of myself, even my passions are programmed” – Nikki’s is an admission that her song is just a bass delivery device.
[5]

Isabel Cole: I don’t know if it’s because I watched Grease like six million times as a child but if a substantial portion of a song is made of repeated nonsense syllables I am about 60% of the way to sold. On the topic of guilty pleasures with undeniable gender issues, I have tried to come up with a way to describe what it is that Nicki is doing here that appeals to me so much that is less problematic than “girling out all over the place,” but to no avail. It may be “for the boys,” an ode to their irresistible attributes (of this one guy and of Dudes as a class, a vacillation familiar to anyone who’s sighed how much she hates/loves/hates how much she loves it when guys [wear polos/can dance/lean real good] by way of introducing her latest obsession) (that would be me) (in case you were wondering), but it’s a girls’ conversation. She recounts her flirtations with a giddiness that slides into frustration at his failure to recognize who the eff she is, capturing that crush-defining mix of thrill and increasingly desperate hunger. I feel like Nicki and I could commiserate, in whispers and groans, over how does he not hear our heart going boom-badoom-boom-boom and why are boys so clueless, it is so unfair when they just gotta give us that look and then the panties coming off, unghhh. Hey — there are worse things we could do.
[8]

Perhaps the most cumbersome song title in a while…

[Video][Website]
[5.60]

Edward Okulicz: I don’t really know why something so imperfect and stunted by its performer’s obvious limitations sounds so perfect in my ears. The lyrics resort to awkwardness if not quite cliche. The verses do nothing that I couldn’t get from Girls Aloud’s “Something Kinda Ooooh” or a synth-pop box set. It aspires to an epic feel it can’t possibly achieve. And yet, something about the way Example speak-sings the chorus magnifies the bleakness to poignancy even if his voice is not usually a compelling instrument. Inarticulate but genuine. An hour (maybe two) on loop later and I’m none the wiser. Even if I can’t say why this has touched enough people to make it a UK #1, I can say that it’s hit me close to home and it won’t let go.
[10]

Iain Mew: So this is a song about a relationship which is falling apart, and it hasn’t been right for a while but no one has actually said anything. Example knows though, from the change in the kiss. General concept works well enough, and although the bleeps and beats are not exactly anything which stands out in UK chartland right now, they’re deployed in an enjoyably dramatic fashion. The problem is that clumsy ‘cos’ sitting there stubbornly in the chorus, saying that she’ll miss him because she’s changed the way she kisses him. Not that she’ll miss him when he goes, which he’s going to do because he knows things are wrong, which he can tell because she changed. Just ‘cos.’ There’s several steps missing in constructing something which makes sense, it gets more annoying every time it comes up, and for someone whose voice is pretty much all he has going for him, it’s not good enough.
[4]

Matthew Harris: Dudes are soooo funny.
[2]

Pete Baran: Why do I hope Calvin Harris has nothing to do with this? I am pretty sure he doesn’t, because if I was Calvin Harris and I had a hand in a track this fun, I would expect a featuring somewhere in the creidts. Indeed, surely this UK pop grime (this is NOT grime) is featuring someone somewhere, this can’t all be just Example. But since I have no evidence to the contrary, I will credit Mr Example to all of the song which would have sat perfectly on the Best of the Human League (remix disc) with nary a batted eye. Except Phil Oakey rapping a bit. I get the feeling Phil can’t rap as well as Example.
[9]

Jonathan Bogart: Was gonna say something flip like “can we start having nostalgia for the 90s now?”, but then realized that this isn’t necessarily 80s nostalgia; it could just as easily be nostalgia for 2005 and the Killers. Either way it’s more lead-footed and dopey than the original.
[4]

Katherine St Asaph: Gloomy synthpop is best served chilly, without these lukewarm dance or rap breaks. But oh, how quickly the ice reforms.
[8]

Michaela Drapes: A pleasant diversion. The component parts will be excellent remixed, but Example’s Scott Stapp-ish tone and not-chavvy-enough enunciation on the verses — but oddly, not the chorus — make my skin crawl. Usually, I’d blow off a track with issues like that, but the hook is so madly infectious that I was (begrudgingly) won over by the end.
[5]

Britt Julious: Everything about this shouldn’t work (the excessive synths, the off-kilter melody), and yet it does, at least to some extent. As an eternal fan of delicious eighties synth pop, I can’t help but also like this for digging up sounds and vocals that were already dug up in the underground scene last decade.
[7]

Zach Lyon: If you ever find yourself kissing this dude, for heaven’s sake, KEEP IT CONSISTENT. Don’t, and he WILL read way too much into it and write an offensively generic song about it. Not kidding. You’re better off dumping Taylor Swift.
[3]

Alfred Soto: I’m baffled by how changing the way “you” kiss means enough to keep a stale British post-millenial backbeat.
[4]

Would have been an 8.00 if it had featured Kurupt. Discuss.

