I can’t help it, I have to link to this.
[Video][Website]
[7.00]
Jonathan Bogart: ALL HAIL.
[9]
Frank Kogan: If you think of vocodor and autotune as the screwball comedy of popular music, this song is Carole Lombard slapping at the dishes, it’s Kate Hepburn bringing down the brontosaur, it’s Harlow kicking Beery in the butt — it’s also every spizz and pingle of modern electro condensed into one orange-haired woman flexing her foot like a windshield wiper and ticking her tush like a clock.
[9]
Iain Mew: The aggressive guitars and sounds pinballing manically from side to side of the intro set the tone. Words are half spat and growled, effects disrupt and enhance in equal parts. The singer turns first into a ticking clock and then into just part of the clanking machinery. It’s quite metal for something which isn’t really metal at all, and given the way it flits between ideas, the unceasing toughness of it is really quite impressive. Just not all that loveable.
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: The frequency of the main synth (both sonic frequency and how often the damn thing’s used) is so physically painful that I can’t listen to this without periodic breaks. It’s a shame; I’d love this if I could get through 30 seconds at once.
[6]
Jer Fairall: Avant-dance taken to its logical extreme in a mess of guitar squawks, belching robo-beats and lyrics that I’m willing to bet would read as nonsensical in any tongue. Exactly what I expect the next Britney album to sound like, essentially.
[3]
Edward Okulicz: Moves like prime Britney, especially reminiscent of “Toxic”, albeit without the string sweeps and instead about fifty kilos of snark and bitchy, self-empowered attitude in its place. It’s a pretty fair trade, because Fat Cat does bratty just as well as Spears does supine, overwhelmed sexuality.
[9]
Brad Shoup: A half-rapped, persona-building exercise in pure snot. The spirit and drive are pre-Blackout Britney: Fat Cat wants to destroy, not dance. Actually, “half-rapped” isn’t entirely accurate; she’s wonderfully nimble in the official rap break, and gets a nice, begging-for-extraction cadence in “holic holic fallin’ fallin’ that’s me that’s me love me baby”. The guitar riff, separated for safety, sure seems like a signifier (to the winking recklessness of hair metal? generic rock ‘n’ roll rebellion? “(You Drive Me) Crazy”?), but hell, it’s K-pop — maybe it’s just whatever works.
[7]