Nom nom…

[Video][Website]
[6.00]

Anthony Easton: Fantasia has the least usual voice to ever win anything at American Idol, and I love her generally fuck you attitude. Plus, it’s good to have her on Broadway. I like the concept and the idea of Fantasia, and I often really like work she has done, plus I’m fat enough to be seduced by the fucking means food and vice versa metaphors — so this is really close to being alright. But it’s not, and I can’t quite figure out why. Too much going on in the verses, maybe; bridges to the chorus not delineated enough; how the “woo oo ooo” syllables are not quite rich enough, they could be as dense as banana pudding and they just aren’t; the production doesn’t quite know what decade it’s in — the whole thing is a bit of a mess, which is really disappointing.
[6]

Jer Fairall: This is what happens when the recent run of retro-brilliance that brought us “Tightrope” and “Fuck You” (or hell, pretty much all of The Lady Killer) is processed through American Idol‘s ultrabland, calculatedly inoffensive polish. She sings well enough, the chimes are pretty and there is nothing at all painful about this, but would you really want to live in a world where this represented pop’s greatest aspirations?
[4]

Chuck Eddy: Top 10 new or newish soul albums I’ve heard this year that sound more like collard greens, cornbread, and sweet potato pie than Fantasia ever will: Carl Marshall Love Who You Wanna Love (CDS ’10); Mel Waiters I Ain’t Gone Do It (Waldoxy ’10); Gerod Rayborn Call Before You Come!!! (Ecko/New Groove ‘10); Carl Sims Hell On My Hands (CDS); Bigg Robb Soul Prescription (Robbmusic/JMG ’10); O.B. Buchana That Thang Thang (Ecko ‘10); Donnie Ray Who’s Rockin’ You? (Ecko); Floyd Taylor All Of Me (CDS ’10); Ms. Jody Keepin’ It Real (Ecko); Lee “Shot” Williams I’m The Man For The Job (CDS ’10). Docked a point for false advertising.
[4]

Alfred Soto: All the retro stylings can’t hide my disappointment that the title is supposed to be a metaphor.
[6]

Al Shipley: Lot of soul, but I think I would’ve liked more attention paid to the food.
[6]

Asher Steinberg: Maybe there’s something different about being Jewish, but I have no doubt that if I were to record a song about liking a girl better than my mother’s matzoh ball soup, everyone would read that as a huge ironic goofy joke on Jewish men and their weird relationships with their mothers. I find it hard to see why similar sentiments about collard greens are susceptible to a sincere, “soulful” reading, and I guess I have some concerns about the reaction to a woman of Fantasia’s race and size comparing the object of her affections to collard greens and cornbread.
[6]

Zach Lyon: I originally thought to call this out as being an empty, cheap gimmick set around a cheap comparison. And then I remembered that FOOD IS AWESOME. You claim to love someone more than you love your favorite food, glazed in nostalgia though it may be, you are going to be making a pretty big statement. One that can’t be taken back. There is nothing to dislike about this song.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: New rule: No more comparisons of lovers to food unless you’re prepared to show a) jingly, breathless production, or b) a Fantasia vocal, especially one this well-paced. And if you’ve got both, you get a lifetime pass. Salivate on.
[8]

#1 in Denmark, not that that counts for much round here these days…

[Video][Website]
[6.29]

Mallory O’Donnell: Topped the charts in Denmark, you say? In other Danish chart-related news, Aqua apparently still exist.
[4]

Asher Steinberg: Until I heard this song, I had no idea that there were Danish women who sang like dopey French women who sing on the soundtracks of dopey Sundance Film Festival films. Sorry, Denmark, for culturally stereotyping you all these years as an idyllic land of tow-headed Abba acolytes. Clearly I was mistaken.
[3]

Josh Langhoff: An actual Danish speaker would no doubt blow this interpretation for me, but I hear it as a girl’s adventure to her First Club, a mythic land of shiny strobey sensory overload that, until now, has only existed inside her imagination. Her voice betrays little emotion because she’s too busy wrapping her brain around this new reality. She’s so overwhelmed by the strange gyrating people and deafening music, the sticky floor and the way her own body responds to it all, it’ll be at least a week before she knows whether the whole experience was a euphoric fulfillment or a disappointment or some other category she never knew existed. Pretty soon she’ll notice that The Club smells like vomit cleaner-upper while some shmuck asks her to admire his rims. But I like to think that even Luda — who I SWEAR she mentions in the chorus — started his club career with such wide-eyed wonder.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: All I wanna do, is chill out and dissipate.
[5]

