The U2 it’s apparently less cool to like than U2 itself.

[Youtube][Website]
[4.88]

Edward Okulicz: Delta Sun Bottleneck Limp. And the lyrics are awful. But that’s only if you listen to them, and you needn’t. To me, Coldplay seem to get better the more panoramic and epic their music gets, and worse the more profound they try to be. This is a big, happy expanse of emptiness, and all the better for it.
[7]

Iain Mew: I have a long history with this band which makes me entirely biased but, wow, those ecstatic guitar squiggles are fantastic, and something very new for them. The best thing they’ve had in a single since “In My Place.” Their worship of the Arcade Fire is definitely audible but has invigorated their sound rather than completely taken over, and if there’s ever been a song where a spectacular dense production and vocal outpouring of emotion has done a better job than this of rendering duff lyrics inconsequential I can’t think of one.
[8]

Alex Ostroff: Cathedrals in his heart, stuck between two trapezes, Chris Martin sounds sincerely joyful, but in a typically muted manner. This is different from the last blandly inspirational Coldplay single in that there are synths and something resembling a dance beat underneath the acoustic guitar strumming and the vaguely Scottish electric riffs.
[3]

Jer Fairall: Couldn’t they at least plagiarize better lyrics?
[4]

Alfred Soto: Of course Chris Martin qualifies most of his verses with “maybe.” If you’re going to record tuneful New Age-infused vagueness, be a man about it, for chrissakes.
[2]

Pete Baran: In plotting the musical lineage of Coldplay, its common to throw in a grab-bag of contemporaneous references: 40% Radiohead, 30% Travis and then a melange of U2 and whatever no mark indie bands were around at the time. Since anyone who didn’t like them in 2004 weren’t looking to start liking them in 2008 it is unsurprising that the major changes in their sound, atmosphere and outlook have gone unremarked upon. Anonymously Coldplay now invisibly stride the globe as probably the most startlingly innovative band operating in rock today. As the stadium crowds bounce to “Every Teardrop Is Like A Waterfall” (metaphorically not volumetrically), their most undeniably dancey number in quite some time, it’s quite likely that 95% will be unaware of quite how remarkable this record is.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: Every time I try to hate Coldplay, I get stuck on the “they don’t actually contribute anything” bit. Because while I’m not necessarily the target audience for big maudlin soft-rock anthems, I’d be a very poor pop historian if I didn’t believe there was a basic desire for them. So then the question comes down to whether Coldplay does it better or worse than a similar act would. And I guess that depends on whether you think the similar act that would fill that vacuum is along the lines of the Arcade Fire or along the lines of the Fray. From my vantage point, there’s not much to choose between Martin and co. and Butler and co. (except possibly Coldplay take themselves less serisously), but if this protects us from a second round of “How to Save a Life,” I’m all for it. Plus it even has a dance thump for a little while there!
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: Freshman year of college, I tried to fall in with the folks on my randomly assigned floor, the sort of people who couldn’t decide whether they were hipsters or hippies. It didn’t work. I was a little laptop girl who’d curl up in a blanket on the vinylly dorm chairs in the common area waiting for people to meander by because that was how freshmen were supposed to Meet People. They did things like go camping together at the quarry for two days then stumble back with inside jokes but no showers, or commandeer the entire lounge for a Great American Fake Book sing-and-strum-along. So singing would happen, piecemeal harmonies splayed over flimsy chords well into the quiet hours. I’d try to tamp down any stirring melisma and mentally decide which harmony over “Can The Circle Be Unbroken” would ingratiate myself most to the crowd or at least the blond guy on whom I had a useless crush, and wondering whether I enjoyed this or just the idea of it. Needless to say, there was no ingratiation, and a year and a dorm later it was clear from never seeing the lot again that I had never fit in. But Coldplay probably would have.
[5]

Al Shipley: I was justifiably skeptical about Coldplay hiring Brian Eno and flailing about trying to abandon their previous formulas for success, but I have to give it to them, I enjoyed Viva La Vida far more than I would’ve another “Clocks” rewrite. This has a similar pulse to my favorite off that album, “Lovers In Japan,” but the synth buzz in place of piano is surprisingly welcome, as are some of the band’s most impressive guitar leads to date. I can understand hating on the aesthetics or the concept, but I appreciate the execution.
[8]

Isabel Cole: You should maybe know, going into this blurb, that the one rule I set for my freshman year roommates was No Coldplay Without Headphones. They are my go-to analogy when I want to express soul-shattering terribleness (e. g. “The Star Wars prequels are the Coldplay of movies”). So when I heard they had a song called “Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall”, my immediate reaction was: this is a joke right I mean are they trying to make me hate them you can’t be serious. But they are: dreadfully, drearily serious, to a melody that bears an unfortunate resemblance to Dynamite (an observation at least one enterprising Youtuber has beat me to). Unfortunate for Coldplay, because that song is to this one as the best party of your life is to the subsequent hangover. Pass the Advil; I’m hiding under the covers till this headache of a track ends.
[0]

