With a dimple that can overcome 280p…
[Video][Website]
[4.89]
Alfred Soto: She sure is nice — so nice that when she urges her lover to “play the part” I don’t believe her for a moment. If she’d married a post-rehab don’t-bullshit-me lyric to the clomping backbeat, woo-oos, and synths, the results would be worth a listen.
[5]
Will Adams: “Are we on the same page?” asks Cheryl Cole. Considering she brought sunscreen, a parasol, and 75ºF weather while Alex da Kid brought an overcast sky, some fog, and 50ºF, I think the answer to that is an emphatic “no.”
[3]
Jonathan Bogart: I’m only vaguely aware of who Cheryl Cole is, but the breezy good nature of this song isn’t the sort that depends on the specifics of the singer’s personality. In that, it reminds me of Paris Hilton’s “Stars Are Blind” or Lily Allen’s “LDN” — too chirpy to be seductive, too self-amused to be boring. The beat’s unimaginative, but nothing a good remix couldn’t fix.
[7]
Erick Bieritz: The problem with “Under the Sun” is the way it tries to trade its serviceable conceit for another (vaguely) sun-related turn of phrase at the end. For those following along at home, this refers to that painful bit of punnery at the end of the middle eight. “Ring My Bell” doesn’t begin with some bell-polishing or bell-purchasing double entendre and then try to change tracks at the end. Anita Ward puts away some dishes and then the rest of the song is just bell ringing. That’s how it should be!
[4]
Mallory O’Donnell: I’ve often been a fan of the Girls together, but apart… There might have once been something charming in that juvenile, plodding, mid-90’s beat but it has been robbed of that (admittedly minor) potential by football chants and Cole and her studio wizards’ dogged attempts to employ various vocal and photoshop filters to make this waif sound and look (peep that album cover) as close to an African-American woman (again, from the mid-90’s) as computronically possible. While that attempt mostly fails, it’s so disrespectful on it’s own terms–when coupled with a track so clearly courting the under-18’s that nonetheless shoehorns in an unsubtle cunnilingus reference, it crosses the line from being merely insulting to becoming truly, boringly gross.
[3]
John Seroff: Unimaginative and oddly heavy hearted but unoffensive by dint of its own restraint. Even by radio pop’s notoriously coy level of double entendre, this is a hell of a long road to tell somebody “eat me”. Bonus point for managing to compare your vagina to a star.
[6]
Brad Shoup: This is one of the cheerier things Alex Da Kid has foisted on the marketplace. The manufacturing-plant drum track is still here, but at least here it detonates the chorus, and anyway, Cole’s a big step up from Skylar Gray. Speaking of the chorus, she’s so pitch-processed there, I can’t even be sure it’s her, or even a female. It’s just one impeccable ingredient in this mess: Adam Levine on the whee-oo-whee-oos, existentially-devastated bros screaming on the pre-chorus, a truly ambiguous “is this really my life?” (She could be luxuriating in fortune, or perhaps uneasily digesting the text.) And also this has the kind of close harmonies and cadences that knock me down. It’s melodic but not ecumenically so — does that make sense? Like, I can’t imagine more than one person at a time singing along to this. It’s a wonderful experiment in pleasing everyone gone amok.
[9]
Anthony Easton: I am just not ready for Cheryl Cole’s emotional masochism. It’s not very deep, and it’s not anything that hasn’t been done for a thousand years, but this isn’t even a radical enough departure to note the differences.
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: Questions posed by Cheryl Tweedy’s “Under the Sun,” in order: How pissed is Cheryl Burke right now? How about Cheryl Tiegs? How about Cheryl, the “four-member, semi-anonymous, cat-masked artist collective based in Brooklyn”? Are we really going to accept this crime against surnames? How about the crime evidently committed against Calvin Harris’s keyboard (if you think he still uses a keyboard)? Oh, it’s Alex da Kid? What’s he doing on this? Why do his drums always sound this shambolic? Why does every pop singer splay her vowels like that? Who can we blame? And who can we blame for the fake crowd sounds? Is it will.i.am? It probably is, considering he’s got at least a 10% stake in the Cheryl enterprise, right? Why do those pauses before the chorus always work on me? And who invited Adam Levine to that chorus? Is “under the sun” supposed to be a metaphor for something? Is it Cheryl? Cheryl might compare her body to the sun, and that’s what the video does anyway, right? Does that make “over you” a metaphor, too, one that defies any breakup-song narrative? And “sunshine on my face,” which would require contortions beyond even pornographer imaginations? Did I just hear “I got paid today / is this really my life?” I mean, I empathize, but surely Cheryl Cole getting paid ranks in surprise somewhere around Cheryl Cole smoldering? Do I get, get what she means? Does the “get underneath” line mean it really was innuendo? Was that…? Please say…? I guess she wouldn’t have heard Noe Venable, but seriously, who signed off on that line? Do artist deals just come with one contractual shittily titillating (shitillating?) entendre per record now? Wouldn’t that make him the sun, anyway, or are we supposed to imagine Cheryl Cole’s own body is going down on itself? Everything under the sun, indeed.
[3]