Dracula's Pop Music Soapbox

Alright, I realize that we have a dedicated music forum but... I want people to actually read this dammit, and they're not going to do that if it's hidden away in that wasteland. I can reserve the right to use this as a soapbox for other topics if I have to in order to keep it in the community section.


Every day I commute to work and every day I tune into Top 40 radio to see what’s been lighting up the charts. I don’t consider myself a music snob and while I do think I possess a decent knowledge of musical history I don’t really listen to much indie rock. Instead I primarily listen to whatever the popular hits are at a given moment even though I’m well aware of the fact that 75% of them are going to be pretty stupid. Anyway, because of this I’m left with a lot of musical opinions I need to vent and I’ve finally decided I needed a place to do it. As such I’ve created this thread where I’ll post some brief reviews of whatever the newest and most popular pop songs are all over the radio. For my first installment I’m going to simply let the Billboard chart dictate which songs I’ll look at by reviewing the current top ten most popular songs in the country. In future installments I’ll probably use other means of choosing what I’ll look at, but this seems like a good place to start. Oh, also, I should probably note that I’m grading these by the standards of contemporary mainsteam pop, not by some kind of all-time all-genres metric.

The Billboard Top Ten Reviewed
10. “Stay With Me” by Sam Smith

Oh Mumford and Sons, what hath ye wrought. Ever since that band hit it big we’ve been inundated by horrible British folk-pop by the likes of Ed Sheeran, Passenger, and now this ****ing guy. It’s also probably telling that the first few weeks I heard this on the radio it came with a “presented by Capital Records” disclaimer at the end of each playing, which indicates that this song’s success is largely due to legitimized payola. Even if the song had managed to get into the top ten on its own merits, it’s still a really uncatchy dirge of a song sung by a guy with a weird and kind of whiney voice. As has often been the case with these songs, it also has the distinct whiff of a song that’s just blatently pandering to female listeners swooning over how sensitive the singer is supposed to be. I mean, this is a song about a man having a one night stand and then just wanting to stay and cuddle with the anonymous woman he’s just banged because she’s “all I need.” Give me a break. Sam, if this is the kind of thing you have to say in order to pick up chicks at the coffeshop, that’s fine, but don’t think you’re fooling anyone else.
D

9. “Summer” by Calvin Harris

Singles by EDM DJs are pretty much the biggest trend right now on the pop charts and as far as I can tell this Calvin Harris guy has more or less supplanted David Guetta as the biggest thing going in the genre. Judging by this video (which looks like a cross between a Victoria’s Secret commercial and a direct to video Fast and Furious knockoff) it might just be because he’s willing to pander to the lowest common denominator. The fact that he looks a little more presentable than some of his mask wearing brethren probably has a little to do with it as well. Normally he just serves as a glorified producer on his singles and hand the vocal duties off to a pop star like Rihanna or Ellie Goulding, but here he’s doing his own vocals like his did on “Feel So Close,” a song which this borders on sounding like a complete retread of. It’s pretty clear that this guy would not make it as a professional vocalist but the lyrics here skew more towards poetic speak-singing than real crooning, so he isn’t too much of a liability. I have reservations about Harris and about this genre but I’ve got to say there’s something about this song that really appeals to me. The lyrics are nothing special at all but it has some really well placed “sum-ah”s and “Ays” and manages to set a really epic and atmospheric tone that reminds me of Zedd’s “Clarity” (which probably my favorite song to come out of this trend).
B+

8. “Am I Wrong” by Nico and Vinz

When I first heard this song, which is by a couple of random Swedish guys I hadn’t heard of before, I kind of assumed that it was another case of an EDM DJ making it big, but that wasn’t really the case. Nico and Vinz are actually basically just electronic pop singers. Listening to the song right next to the above Calvin Harris song I can definitely see how that one has more of an “oonsa oonsa oonsa” dance music quality to it while this one has more of a slinking sort of string sound. In many ways it sounds sort of like a song out of time but I can’t exactly place what era it evokes, sort of 90s synth-pop kind of thing I guess. Anyway, I’m not really sure how this song became a success, but by contemporary pop standards its mostly listenable even if I find it kind of indistinct and forgettable.
B-

7. “Rude” by Magic!