Zach Lyon: Never thought I would miss “Viva La Vida”‘s embarrassing specificity (“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool…” etc) but how are Coldplay concerts not massive group naps?
[5]

Michaela Drapes: The unrelenting, thumpy, heart-bursting epic-ness birthed on Viva La Vida and ripped from U2’s Joshua Tree playbook persists here, cranked up way, way, way past 11. I can’t possibly latch on to any lyric in this mushy, overlayered dreck, but what I do hear sounds like Coldplay’s taken a bite out of the Arcade Fire’s suburban ennui tale. There’s some awkwardly done folksy moments on top of that, too; Big Country did the whole e-bowed-guitar-as-bagpipes thing much more convincingly back in the day. The only lively moment comes in the last 15 seconds’ shout out to every postpunk drummer ever. Predict a bright future for this one scoring romcom trailers and commercials for earnest, ecofriendly, cruelty-free products.
[3]

Jonathan Bradley: That song title is some first class trolling from Chris Martin, perfect because we could all very reasonably imagine he was being sincere about it. The hippie mysticism makes sense when you hear the tune, which is influenced more by the spirit than the sound of ’90s rave. Considering the band’s previous adventures with Kraftwerk samples and Brian Eno collaborations, it’s long been clear Coldplay wished to shrug off the straitjacket of Britrock earnestness that had reduced them to a well-selling punchline for most of the past decade. Of U2’s post-Rattle and Hum attempt to escape the same air of crushing seriousness, Tom Ewing wrote that it “was simply a question of working out whether Nine Inch Nails were a healthier influence for a rock band in 1991 than John Lee Hooker.” Coldplay’s re-invention is similarly illusory; shimmering acid euphoria isn’t business-as-usual, but the band is still peddling the same broadly inclusive emotionalism it always has. For an act so defined by its mass appeal, there’s a lot of sense in drawing from communal dance music. It certainly makes more sense than attempting to paint Martin as a canny auteur — even if he has just been revealed to have a sharp sense of humor.
[6]

Kat Stevens: I must have charity shopped my copy of Deserters Songs because it’s no longer on the shelf or the rack or the pile or even the box under the bed, but luckily in this age of MODERN TECHNOLOGY I can line up a Youtube of “Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp” right next to this and do the compare and contrast anyway! I wonder if you can send mp3s to the charity shop?
[4]

Chuck Eddy: Jangly. But I don’t go chasing teardrops, either.
[4]

W.B. Swygart: This simultaneously is and isn’t a dreadful arena-rock-bigness-for-the-sake-of-bigness-hooray-for-Bono’s-sunglasses monster. It will soundtrack anything that moves on the BBC: girlfriends on shoulders at Glastonbury, someone from the RSC playing a detective who is always either yelling or crying, Wayne Rooney reminding everyone that he is The Daddy by scoring a last-minute equaliser at home to Norwich – it’s the archetypal Song That Makes The British Music Industry Think It’s Doing Its Job Fantastically Jessie J We Love You. But also: it’s a song about a bloke having a massive panic attack and becoming unable to leave his house because he’s not young or fast enough to hang on anymore. So he puts his records on – not like Corinne Bailey Rae, not because he wants anything in common with anyone; but because he needs to be reminded that he’s capable of being human, and that there’s actually some value in his existence. The guitar solo is a ghost; another song, wandering in out of place; a reminder of something else; a reminder that it is possible for things to be alright. It is a very weird sensation when I get reminded the big bands have feelings too.
[8]

Additional Scores
Mallory O’Donnell: [5]

You knew it was a ballad from the moment you knew it existed.

[Video][Website]
[6.62]

Anthony Easton: I believe that sex can be a bower, a protective circle, and a force for radical change, therefore her message of unity against the chaos and hate of the world is something I appreciate. But she’s not restraining her diva/belting instincts well at all, and the unintended tension between private and public discourse kind of scuppers the whole enterprise.
[5]

Alfred Soto: She may not know much about algebra, but she knows “Wonderful World” and the value of strong guitars. She should stop belting though. Apparently Love is only a wonderful thing when it happens to Beyonce.
[6]

Chuck Eddy: She don’t know much about Sam Cooke, either, I bet. And her yelped “youuuuuu”s and “tooooooo”s are as painful, pretentious, and preposterous as anything on the radio this year. The life-during-wartime theme comes off as pandering to boot (since she clearly has nothing to say about said war), but it’s the closest thing to a saving grace this record has — well okay, maybe that and the hack power-ballad guitar solo. So, right: 1 + 1 =
[2]