Iain Mew: There’s something a bit Joan As Policewoman about (I assume) Alberte’s singing here. It’s soulful and commanding but with a touch of compelling uncertaintly which sneaks in in places over the course of the song. That’s probably the highlight, but the seamless way the whole thing it’s structured is excellent too – it stays remarkably consistent in mood while slowly unfurling as new elements slip in unnoticed then proceed to shift its course towards intriguing new places.
[8]

Ian Mathers: The intro to this feels barely there, and the rest of the track isn’t actually all that much more present, in the most wonderful way; in fact, “Min Klub Først” is least compelling precisely when the vocals and that little digital wibble present themselves most forcefully. It’s when the song almost floats away on the breeze that it’s most compelling.
[8]

Alex Ostroff: “Min Klub Først” isn’t quite balearic but it takes me to the same headspace. The gentle throb of the beat, the light touches of acoustic guitar and Alberte’s voice combine into a gorgeous track, which soothes me as much as it compels me to dance. Plus, my brain has an urge to fill the empty spaces with the Lambada riff from “On the Floor“.
[8]

Cuddly Swedes launch themselves on the mainstream…

[Video][Website]
[5.43]

Doug Robertson: Songs made in the bedroom are sometimes best kept in there. What has a sweet frailty and a pleasing naivety when heard within the confines of your house can be destroyed by the harsh glare of reality’s light.
[5]

Asher Steinberg: Some words I’ve seen used to describe this romantic synth explosion are “heavenly dream-pop,” “ethereal,” “fragile thing of beauty,” “brilliant,” and “thumping.” Me, I prefer “creepy breathy-voiced dudes share Disney Channel-pop sentiments over limp electro backing.”
[3]

Jer Fairall: So utterly dreamy in the lead up to the chorus, with its twinkling synths and the boys’ charmingly unaffected ESL delivery, that I’m genuinely crestfallen when the big, faceless all-purpose Euro club riff kicks in. Rather than steamrolling the rest of the song in its wake, though, said riff turns out to be little more than an occasional rude interruption, and the song manages to recover from it nicely each and every time. I quite like this, then, but I’m still left wondering at what could have been had these guys trusted their best instincts a bit more than their commercial ones.
[7]

Ian Mathers: Too restrained for its own good. “Nova” needs to either relax back into its initial reverie, or take things up another notch, and really, either would suffice.
[6]

Alex Ostroff: Pleasant enough, and it has a killer riff, but it just doesn’t connect. ‘Into the Clouds‘ was a more humble track, not built for world-conquering, but ‘Nova’ feels anonymous. It’s likely to be enjoyed by more people, but remembered by significantly fewer.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Half a beat faster, and this thing would have gone supernova. In its present form this Swedish electrofuzz trifle is merely cute in a teen slow dance kind of way.
[6]

Iain Mew: Even by Scandinavian electropop standards, those are some amazingly wimpy and ineffective vocals. Luckily the sense that they’re only just clinging on over all of the lovely electronic burbling and pulsing is a decent fit to the needy longing of the song, but it still feels like actually praising this is an act of sympathy as much as approval.
[6]

I’m trying to figure out if having two colours in your hair counts as edgy for Disney…

[Video][Website]
[4.38]

Doug Robertson: And so it all comes full circle, with former Mouseketeer Britney Spears’ new material passing through the Disney filter to create a suitably hyperactive mish-mash that forgoes the icky sugary sweetness of the High School Musical soundtracks in favour of something that could actually function in the real world. Though you will still be judged for listening to this if you’re not actually thirteen.
[7]

Zach Lyon: Includes all the signifiers for this type of exercise: sweeping tone shifts (always going bigger), lyrics hilariously mismatched with the music because the characters never have big enough problems to warrant that level of drama, the abandonment of any lyrical sense or narrative after the first verse, and a guest appearance by an adult male rapper (maybe not). This is also catchy as fuck.
[7]

Anthony Easton: I like how this one breaks wide open about the one minute mark, but hate the rest of it.
[4]

Al Shipley: Does the rap verse make it better or worse? I really have no idea. I’m thinking better, if only to make it a little less forgettable.
[3]

Alfred Soto: The Honorable Katy Perry has forever soiled the staccato vocal rhythms in which these spry young women indulge, but at least they’ve got rhythm — and a good ear for glancing off an unexpected SAT word.
[5]

Asher Steinberg: Self-help for the tween set, complete with made-up words (note: determinate, pronounced determin-it and used as an adjective, is a word, but determinate pronounced determin-eight, used as a verb, is not).
[1]