[Video][Website]
[6.75]

Jer Fairall: So smoothly and charmingly old-school in its lyrical flow and no-additives funk sample that I don’t even feel like questioning his rather dubious prioritizing.
[7]

Mallory O’Donnell: Quik returns to his roots, admittedly an easy option. It’s hard to argue when he plays his role so damn well, crafting and barely rocking a beat that sounds great in any car equipped with a soundsystem more advanced than a boombox propped up on the middle back seat. Actually, this sounds good on that shit too. Still, one could argue that life might consist of more than a whip, some cash, and a bottle of champagne whose name you can’t pronounce.
[6]

Asher Steinberg: In spite of the conventional wisdom, I’ve always found Quik to be just an alright producer but a really wonderful rapper. He doesn’t exactly have a ton of technique, which is perhaps a large part of his charm, but even when he’s saying the most ordinary things he comes off as a more genuine, reflective, honest and interesting person than 98% of the rappers out there. These qualities, including his just alright production, are epitomized here.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: The slap of the beat is a jarringly un-subtle touch on something as cruisy as this. Maybe it’s deliberate – but then again, someone who likes Dom Perignon enough to drink it but not learn how to say it is clearly interested in his own pleasure first. Fortunately the sparing tinkles and sinuous bass are finely-calibrated pieces of craftsmanship, and a wonder to behold, so the pleasure isn’t all his.
[7]

Erick Bieritz: Not a lot of mainstream hip-hop can claim the maturity and honesty that gracefully aging player DJ Quik finds between “Luv of My Life” and his similarly themed recent single “Real Women.” He still has that almost nasally young voice, but he’s the model for growing up without growing out of the music he made when he was a kid. “Luv of My Life” can’t quite match “Real Women”‘s lustrous chorus, but it is another accomplished entry from hip-hop’s most consistent veteran.
[6]

Alfred Soto: As casually imperious as ever, DJ Quik reduces more than two decades’ worth of cold surveillance into a hedonist’s manifesto from which Travis Porter could learn lots. As usual it’s Quik’s pauses, unexpected interrogatives, and gulped consonants that keep me listening, and not the deliberate mispronunciation of a champagne he’s too old to think is the shit.
[7]

Renato Pagnani: In which during a trip to their local luxury automobile dealer, Quik and Gift come up with the idea to write a song dedicated to the true love of their lives. The track glimmers like a just-off-the-lot Maserati at dusk, a pillowy digital throb illuminating Quik and Gift’s 100-in-the-shade flows, at once both sun-soaked and restless. When Quik claims to not give a fuck about his haters, he’s not posturing. It’s just the truth.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: You’d think something this portentous would leave more of an impression.
[6]

Get well soon, big man…

[Video][Website]
[7.35]

Katherine St Asaph: Whether you think there’s any gumption to Gaga’s glory-seeking, she’s certainly got the components: dance gliding into rock, powered by pistons, the Clarence Clemons solo that serves not only to go “fuck you, I’ve got a Clarence Clemons solo” but to make him idol to a lot of tweens who’d probably never heard of the guy before, the synth-orchestral fanfare right before that, and a stuffed-down darkness to it all–Gaga’s made it quite clear in interviews that what’s beyond the edge is death. You can accuse her of doing too much per song, but you can’t say she doesn’t know exactly what each piece is doing.
[8]

Alex Ostroff: Born This Way is a glorious mess of ideas and influences, overstuffed and half-formed, like a torso haphazardly fused to a motorcycle. “The Edge of Glory” is the one moment when the disparate elements of the project come together. The verses have melody and movement, propelled by lightly stabbing synths, eventually exploding into a chorus with soaring vocals, pounding beats and grinding synths. It’s a power-metal-dance-ballad with a totally (un)necessary saxophone solo, and a genuine synthesis so seamless as to feel completely natural.
[9]