Alex Ostroff: In the past, B’s ballads have been her biggest weakness. While her uptempo songs varied from dissonant horns to martial drumbeats, to swagged-out freestyles, slower numbers tend towards Tedder, and often feel more like excuses to show off her vocal range than songs. No longer. ‘1+1’ is stately and slow, giving Beyoncé space to stretch out her vocals, gradually dialing up dynamics, passion and grit with each verse. The track ends not with a display of vocal pyrotechnics, but with Beyoncé ceding her ground to a guitar solo. She still sings the hell out of this – it’s an incredible vocal performance, especially live – but the vocals are in service of the song, not vice-versa.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: Listening to this is like peering up at a locked skyscraper from flat on the sidewalk. Somewhere separate from you is an edifice, built to specifications so advanced they eclipse your puny ninth-grade algebra. From the outside, all you see are stone encroachments that from this angle might as well be caryatids. It’ll always be larger than you and your pebbles and glass, and it’s all the loftier for not being wanted inside.
[10]

Edward Okulicz: Beyoncé’s vocal gifts, astonishingly, seem to be revealing new shades and nuances with every record. She can coo, she can scold, she can seduce, but I didn’t know she growl like this. If the backing is all too polite and textbook soulful to have the same surprises, it doesn’t matter. No matter how big she gets, she gets intimacy. The song isn’t quite an afterthought, but nearly so – her writers and producers aren’t as inventive with the material as she is with her instrument.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: Big, pompous ballads that land just this side (or just the other side, it hardly matters) of ridiculous are one of the best things about pop. We haven’t had nearly enough of them since the early 1990s. By the sound of the power-ballad guitar at the end, Beyoncé agrees.
[9]

Matthew Harris: I keep listening to this and wondering where the actual song is: it feels more like melting spaghetti. I’m not really a ballad person, so maybe that’s the deal. The “whoo”s are great, as are the subtle growls and the unspooling notes wandering in and out of focus. But no one was ever going to argue with the way Beyoncé’s voice drops us to our knees. It’s just, like, why would I listen to this when I could listen to “Countdown” instead?
[5]

Pete Baran: I guess my problem with “1+1” (which I do like a lot), is that I don’t really believe that Beyoncé has a sense of humour. I can go with the history of pop balladry pastiche of the backing, and her own stab at Sam Cooke, but she doesn’t sell the silliness of that high note at the end of each line. And it is very silly, and thus very funny. And someone she trusts has probably told her to sing it that way, and she will make a serious singer face and still not realized it’s SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY. George Michael used to say one of the best things about singing a ballad was watching the odd lighter snap out in the crowd as the waver accidentally burnt their thumb. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think Beyoncé would see what was funny about that.
[6]

Zach Lyon: For a Beyoncé ballad, this is timely and, maybe, crucial. The lyrical conceit wouldn’t be so out of place in the 60s or 70s, or maybe that’s just a result of our collective musical memory holding onto good lyrics while the vague cliche shit, the stuff we’re used to, fades away. A good sign, either way, and not unexpected with a Terius Nash co-writing credit. And then there’s the vocals and the production, each weird enough to fit snugly into a chronology of singles that often rely on well-employed weirdness: the vocals remind me of Whitney, if only because they’re so self-assured and brave and memorable, while Nash’s production is an absolute mess of sounds crossing genres and eras with little care. Sort of the minimalist alternative to Born This Way‘s messy maximalism. That first guitar sounds lifted from a Soundgarden song, different from the solo that ends it, which could’ve been played by Slash. There’s a gospel organ. Whitney-chimes. And some pretty prevalent synths! All of which you’re likely to miss if you don’t listen for them, so overshadowed they are by B’s voice. Pity it isn’t a proper single.
[7]

Jer Fairall: Like she can’t decide if she’s shooting for classic heart-on-sleeve R&B or Dreamgirls-style showpiece balladry, and then lands somewhere closer to the yuppie Soul of Anita Baker and Toni Braxton anyway. Not necessarily a terrible place to be in its own right, even if it leaves the song’s admirable attempts at grit sounding far less authentic than they’d like. I’m not completely sold on whatever it is she’s trying to do here in any case, but that slow burn of an electric guitar outro is like a warm blanket I’m only all too happy to wrap myself in.
[6]

David Katz: Gorgeously produced, with every sound a perfectly wrought modern update on the Prince imperial-phase sound. Think a hybrid of the sultry effortlessness of Slow Love and the shamelessly anthemic Purple Rain (check the rare and incredibly well-deployed guitar solo!). The-Dream mainlines that 80s feeling with 2011 technology and the sheen is ear-candy. I can’t really connect with the vocal though; Beyoncé’s pipes aren’t raw enough to truly sell this soul barnburner as someone like Erykah Badu or Jazmine Sullivan might.
[7]

Britt Julious: I can’t deny Beyoncé’s firm yet sole hold on the diva title. This is the sort of song that a woman who wants people to know that she can sing releases. It’s the complete antithesis of earlier singles and it’s showstopping because of it’s simplicity. Even with the power ballad guitars that hit a little more than half-way through the song, the song still comes across as a minimalist breathtaking gem in a sea of cultural musical excess.
[8]

