Okay, other bands named after sporting terminology… go!
[Video][Website]
[4.83]
Jake Cleland: Oooh, a trope I’ve sorely missed in pop music: a verse sung like the vocalist is having a fit of hiccups. It’s wonderful that the dude has enough humility to voice his embarrassment at the ‘licking down’ he received.
[2]
Katherine St Asaph: The world needs a “Hard”-hour Rihanna more than it needs a coloratura Ke$ha. I guess the guys can stay too, though they’re not knocking anyone down so much as blocking the line of movement so you’ll bump into them.
[5]
Brad Shoup: Come on, gang, let’s put on a show! Rihanna’s farm team injects a small bit of Bajan flavor, and it gets the chorus over, but otherwise this song could come from any corner. I know they have a drummer, but I can’t find him here. If their endless YouTube trove is any clue, Cover Drive clearly love pop, but they gotta learn how to treat it special.
[4]
Jonathan Bogart: Of course it would be the little touches I’d respond to, the slightly hokey, even touristy nods to Caribbean music like the steel drum riff and the ska-flecked middle eight. Which makes it stand out a bit more than the other eight thousand Rihanna-wannabes there’ve been this year. The other extra points are for being a bit duttier than RiRi herself, and for the female vocalist’s ability to channel not just the Other Bajan Singer but Ke$ha.
[6]
Edward Okulicz: For the benefit of You Americans, a cover drive is a cricket shot played with a straight bat towards a field position called “cover“. For everyone else, Cover Drive are blankly attractive proponents of blankly attractive quasi-Caribbean pop. Blokey’s response middle-eight is weak, and cute singer’s half-rap is weaker, but the chorus has got some spunk. They’re good at what they do, and not banging the drum for anything other than being vaguely catchy, certainly not being authentic if you look at the people they’re working with (Steve Mac, Ina Wroldsen, Linda Perry!) who make them sound oddly European, even with the steel drums — not that I’d want to lose those.
[6]
Alex Ostroff: Ostensibly a Bajan band discovered by YouTube and Rihanna, there’s little that distinguishes this from standard radio fare besides decorative steel drums, significantly heavier guitars than one would expect, and Bajan accents. But, honestly, that might be enough. The rare moments when Rihanna lets her natural tone slip out are tantalising, but not nearly enough. If Cover Drive produce a single radio moment as captivating as Rihanna’s pronunciation of “go downtown with a girl like me,” their existence will be more than justified. One point of confusion: the instrumental sounds very clearly studio-produced, but the video shows the band rocking out. What exactly do the two non-vocalists do now that they’re no longer rocking acoustic YouTube sessions?
[6]