When I looked up the Billboard 100 to do this feature I was only shocked to see one song on there, this one. The other nine songs have all been in heavy rotation on my Top 40 radio station, but I’ve never heard this song or heard of this bad. How the hell did something become the seventh most popular song in the country behind my back? I was even more surprised when I looked it up on youtube and quickly realized that it was a ska track… I thought all the ska bands died off in the late 90s. Even No Doubt doesn’t get airplay anymore. I’ve done some digging and there doesn’t seem to be anything nefarious going on, it’s just a song that my local station doesn’t seem to want anything to do with. Anyway… uh… it sounds catchy enough I guess. I never really know where I stand on a pop song until after I’ve heard it a thousand times so I’m kind of at a loss as to how to deal with this one. The subject matter about a guy asking his girlfriend’s father’s blessing before proposing is a little hokey, and “why you gotta be so rude” seems like something of an understated reaction to being told you can’t be with the woman you love ("why you gotta be so cruel" would have made more sense), but I guess it’s a pleasant enough song overall.
B

6. “Happy” by Pharrell Williams

Speaking of things I’ve heard a million times, oh god am I sick of this one. I actually liked it quite a bit when it first came out and enjoyed Pharrell’s performance at the Oscars but… yeah the fact that this debuted around the time of the Oscars and it’s still the number six song in the country says a lot about how deeply over-played it is at this point. Okay, I’m going to try to step back and try to remember why I liked it in the first place. Well, it’s got a good beat obviously (that’s to be expected when a Neptune is involved) and Pharrell’s vocals have continued to impress (in this sense he’s kind of the anti-Calvin Harris). So, yeah, I think it’s fair to say that this has done a lot better than a song that was randomly placed on the soundtrack to a Dreamworks-esque animated movie would have ever been expected to. I look forward to when it’s finally off the radio so that I can more objectively assess it because at this point I change the station whenever it comes on.
C

5. “Wiggle” by Jason Derulo Ft. Snoop Dogg

Jason Derulo is sort of like a Flo Rida of R&B in that he somehow keeps having hit after hit even though he kind of flies under the radar and no one really knows or cares about him. Previously he was trying to be sort of a poor man’s Usher, but now he’s decided he’d rather be a poor man’s Akon and the results have been disasterous.One of my least favorite pop songs of recent memory was Jason Derulo’s “Talk Dirty,” which was a really lame song with an annoying saxophone driven beat, some extremely sleazy lyrics, and a really terrible 2Chainz verse. I certainly thought that song was stupid, but holy ****, this guy really took stupid to a new level with this follow up. I kind of thought we were past the point where someone could say something like “you know what to do with that big fat butt… wiggle wiggle wiggle” out loud. In fact it’s so completely moronic that I find a sort of perverse joy in listening to it. There’s almost a train-wreck quality to the whole thing, you listen to it and wonder how anyone would dream to make such a thing. On top of that, I generally think it’s a better sounding track than “Talk Dirty.” I much prefer the pan-flute sound here to the saxophone ear-sore on the other song and Snoop Dogg is generally more lovable than 2 Chains. All that said, I’m pretty sure that I’m going to stop being amused by this really fast if it stays around for any length of time.
D+

4. “Turn Down For What” by DJ Snake and Lil Jon

First thing’s first, the video for this song is just the most bizarrely brilliant music video I’ve seen in a while. We don’t see enough surreal craziness in videos enough anymore and it’s pretty cool that someone went ahead and did something creative with the medium for once. Anyway, this is another EDM song, but it’s pretty much on the opposite side of the spectrum from Calvin Harris’ brand of grandiose high class electronica. Instead this is a down and dirty club song with little in the way of lyrics beyond Lil Jon occasionally shouting a couple lines of gibberish here and there. It’s kind of oddly admirable that something this raw would come along in an era where these EDM DJs seem to be working so hard to turn their dancefloor noise into fully crafted pop songs. Also, man, this song just really pumps me up whenever I hear it. I’m not one to party but when this comes on the radio I just want to crank up the volume and bang my head.
A-

3. “All of Me” by John Legend

This is another song that has been massively overplayed, but unlike “Happy,” I never really liked this one very much to begin with. It’s certainly odd to see John Legend back on the charts a full decade since “Ordinary People,” which was a song that was never close to being as popular as this one (it peaked at number 24). Legend makes somewhat respectable though usually not overly exciting music and frankly I don’t think this song is up to his usual high standards. At this point in time I fear that songwriters are really running out of ways to say “I love you” because “All of me loves all of you” is trite even by Hallmark card standards. The rest of the song is basically just your standard litany of reasons why the singer loves and worships his woman. It’s a generally unoriginal and indistinct song and I don’t know for the life of me why it’s caught on so hard.
C-