Michaela Drapes: I’m almost certain I would like this song better if it didn’t bear a passing resemblance to the misguided nostalgia of Bon Iver’s “Beth/Rest”. Like, say for instance, if we were instead treated to some Funk Brothers-flavored soul to match B’s intensity, instead of an outro that ends up sounding not unlike a karaoke version of “Everything I Do (I Do It For You)”. But perhaps that’s more Solange’s bag?
[4]

Jonathan Bradley: B dons Prince paisley for summer pop’s costume party, and she wears it well. We should expect no less, though the ease with which Ms. Knowles adapts to purple wailing and stormy organ fills makes her proficiency at the same no less impressive. It does make it unexciting, however. Beyoncé’s entire career has been shaped by her ability to slip in and out of new roles — feminist commandant on “Run the World (Girls),” immovable executioner on “Irreplaceable,” panicked harridan on “Ring the Alarm” — filling them entirely before jettisoning them for the next performance. As a pop actress, she’s superb, but “1+1” has little beneath its very fine accoutrements. She sounds like she’s singing for tips, not a lover.
[7]

Josh Love: The sheer incongruity of this song makes it wonderful. B’s slightly hysterical diva reading is the kind of thing that’s usually accompanied by gigantic orchestras, but the fact that she’s lightly backed here by The-Dream’s slavish Prince vamps lends her performance a stark pathos that elicits shivers, particularly when she lands with an exaggerated whoomp on the end syllable of her verses.
[9]

He can see down her dress, can’t he?…

[Video][Website]
[6.12]

Asher Steinberg: Ooh, “Rock the Boat” re-imagined as a Simon Says-style sex instruction video, minus the talent of the original. Great idea, Jim Jonsin! These might be the least sexy four minutes of pop that were intended to be sexy in the history of mankind, not least because of Mr. Rainforest.
[0]

Katherine St Asaph: Not that I’ve tested this, but “I believe in you” does not sound like it would go over well in bed. And if things are in fact going over well, wouldn’t your partner be sufficiently motivated? You wouldn’t need this cooing or spare production, although perhaps it makes things more exciting for Kelly or (an oddly sedate) Weezy. Not my place to argue.
[7]

Ian Mathers: Given how many songs are about sex, it’s surprisingly rare to find one that’s frank about its subject matter and still, well, sexy, but both Kelly and Wayne manage to pull this one off. I love the spare, slightly chilly production, the stop-start rhythms of the chorus, and even most of Wayne’s verse (I think it’s been evident from my last few blurbs of his work that I think he’s been running on empty for a bit now). Unlike most of the sex jams we get here at the Jukebox, “Motivation” sounds like it’s being done by people who have actually had sex, and that makes a big difference.
[8]

Al Shipley: Poor, poor Kelly; she finally left the Matthew Knowles roost a couple years ago, and got over her self-defeating bridesmaid complex enough to try and launch a solo album during the lull between Beyonce blockbusters. But after a couple of initial attempts missed, she finally started to get some commercial momentum with a genuinely good, alluringly sexy song right on the eve of another avalanche of B hits. Sure, it’s doing better than “Run The World,” but you know that’s a temporary victory.
[7]

Jer Fairall: I can’t not like those glassy, ominous keys, which I’d go so far as to call “cinematic” if the cinema in question can be those gritty early 80s quasi-exploitation urban dramas like Vice Squad or 10 to Midnight. But even with Wayne’s “meh” of a verse, it’s pretty sad when Kelly still comes off as the least necessary thing here.
[5]

Alex Ostroff: For the first time since the days of Destiny’s Child, Kelly is hitting me harder than Beyoncé. “Motivation” is smoother, more sultry, more…everything. The synths fall like drops of sweat, the echoed “Go!”s ascend, Kelly’s voice creeps glacially down the octave and back up, layering itself into gorgeous harmonies around 2:18, and the whole thing sounds like dancing with someone in a humid club in the middle of July.
[9]

Jonathan Bogart: The production is spare without making use of its dynamics, Weezy sounds as uninvested as Drizzy. She’s great as always, but she needs collaborators who give as much of a damn as she does.
[5]

Frank Kogan: Though this is a track that tests my vaunted ability to ignore words (Wayne going “I put her on my plate, then I do the dishes” pulls me up every time), and in the dark I’m calling RiRi’s name, not Kelly’s, I really do feel the night, the slow mood, the music like bits of glimmer and glitter.
[8]

No video for this, so here’s a lovely close-up of Him Out Of The Big Pink’s face…

[Video][Website]
[6.00]