Alfred Soto: As I wrote recently: “Ask Bonnie Tyler or Patty Smyth what “The Edge of Glory” is and how we avoid stepping over it; perhaps it involves commanding Clarence Clemons to stop blowing a siren song on his saxophone; perhaps it means the seizure of eighties triumphalism from their cold dead fingers.” As a disco thumper though it’s not bad.
[5]

Iain Mew: Its epic signifiers really work best as a crowning glory atop the full 70-minute sprawl of Born this Way, but there’s an effective song underneath it. Certainly is does midtempo forcefulness over chugging beats much better than “Born This Way,” especially the synth-strings and saxophone bits.
[7]

Al Shipley: There are so many little vocal moments here where her presence, her starpower announces itself more clearly than it ever has before: “tonight, yeah baby, tonight” or “the edge, the edge, the edge!” or even the way she bites into the word “dangerous.” The audacity of the ’80s retro and the brazen meaninglessness of the lyric wouldn’t get nearly as far without that voice going just over the top.
[9]

Edward Okulicz: Confident and huge enough to be the epic it wants to be. Gaga doesn’t deploy the WMD that is her voice to its most powerful level very often, so it’s a joy to hear her do it here. Coupled with the delightfully over-the-top saxophone, it makes for a fine palate-cleanser after the overstuffed, sexless headache of “Judas,” but a great single on its own merits, too, even if part of it skirts a little close to “Hanging By A Moment” for safety.
[8]

Matthew Harris: Overall, Born This Way makes Gaga seem like an awkward pop nerd, prowling for the ultimate expression of attitude-less awesome. So here’s the trick to understanding “The Edge of Glory”: it is a hair metal anthem dressed up in Euro-dance clothes. Just read the grinding synths on the chorus as geetars. It’s a fun, strange little manifesto: dance-pop is the new cock rock. And it’s why I like that Clemons’ sax solo is more Daft Punk’s “Aerodynamic” than uninflected 80’s nostalgia. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to cry to that chorus on the dancefloor.
[10]

Jonathan Bogart: Every time I want to join the consensus I listen to it again and am stalled by the way the joints show, the way the different sections of the song plow into each other without regard for what came before. It’s not that I demand a seamless garment – plenty of great pop songs are Frankenstein’s monsters stitched together with Scotch tape and charisma – but I can’t hear any joyous release in Clarence Clemons’ wailing if it sounds like the radio was just switched to another station to get to it.
[6]

Pete Baran: An odd pick for a single from Born This Way. Not that its not a strong track, but its role as a valedictory stomper makes it one of the more predictable tracks off of the album. And a track that feels like a final album track (and I can’t quite hear it out of context yet). If nothing else it displays what Gaga is the stone cold lost Eurovision winner: I can hear this sandwiched between Sweden and Serbia about a third of the way through the competition and blowing the competition away. And again, as the credits come up, a drunk Gaga snogging the front row in Azerbaijan and the over-running DP desperately trying to get the credits up before the sax break kicks in.
[6]

Zach Lyon: At first, the only thing I cared about was CLARENCE CLEMONS IS GOING TO BE ON POP RADIO AGAIN, which contained a hint of HA, KIDS THESE DAYS ARE GONNA LISTEN TO A CLARENCE SAX SOLO WHETHER THEY LIKE IT OR NOT. And you know, that’s good enough for me. I love Clarence. I know he’s going to recover and live 80 more years. I honestly don’t think any more justification for my love is needed. But I have time. For one thing, let’s hear it for Gaga’s triumphant return to lyrical meaninglessness; it’s always been a good look for her. She can actually take a cue from Coldplay! And this sounds like the music from “Born This Way” if they had only taken a step back and stopped trying so hard to build a monument. And, hell, the solo. No, it doesn’t fit, at all, not like the sax in Katy’s hideous “T.G.I.F.” I prefer it this way. It’s a solo borne out of the desire to collaborate with a specific sound in a new context, rather than forcing it into a trite one. It’s respectful. And, fuck it, it’s Clarence Clemons. If it worked on Macauley Culkin, it’ll work on Gaga.
[10]

