“Papaoutai” with parping, and repeated comparisons.
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[4.43]
Josh Langhoff: Ridsa’s first top 10 hit is très métronomique, with each keyboard preset nodding a distinct entrance over a four-floor stomp. I admire his multitracked “die die die” bouncing off the beat, but ultimately the song is too clean and bland to register, a corner entry at the electro craft fair.
[3]
Iain Mew: Là c’est Stromae, more like. Credit for getting the languid banger sound just as perfectly balanced, even if he doesn’t reach nearly the same intensity.
[6]
Thomas Inskeep: Sounds like Eiffel 65’s “Blue” with hip-hop accoutrements, and the fakest of fake horns.
[3]
Jonathan Bogart: It’s outrageously unfair, I know, but ever since I was fourteen I’ve mentally compared every French pop dance song to “Dur dur d’être bébé” and very few of them can withstand the association. Certainly this twinkling smugfest doesn’t.
[4]
Juana Giaimo: I wonder, if this song wasn’t in French, whether we’d still compare it to Stromae — still, it sounds so much like Stromae.
[5]
Edward Okulicz: When I first got a real computer, one thing I enjoyed doing was downloading MIDI files from the Internet and switching the instruments around, turning every instrument that wasn’t a drum into badly rendered horn patches. This song’s chorus with its tragic parping over tinkling has done the work for me already.
[5]
Scott Mildenhall: These early Stromae demos must be exceedingly rare. They must have monetary value, at least.
[5]