Erick Bieritz: These girls fall like toyyy sol- er, dominoes, sure. After a couple bad duets with uncomplimentary partners in “Moment 4 Life” and “I Ain’t Thru,” it’s good to hear Nicki breezily unencumbered, with a track to herself. And a 4AD sample. And cashew puns!
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: Borrowing someone else’s hook is a good strategy for Nicki, who tends to go all flat and affectless when she does her own, but the dude declaiming provides another kind of flattening: is this supposed to be Nicki as Queen Bitch versus all the Little Bitches, or are they an Army of Bitches together? Gotta be the latter, right, because not even the most overblown egomania is going to step to Beyoncé. Right?
[5]

Jer Fairall: Less inclusive than Beyonce and Gaga’s recent empowerment anthems, but Nicki’s having loads more fun globetrotting with her fellow divas, stealing women from her male counterparts just because she can, possibly hooking up with transsexuals for the same reason and dropping hilarious references to Eddie Murphy films all while obliterating the oppressive sentiment of the titular big Britpop hook with the unstoppable force of her delirious, contagious enthusiasm. Whose party would you rather crash?
[9]

Asher Steinberg: I believe a song of this sort is supposed to be fun. But this just sounds like someone reading their shopping list, or bragging about the vast variety of artisanal organic breads they have at home in their pantry. Who knew objectifying women could be so boring?
[1]

Anthony Easton: Minaj is not falling at all — is she not a girl, or does she work as a corrective against the misogyny of the text? It could be argued, but the maximalist production and the capitalist excess would suggest otherwise. Makes no sense, but horribly seductive, plus the Grace Jones reference is worth at least a point.
[8]

Ian Mathers: I actually can’t tell whether Minaj has repurposed the sample from a very risible song to good effect or not, mainly because I don’t think I follow what’s actually happening in the song. I’d investigate further, but the end turns into such an interminable precession of refrains I don’t think I want to.
[5]

Doug Robertson: Miss Minaj strides across this like a boot heavy soldier, each step a kick in not only the right direction, but the only possible direction. She owns this track, this street, this city, and has first dibs on your first born child as well. This is immense. And to think the Big Pink reckoned that Xbox commercial was their best shot at a valid pension plan.
[9]

Kat Stevens: Super-disappointed by this. I hadn’t listened to Pink Friday in a while and remembered liking this song, only to realise I was was actually still thinking of “Moment 4 Life” and that this song wasn’t actually *on* my version of Pink Friday at all. The chords are too basic and Nicki is rapping in her sleep.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Recasting a piece of white sexist British smut as an anthem of female solidarity, Minaj scores her most ingratiating hit yet. She’s also clever enough to note that girls can have fun by hitting divas like Mariah Carey. Docked a notch because the background synths sound spongy.
[7]

I will get the wagon back on the road…

[Video][Website]
[6.50]

Anthony Easton: I was talking to a friend just before Easter vigil was starting, and we were mentioning about how storytelling as a legitimate sermon method was under rated and under used. I feel the same way about hip-hop, and I think Big Boi and Monáe are genuinely great story tellers –her verses here, deft, come from a hip-hop tradition, but would be impossible without Dinah Washington or Dionne Warwick. Having both of those work makes an object of prismatic beauty.
[10]

Alfred Soto: The percussion, whistling New Romantic synth, the intro question about teabagging — all this and Janelle Monáe, an android and an arch one too. So many ideas yet I hear no attempt to integrate them, which is probably the point.
[4]

Jer Fairall: A Sir Lucious Left Foot filler track becomes a throwaway single that sounds like an ArchAndroid filler track on account of being nearly all Janelle hook and almost no Big Boi. Which would be fine were the hook itself not so wishy washy.
[5]

John Seroff: Bookended by a pair of truly inane skits, “Be Still” is the prettiest, gentlest cut off my favorite album of 2010. Big Boi is relegated to a supporting role, ceding the spotlight to Monáe. She certainly knows what to do with it; this sort of funkadelic torch song comes off perfectly natural and unforced, especially in comparison to much of the overstuffed, one woman Broadway show that was Archandroid. Janelle and Fat Stacks really thrive in each others company and even if “Be Still” never quite reaches the incandescent heights of “Tightrope”, it’s still as good as anything these two have done, either together or separately. That’s saying a lot.
[9]

Chuck Eddy: I hate the punchline-less teabag/teatime joke-or-whatever at the start, have no real use for the crack-bust skit at the end. And I pretty much can’t stand Janelle’s show-tune/supper-club/Judy Garland side, which zeroed out the intermittent funky band parts when I saw her live during SXSW; that she’s got basically just an average voice, and that there’s nothing especially interesting about her conceptualizing besides being, you know, conceptual, didn’t help. Anyway, that last complaint admittedly has nothing to do with this song. I have nothing to say about what Big Boi does — he does what he does, and it sounds okay, usually. But there’s nothing in it I care about, and sounds to me like he’s spinning his wheels.
[5]