Chuck Eddy: Just like with the new Brad Paisley (whose previous album also made my Pazz & Jop ballot two years ago), I’ve been procrastinating on checking out Gaga’s new one just because all the singles so far have been so uniformly, mind-bogglingly underwhelming. And given her SoundScan nosedive since Amazon’s 99-cent release-week blowout, I get the idea that I’m not alone thus far in being disappointed. I concede that it’s conceivable, as one Jukebox critic swore to me over the phone last week, that Born This Way is more than the sum of its parts: That it works as a top-to-bottom great album, even despite less-than-great singles. But albums like that are rare enough (at least in the Top 40 pop realm) that I’m pretty skeptical, especially because I get the idea that some of the fawning reviews for her new one are coming from critics who missed the boat on its predecessor — an old story with follow-ups to debut albums that didn’t get their due ’til long after release. Still, who knows, maybe I’ll be surprised. Meanwhile, there’s this, which feels bombastic enough in a certain indeterminate sub- Bobby-O ’80s flashdance-bosh sense (i.e., a genre that music critics unanimously ignored back when it was actually new), but which also (unlike nearly all her debut’s singles) exhibits not a smidgen of Gaga personality that I can discern. I just hope she’s thankful to Clarence Clemons; a few months later, for all we know, this record’s most likable moment might have been impossible.
[6]

Isabel Cole: I really did not want to like this song, but goddamn if it isn’t irresistible, a pulsing burst of sweetness delicious as one of those fancy gourmet cupcakes with the frosting that doesn’t leave a nasty aftertaste, the sax solo bringing the delightful surprise of unexpected chocolate filling. It’s so infectious it breaks down my philosophical opposition to pop songs longer than four minutes, like how Crumbs convinced me there is no shame in cupcakes for dinner. Or …something. Whatever, words are inconsequential here out on the edge. Glory! Rush! Alright! Yeah, baby! Indeed.
[10]

Michaela Drapes: I can’t help but feel I’m trapped in the DJ booth of the gay bar at the end of the universe when the lights are thrown on at closing time, revealing everyone’s left the joint except that one very odd girl still giving it her all on the dancefloor among the crushed plastic cups and popper vials. You can keep the party going, honey, but you can’t party here.
[5]

Jonathan Bradley: When I first heard the song independently of the album, I thought it was a middling bore, an exercise in canned ebullience channeling Glee’s spirit of inclusive uplift without Glee’s whatever-it-is-that-makes-people-like-Glee. But “The Edge of Glory” is properly heard as a closer. It plays like a musical number, an encore. It charges once more into the pop breach after an hour of hair and bad kids and Judas-betrayed black Jesuses for one last turn in the spotlight. Stuffed with synths and saxophones, it’s a victory lap its singer is gracious enough to give to everyone but herself.
[8]

Mallory O’Donnell: This is pretty dull, but loads better than most of her output because it removes almost every distinctive tic and affectation. Which says more about her than it does about this song, a fairly generic power ballad that could have been sung by anyone from Linda to Katy Perry. Perfect for that remake of Top Gun I’m sure is looming around the corner.
[4]

Jer Fairall: Donna Summer’s “Heaven Knows” meets Cyndi Lauper’s version of “I Drove All Night” with only some Euro synth stabs and squiggles around to sully the mood. Thankfully, Clarence Clemons is on hand to render the whole homage era-appropriate again, though the song still loses a bit of momentum by being about a minute longer than it needs to be.
[7]

Asher Steinberg: A schizoid song. In the verses, Gaga proves for the first time in her career, or at least her singles catalogue, that she’s perfectly capable of being a winning, earnest square. Even ‘Born This Way,’ with its sledgehammer messaging, didn’t go nearly as far as this does in dropping all the quote marks with which her stuff is usually encumbered. But then the made-for-reality-TV-competitions-and/or-outros-to-commercial-breaks-in-major-sporting-events hook happens. And happens, and happens, and happens. (Indeed, the NBA’s already co-opted the hook.) And what had been a song about a meet-cute/fuck-cute turns into a Charlie Sheenish beer commercial. This dismaying conflation of affairs of the heart with “gloa-wee,” so typical of discourse about romance in 2010s America, shows that Gaga has way more in common with the other great Jersey girl TV star of our time than she lets on. I refer, of course, to Snooki.
[6]