Take me by the hand, take me somewhere new…
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[5.20]
Edward Okulicz: “I’m With You” is my favourite Avril Lavigne single. “Cheers (Drink to That)” takes the tiny bit of the song just before it becomes completely amazing, and loops it until it becomes annoying — i.e. twice. And then does it several more times for good measure.
[1]
Al Shipley: I didn’t think a Rihanna song could be so perfectly pandering as to make most of her other hits feel kind of artful and subtle by comparison. The insistent yelp of one of pop’s more piercing voices takes it from shameless to grimly mercenary in its inevitable ubiquity.
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Katherine St Asaph: Cheers to the freakin’ seventh single out of your Loud songwriting camp. Dropping a record-skipping sample of Avril’s “yayeeyeah” is the sort of trick only permissible after the party’s soused and lazy.
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Jonathan Bogart: It doesn’t matter what score I, or any of us, give this. It will be playing at happy hours on Mars long after our cities have ground to dust.
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Brad Shoup: Too many pop songs about bars carry a dark, nugatory energy, so “Cheers” comes as a massive relief just by tilting the emotional color wheel a bit to the left. It’s a weary celebration, to be sure. Rihanna sticks to her lower register — her flat yeahs may be my favorite thing she’s done — alongside slabs of piano mixed so low as to be dronelike. Props to The Runners for leaving an instrumental bridge, even if there’s a solo-shaped hole over the palm-muted strumming. This thing was built for the local service-industry drinking circuit, where 2 a.m. is the finish line, and you might get laid, but it’s mostly about the alcohol and a few friends to bitch with. A beautiful grey buzz of a song for those whose workday ends in darkness.
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Erick Bieritz: Not many singers singing about drinking sound like they actually did any drinking beforehand, so it’s refreshing to hear Rihanna put her bottle where her mouth is and deliver “Cheers” in that particular drowsy drawl that makes her sound like an admirably high-functioning, well-enunciating drunk.
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Alfred Soto: Since Rihanna’s usual tone is drink-sozzled anyway, I was ready for this marriage between singer and material. Besides, Ke$ha’s “Shots on the Hood of My Car” was a terrific chaser last month. But Rihanna’s full of surprises — who knew Jameson could inspire “ethnic” vocal stylings? Who knew you can confuse Jameson for quaaludes? As grim as a Monday morning hangover.
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Jonathan Bradley: What’s the better novelty here: Rihanna’s rediscovery of her Barbadian accent or the disembodied Avril squawking all over the hook? The other distinct feature of the song doubles as my favorite part: the soft resignation with which Rihanna sings “Cheers to the freakin’ weekend.” When Kells toasted, “So what I’m drunk; it’s the freakin’ weekend,” it seemed like Friday night permitted him to shrug a great load from his shoulders. Rihanna sounds as if the burden will still be there on Saturday morning.
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Josh Langhoff: It’s about time somebody captured the depressing slog that is obsessive barhopping. Your mind’s always on your money, everybody just sits around complaining about the bastards at work, and some idiot keeps singing the same line from that stupid Avril song OVER AND OVER. Cheers to the freakin’ weekend.
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Alex Ostroff: The breezy shuffle of “Cheers” lets Rihanna slow everything down so her voice can lilt its way through “Jameson,” “bastards,” “no Tyra!” and a variety of other pleasing sounds, which is more than enough reason to love it. The other half of the conversation about this song revolves around the incongruous, aggravating Avril sample, “Yeah!”s yodelling up and down the octave. But it’s not as out of place as it might seem. Avril’s original cries were about feeling isolated and lonely in the midst of a hundred identical small-town house parties with no way out. There’s a similar resignation and weariness here that pops up sporadically in lines like “people gonna talk whether you doing bad or good” and exhortations to not “let the bastards get you down.” Even the hilarious “no Tyra!” is swiftly followed by Rihanna’s fears of downward spirals and fights disrupting her vibe. This toast to the weekend isn’t Montell Jordan‘s or R. Kelly‘s, or even Katy Perry‘s. While everyone else does shots on the hood of their cars and parties until the end of the world, Rihanna’s not even drinking to celebrate the end of the week. She’s drinking to push away the misery, get her mind off her money and search for that one song on the jukebox that will momentarily unite the entire bar in a slurred chorus of community. These days, what other options do we have?
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