Ian Mathers: Maybe I’m letting my day job creep into my writing here, but I just can’t tolerate the titular misuse of the English language – it grates on my ears like bad AutoTune. And while I’m clearly not the target audience, it’s not like I’m immune to the charms of this kind of heavily frosted mock rock. This just isn’t a very good example of it. One point for some of the synths.
[1]

Katherine St Asaph: It’s pretty easy to discern the formula here — everything that charted in the past five years plus everything else that barely charted. Start with a Colbie Caillat/Jessie Malakouti mashup, then add the verses of “Hold It Against Me”, Cascada’s dad-rap (despite these kids[?] being cast as high-schoolers) and, crucially, a Luke-alike chorus. Well, almost. They’ve copied the dance-as-death-march template (think Ke$ha) from the grown-up charts and kept the music dark and intact, but they’ve only half-bowdlerized the lyrics, so “you and me together, we can make it better” lives alongside “I want to cry, I’ve been high, it isn’t right”. It’s as catchy as its predecessors, and I’m sure the movie makes the scene empowering, but you’ve got to wonder what the kids will think when they switch the dial and hear that this place is about to blow.
[7]

Trouser party!

[Video][Website]
[5.14]

Alfred Soto: Ooh — “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” for rap has-beens!
[4]

Al Shipley: It’s sad that it took a couple of hapless verses by overexposed bores to get a vintage Busta Rhymes doubletime flow over a wacky beat on the radio like it’s the late ’90s all over again.
[5]

Josh Langhoff: If you let Busta openly mock you on your own song, does that qualify as remorse? Busta’s verse is impressive and empty like “Flight of the Bumblebee”, like a DragonForce guitar solo, like the Micro Machine Man only now he’s selling Chris Brown music. Well, it might work — Busta and Wayne and the sparse Afrojack beat make this thing POP on the radio, and what with this and “Beautiful People” I’ve a sinking feeling I might end up liking Brown’s album. Best line: Wayne’s assonance-destroying “My Momma’s nice and my Dad is DEAD.” Second best: “I’m done.”
[7]

Asher Steinberg: There isn’t much to say. Busta sounds as energized as he has in many years, Wayne about as energized as he has in two years, Chris Brown acquits himself about as well as the average Travis Porter member (which is to say, not too badly at all), the beat’s terrific, with plenty of open space for Busta to roam over, there’s a catchy hook that works in the context of the song. Extremely commercial rap used to be this well-executed all the time, but today that’s rare, making this song a bit of an event.
[8]

Doug Robertson: Being bored of braggadocio is now at the stage where even being bored of it has become boring. Still, Busta Rhymes puts in a good effort, so this isn’t entirely a waste of our time, despite what little value Chris puts on it.
[4]

Ian Mathers: There are so many reasons this asshole shouldn’t have even the shadow of a career right now. But at least he’s gracious in his relative victory.
[0]

Zach Lyon: It’s a weird and entirely unique radio-listening experience when your first instinct is to go for the dial, because the song is being performed by a little shit that doesn’t deserve a lick of repentance, and then realizing that your hand is slowing down, and then having a moment of “oh God I can’t stop this”. At this point, I’ve given in completely, though my hand still does a little twitch when it comes on. I didn’t have as much trouble listening to a bit of “No BS,” because I mark out for Tha Bizness and I was happy they had a hit (and Brown was all but invisible) or for “Yeah 3x” because I always forget what song it is until the chorus. Supposedly, the big difference between the F.A.M.E. singles and all the other post-Rihanna ones is the fact that they no longer seem to be directly inspired by that night, or they at least lack the accidentally disgusting lyrics that bring it to mind. Lately it’s just been Chris Brown sitting back, becoming anonymous, and letting all his friends in the industry make him a bigger star than he ever was before everyone hated him. The problem with “Look at Me Now” is that none of that applies. It still IS a song about Rihanna and it’s the most confrontational one he’s written yet, and it peaked in popularity about a week before another big personality-exposing incident (YES, LOOK AT YOU NOW, YOU’RE THROWING CHAIRS LIKE A BABY). He plays himself up as the villain rather than the absent nobody he was playing before, and he doesn’t do it without some quality effort — yes, he’s overshadowed by rest of the song, but his involvement here isn’t a detriment. I’d like to add “in a vacuum” to the end of that sentence, but we’re not in a vacuum and I still enjoy his verse. Maybe I (and others) overrate it because of the taboo? Or because I never expected quality from him again? I don’t know. I try not to get down on myself about it, even as The Self-Righteous Guy with the Annoying Opinions about Odd Future, but the guilt is there, and maybe that’s just a part of the listening experience. Maybe the taboo is still there somewhere for much of the masses that have made this a top ten hit, or maybe I’m just hoping.
[8]

You know how sometimes you look at a band photo and you can just tell that hanging out with them would be awesome fun?

