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