Asher Steinberg: Who ever would have thought that Big Boi’s flow would sound dated one day? It does here; for a moment I felt transported to 2003. Thanks to Janelle, it was only for a moment though, as she drones on for the rest of the song about the virtues of a loveless life (or adolescence, at least), dully channeling someone or another who she’s not.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: In which Janelle Monáe contrives to sound oddly like Stereolab, and not just because of the buzzing synths she’s surrounded by. I adore the affectlessness of her singing here, not least because it cuts out her worst musical-theater tendencies and gives Big Boi’s nimble flow a smooth flat surface against which to bounce.
[8]

Ian Mathers: Given the pedigree, I suppose this is slightly underwhelming, but another way to think about “Be Still” is just that it’s solid, satisfying. It’s pleasures aren’t as pyrotechnic as the best stuff from either participant, but they’re just as durable.
[7]

I accidentally made pepper spray while cooking yesterday, which was weird…

[Video][Website]
[5.25]

Anthony Easton: When all these English singers in the last decade or so came out trying to be Kate Bush, I kept saying to myself, the original was better then the copies. Now I’m not so sure.
[5]

Alfred Soto: One of The Sensual World‘s more famous album tracks (Prince acknowledged it in “My Computer”) gets a redundant update, complete with vocoder distortions that would embarrass T-Pain. Its title is a glum irony.
[4]

Doug Robertson: You know when your parents start talking about using “The Google” and try and add you as a friend on Facebook? This is basically that, but set to music.
[5]

Jer Fairall: About 5 years too late for the whole Imogen Heap vocoder trick to have any novelty value, and about 10-15 years too late for the whole blurring of virtual and actual reality scenario to carry much weight. Then I find out this is actually an extended/modified version of a song from 1989, which actually puts her way ahead of the curve, but which cannot, I’m afraid, keep this song from still sounding a little too quaint and a bit too much like old news to me.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: All points here count strictly for the original song, but it’s not for the reason you think. Anyone whining that ONOEZ KATE BUSH HAS SUCCUMBED TO AUTOTUNE! has clearly either forgotten The Dreaming — were autotune available along with Bush’s Fairlight, you know she’d have used it on “All The Love” or “Leave It Open” at least — or has constructed a false image of Bush as an ethereal goddess-weirdo-recluse suspended in Gaffa and gossamer and Cathy Earnshaw’s tears. This dodges the real problem. The original “Deeper Understanding” chorus was huge: a multitracked, seductive Pandora’s boxful of sound, as if all the lonely, far-flung kindred spirits of the world were embracing you, facilitated by and possessed by one little black box. Replacing this with one tiny, tinny robovoice destroys that feeling. It’s as if you’re watching this scene not through the speaker’s eyes but from outside, seeing only a woman crumpled over a DOS terminal, and what used to be a haunting, paradoxical love story becomes something merely small and sad.
[7]

John Seroff: An excellent companion piece to Lil B’s “Age of Information”, “Deeper Understanding” is an all-too-dead-on prog lullaby for 4channers, a cautionary tale of getting one’s neck caught in the fiber optic umbilicus. Who among us doesn’t recognize Bush’s pained mumble of “too much” from the little black box: too much profundity, too much gibberish, too much experience and loss without leaving your seat, too much perfect explanation and unstoppable input. “Deeper”‘s Peter Gabrielesque susurrus, the too steady metronome drumming and infrequent digital yawps eerily echo the pathetic drip of latenight web surfing. This is a song as entrancing and compulsive as any other bad habit, beautifully executed and deceptively enthralling.
[9]

Ian Mathers: I love Kate Bush, but this is not a song that needed to be remade, any more than Hackers need to be remade. And even if it did, increasing the vocal distortion to make it sound even more like, err, a computer (I guess?) was not what needed to be done here.
[2]

Jonathan Bogart: I don’t know the original at all, but this feels, even at its most modern chop-and-screw, like a meditation on obsolete technology, something not far from what Laurie Anderson might have been thinking in the age of Atari. The extended, directionless outro, with its hopelessly analog harmonica shuffle, doesn’t help matters: after all these years, what Kate Bush has really wanted to do was jam?
[5]

Sorry. Been an odd week…

[Video][Website]
[6.75]

Anthony Easton: It’s spring, so I am in the midst of the jackrabbit fuck portion of the year, but when fall comes and it’s a little chilly, and I haven’t found a husband yet, I will be listening to this basically non stop.
[8]

Alex Ostroff: Apparently this is a cover, but from the first notes of fingerpicked guitar, I can’t envision anyone but Sade crooning this gentle heartbreak. The scattered electric guitar and piano fill out the soundscape without overpowering the vocals. It’s as if “The Moon and the Sky” had been remixed with Santana instead of Jay-Z.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Transforming Thin Lizzy’s classic into a piece of languor-soul is as audacious as any Bryan Ferry attempt at same, and it’s actually a livelier track than most anything on Soldier of Love — not since “By Your Side” have they made their aural creaminess this sensual. Because I can’t quite believe Sade Adu is unaware that she prefers running her fingernails on her bare arms for hours over the company of someone else, I had some difficulty, as usual, appreciating how shrewdly she and her bandmates manipulate distance.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: The lyrics semi-spamsite for this is full of exclamation points, yet I hear no exclamation points anywhere on the track. It’s a shame, because this is a situation that perhaps might merit a damn exclamation point! As a consolation, we get Sade’s tentative delivery, a lot of wavering commas, maybe, which is another way to react to such a thing, if you react with commas. But then there’s the track itself that is a long unbroken sentence without dynamics or emotion or any sort of mitigating punctuation that would make it resemble anything close to the reaction one would have unless one is so completely lobotomized of all feeling that being still in love with someone would not even register as a problem because it would not register at all. See how boring that was to read? Yeah.
[5]