[Video][Myspace]
[4.75]

Doug Robertson: For a band who’ve constantly reinvented themselves and who define themselves by their desire to chase the new, it’s disappointing that this new Daft Punk single is largely a rehash of previous glories and… What? It’s actually the new Justice track? Seriously? Oh…
[5]

Ian Mathers: Hey, do you know what’s way better than one of Justice’s old Daft Punk-on-roids sledgehammers? Similar production married with the kind of lyrics/vocals you’d get from old pop-prog songs. Guys, nobody ever wanted narrative from you.
[3]

Zach Lyon: Has there ever been less pressure on a group to produce a song that sounds even a modicum unlike every other song they’ve done? I mean, I wish I could love anything the way Justice nerds love Justice, but doesn’t it eventually get a little boring? This sounds like they entered a Justice lookalike contest and placed second (but only because MSTRKRFT also ran).
[3]

Anthony Easton: Johnny Halladay, as the French Elvis, is just a little too smarmy, wants it a little too much, and keeps working too hard to be a real rock and roll star. Serge Gainsbourg just gave up, fucked who he wanted, drank what he wanted, and said what he wanted, and became the real French Elvis. I feel that way about Justice and Daft Punk. Though I like how minidrums and miniguns sound alike, and I did spend some time trying to figure out how miniguns had anything to do with civilizations.
[8]

Asher Steinberg: Sort of a cooler, and therefore way less fun, hipster version of Muse’s Queen-derivative musings on geopolitics and world peace, hybridized with a de-bubble-gummed, and therefore way less fun, take on “Evacuate the Dancefloor”. It’s all very shallow and Gallic and Bernard Henri-Levy.
[4]

Josh Langhoff: This is supposed to sound like “War Pigs” at the beginning, right? With the slowness and the detuned growly sound and the hi-hat between lines about war? Kinda gets less interesting after that.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Remember when Utah Saints turned Slayer into disco metal? Justice do the same for Toto or something — I’m not quite sure. Mostly the track sounds as if it waits, foot tapping, for its own remix.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: The chef knew something was amiss when the walk-in freezer started growling Savage Garden.
[4]

I think I’m IRONSIDE, Brian Potter…

[Video][Myspace]
[4.43]

Alfred Soto: On Ross’ own album “I’m Not a Star” was the ideal opening track: self-righteous, defensive, belligerent. Remade and remodeled, Ross and Wayne sound more like Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal than Dre and Snoop.
[5]

Al Shipley: “I’m Not a Star” is one of maybe 3 Rick Ross songs I’ve ever genuinely liked, so I’m happy with the retread, but Wayne used to just throw this kind of thing on a mixtape, not release it as a single.
[6]

Asher Steinberg: I can’t believe this is a single; it has no radio appeal that I can discern. Even rating it as an album track, though, this feels like a solid Rick Ross song with a phoned-in Wayne guest appearance; Ross raps for most of the song, or at least most of the non-forgettable parts. The beat’s a poor ripoff of the stuff Waka Flocka’s been rapping over.
[5]

Anthony Easton: This song hates women. It’s also profoundly stupid, and obsessed with guns in that teenage-boy-worried-about-the-size-of-their-cock kind of way, but mostly this song hates women. That’s got to be said, before I ask the obvious question: can someone explain why Lil Wayne is beloved as a lyricist? Is it the abstractions — because they seem oblique instead of clever — or is it something that hip hop being a continual stumbling block prevents me from hearing? Because I found this genuinely unpleasant and ugly, and I am beginning to think that it’s my fault, that I don’t quite know what is going on.
[2]

Josh Langhoff: The contents of their car: a chopper, bitches, a spare linen suit just in case, a shoebox full of money, delicious cakes, a Basquiat, a Theremin. Wayne sounded more menacing back when it was just a box of Band-Aids in the Escalade. Not coincidentally, the Band-Aids were also funnier.
[5]

Ian Mathers: Yeah yeah yeah, he’s a Martian or whatever, but all that talk of not caring and not coming yet doesn’t read as arrogant disregard and virility/prowess so much as, you know, dysfunction and ennui. And if he doesn’t care, why should I about another five minutes of trying-way-too-hard wordplay? Someone get this guy a vacation.
[5]

Jer Fairall: Bereft of his usual hilariously surrealistic wordplay, Wayne’s misogyny and boasting are simply ugly and tired, though not nearly as ugly and tired as the music backing him up on this surprisingly limp, joyless track. I was looking forward to Carter IV.
[3]