John Seroff: All good Sade songs tend to sound good equally. The critical listener has to be careful not to be fooled by the encroaching sense of deja vu: yes, these are new chimes, a new shaken rainstick, another laconic blue flamenco guitar melody but despite all evidence, you have not yet inhaled this particular smoke. Then the soft, well trodden path to the worn leather couch and cashmere wrap of Sade’s voice, still the same as it was in junior high. You say it’s a cover? It’s a snug one, warm and comfy as it ever was.
[8]

Jer Fairall: “Baby Father” didn’t make my Top 10 Singles list last year, but it should have. Blame my idiotic self-consciousness over an artist that I previously considered, if not The Enemy, than certainly someone who courted my indifference as aggressively as it is possible to court indifference for my last-minute preference of a sprawling Titus Andronicus anthem over Sade’s calm, lovely ode to fatherhood, a song that reliably causes me to smile as broadly as my face will allow each time I hear it. It makes me want to hear Sade with new ears, to find sustenance where I had only previously found boredom. It almost happens. She sounds yearning and even slightly pained here, rather than merely decorative, and the washes of electric guitar that creep in enhance the usual Sade-like atmosphere of restraint that I now, for the first time, actually hear as defensive and sad rather than austere and oppressive. But I still feel like I’m hearing a step back from what “Baby Father” promised, a Sade-by-numbers wisp rather than a veteran artist finally dipping further into the deeper well of possibilities always there but rarely explored. Pleasant as it is, she can do something like “Still In Love with You” in her sleep, which is why she will continue to be accused of doing just that.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: Lucinda Williams just tried the same trick. A somnolent blues groove and a lyric boiled down from an agglomeration of every song ever isn’t going to cut it. Not when you can do as much better as Sade can.
[4]

Zach Lyon: I have never even come close to connecting with the sounds of the Sade brand — smooth jazz-soul/quiet storm always recalls for me the music they play in movie theaters before the stuff before the stuff before the previews start. When the screen is just black. Until now! It’s probably Diddy’s fault that my mind is suddenly open to the possibilities of Sade, but this is wonderful. It just took getting past my initial groans over the guitar to hear that there is more genuine-sounding heartbreak in her voice than I’ve heard in just about anything this year. The call on me baby part is almost too much for me.
[8]

Just so we’re clear, it lasts five minutes and 46 seconds…

[Video][Website]
[4.78]

Ian Mathers: When did she and Craig Finn start sounding like the same person?
[4]

Chuck Eddy: God, she sounds like she’s half asleep. For almost six fucking minutes. You know, I do still have my CD copy of Car Wheels On A Gravel Road — seems like something I should keep for “reference”, just like the old Nirvana and Sleater-Kinney and Kanye West CDs on my shelf that I know damn well I’ll never play again. But I don’t know what it’s gonna take to, uh, convince me Lucinda was really ever very good in the first place. Her vocal murmur was always kind of ridiculous, somehow. And now she’s mumbling like she’s in dire need of codeine rehab. How the mildly diverting but hugely overrated have fallen.
[2]

Anthony Easton: This is supposed to be filled with erotic longing, but it’s passive aggressive between the audience and the performer, not the lover and the spurned. Williams plays the game well, but she has worn out her welcome.
[4]

Alfred Soto: Insufferable since newfound success convinced her that slurred vocals and elongated syllables signify lust for life, and the repetition of a two or three-word banality over echo-laden instruments her commitment to inertia, Williams now crosses the line into intractable. Six minutes, and all we get is a lousy guitar solo.
[2]

Jer Fairall: Lucinda rarely sounds this at ease without also sounding on the verge of being asleep, as I feel she has been on her last couple of records. Like the rest of Blessed, though, this is unfailingly polished and professional without sacrificing any of the passion of her standout work, which might be the best possible place for a greatly respected veteran artist to be at this particular stage in their career. Also, Elvis Costello’s blistering guitar work here (and elsewhere on the album) is fucking fantastic, and this is coming from someone who doesn’t always make a point of noticing such things.
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: I bet this is really meaningful for some people. For me? It’d be okay if there were a second riff anywhere in the thing.
[4]

Mallory O’Donnell: Lucinda’s always been pretty deft at repackaging this kind of all-purpose Southern roots/routes music for the NPR canvas shopping bag crowd. Here she’s pushed it up by pulling it back, and ended up with an authentic-ish blooze-derived number that even the most ardent Sarah MacLachlan fan could sway along to. Although the crunchy guitar outtro (easily the best part of the tune) might one day unconvince them, these are the kind of chance-taking moves that have always separated Williams from her more pallid cousins.
[5]

Alex Ostroff: The atmosphere is at times plodding and workmanlike, but over five minutes I’m gradually worn down. There’s something in Williams’ voice approaching naked desperation, an honesty that is as artistically attractive as it is off-putting. In isolation the final guitar solo could scan as triumphant, but in context it sounds like a Hail Mary pass in a losing game.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: Do you sympathize with Lucinda or with the one she’s singing to? There are other, better tests out there — vocal tolerance, obviously, and tolerance for repetition — but this one’s the heart of things. It’ll determine whether you find this a gorgeous wringer, preserved in paper to devastate you further, or a four-minute ordeal of being sang at and wanting to scramble away from iteration one. Any other factors might nudge your score off either pole, but not much.
[7]

Finally got de-perched in the UK this weekend…

[Video][Myspace]
[2.75]

Zach Lyon: I tried hard as I could to like this because these dumb boobs are opening for Ke$ha. Someone must not’ve remembered that there’s a spectrum of quality for everything, goddammit.
[3]

Anthony Easton: All of the assholes who bought Das Racist are responsible for the fact that people are doing cocaine to this unironically — sort of like this Onion article.
[0]

Alfred Soto: Dance-a-rama should never be mindless, especially when it’s sonically updating “Everybody Have Fun Tonight.”
[2]

Jer Fairall: What hath will.i.am wrought?
[1]

Alex Ostroff: If nobody has decided this already, I suggest that we dub the current crop of dance-rap infiltrating the charts “Frat House”. Boorish, drunk, and incredible dense, “Party Rock Anthem” is designed for those who thought that David Guetta, the Black Eyed Peas and Far East Movement were far too complex. Vocals and rapping that define mediocrity expressing mindless platitudes over cookie cutter rave synths dialed up to obnoxious. There’s a vaguely interesting glitch breakdown, but I’m almost positive it’s lifted wholesale from a song I can’t quite remember.
[3]

Jonathan Bogart: I bet this is really unbearable for some people. For me? It’d be terrible if I didn’t respond lizard-brain to the opening synth-riff borrowed from “Dynamite,” “California Gurls,” “We R Who We R,” and “Yeah 3x.” And the old blues dude (ha ha) going “Everyday I’m shuffling.”
[6]

Asher Steinberg: It’s amazing how the original is just the odious latest from a couple of clubtrash douchebags, but the remix by G-Unit seventh-stringer Hot Rod, with just a few tweaks, manages to be the novelty record of the year.
[3]

Katherine St Asaph: Party in the numerator, rock in the denominator, canceling each other out.
[4]

It’s still Monday on the west coast, just about…

[Video][Website]
[5.38]

Jonathan Bogart: I bet this is really cathartic for some people. For me? It’d be okay if it weren’t for some asshole screaming over top of it.
[4]

Doug Robertson: Why so angry? Rather than venting your rage over what is actually quite an enjoyably melodic backing track and ruining it in the process, can’t you go and look at videos of kittens falling over on YouTube instead?
[5]

Anthony Easton: Pink Eyes could growl his way through the phone book or his grocery list, and I would be happy, and here he might as well he may as well be. Nice little grungey melodic break in the middle.
[6]

Jer Fairall: Bright, riffy and likely the most commercially viable song possible by a growly-voiced band called Fucked Up. I could see this costing them some of their more purist fans, but I for one am interested to see where they’re going with it.
[7]

Frank Kogan: Tuneful rolling-lava instrumentals run into stately architectural guitar lines, the latter ruining the momentum of the former. Too bad, ’cause the chorus was a nice little bit of bellowing weepiness. The lyrics are clumsy pseudo-stiff-upper-lip heartache, but the bellow makes ’em impossible to discern anyway.
[6]

Iain Mew: A really weird mix between hook-filled excitability and confrontational ugliness, neither of which seems placed to serve the other at all well. Best illustrated by the (unintentional?) hilarity of the lovely R.E.M.-like harmonies underpinning the scowling chorus.
[3]

Ian Mathers: I always liked the idea of these guys more than the reality, although I’m glad they’re out there. I’m a little bemused we’re covering them on the Jukebox, honestly. The guitars during the verses seem to need a better melody or maybe just a better singer, but the chorus packs a decent wallop. Still glad they’re doing their thing, still a little underwhelmed.
[6]

Zach Lyon: Still like these guys to the extent that they sound like the punk rock version of airships from Final Fantasy VII or something. There are better punk acts that, like these folk, work with more than simple delusions of anger, but this’ll do.
[6]