2. “Problem” by Ariana Grande Ft. Iggy Azalea

Alright, I’ll start with the positive. Ariana Grande seems to be a very talented vocalist and the parts of this song where she’s singing are mostly pretty enjoyable. The problem (no pun intended) is that pretty much every other decision made about this song is questionable. It’s yet another song with an irritating saxophone loop for a beat (Macklemore, you’ve got a lot to answer for) and I also think that having Big Sean whispering “I got one less problem without ya” is a very weak chorus that doesn’t do the song any favors. Then there’s the guest verse by Iggy Azalea… I’ll have more to say about this chick shortly but for now I’ll just say that I’m not a fan of her and her verse here (which doesn’t even rhyme, unless count the first four lines in which she rhymes “you” with “you”) is pretty lame. So yeah, there’s the backbone of a good song here but its buried under some bull****.
C

1. “Fancy” by Iggy Azalea

We saved the worst for last (or first depending on your perspective). Iggy Azalea’s entire career is, problematic, for me. I’ve never been one to argue against cultural assimilation in music and I’ve also never been one to argue that white people shouldn’t be allowed to rap. I’ve certainly never had a problem with Eminem or his place in Hip Hop, partly because he wasn’t coming from a remotely middle class perspective and partly because his success almost never seemed to come at the expense of black rappers. This recent wave of white rappers seems different to me, in part because the amount they get played on the radio seems to be very out of proportion. The racist-ass Top 40 station in my area seems to play Macklemore songs and “Fancy” every hour and they also jump on every new Eminem track they can get their hands on but they hardly play any rap songs by black artists unless they’re entirely dominated by white singers like Justin Timberlake doing hooks, and judging by what the charts look like I don’t think their alone in this. I could kind of forgive them for doing this with Macklemore because he was at least covering unique subject matter in his music and also because he actually displayed some real lyrical skills at times.

“Fancy” on the other hand is really just another Hip Hop song about money, liquor, fashion, and all the other things that supposedly turn people off about rap music and seems to get a pass for it all simply because she’s a white woman. The irony of course is that she frankly has less business singing about any of that stuff than most rappers simply be virtue of her whiteness. When Jay-Z brags about money it has a certain power to it because it’s in a rags to riches context, but when a white woman who by all accounts had a privileged upbringing does it the same it just doesn’t resonate. Also there’s a certain copycat quality to what she’s doing. She didn’t grow up in the culture that invented these phrases and she certainly doesn’t really come up with a very original way of expressing any of it. You really get the impression that she just sat around listening to a bunch of Young Money CDs and said “I could do that.” Also this voice that she takes on is just lame. On top of all that the rhyming here is just weak, there’s hardly a single memorable couplet in the whole song. If Ace Hood had written this (and he very well could have) it would have been a small blip on Urban radio and no one in middle America would have ever heard it.
D

Random Bonus Song:
For the most part I’m going to be using this thread to talk about the newest of pop hits, but I also want to take a look back what topped the charts in the past. So with each installment I’m going to do a random bonus song, which I’ll pick by randomly picking a date between 1955 and 2010 with Random.org’s random date generator and then looking up what the number one song on that date using thisdayinmusic.com. For our inaugural random bonus song we’ll be looking at:

“The Sign” by Ace of Base

I swear I picked this song randomly but it’s a pretty fortuitous choice because I think this song has had a lot of influence on the pop charts in the proceeding years. The song is largely the brainchild of a Swedish producer named Denniz Pop, who was sort of the Lee Atwater to Max Martin’s Karl Rove. Long story short, he’s one of the key forces behind the late-90s boy band boom and though he died in 1998 his protégés live on and have been making annoying music ever since. Still I do enjoy the craft of a well-crafted pop tune, and “The Sign” is nothing if not well crafted. This is also one of the oldest pop songs that I still pretty distinctly remember the original run of because it became ubiquitous enough to crossover to children’s radio when I was six. The weakest element of the song are probably the lyrics , which have a distinctly ESL quality to them (“Life is demanding without understanding?”), and while the singer can carry a tune she’s not exactly the greatest singer you’re likely to ever hear. Still this is an undeniably catchy song and I totally understand why it was such a smash hit, and I think it’s mostly managed to age more gracefully than I would have expected.
A-

Last week I started things out by going through the Billboard top ten. I don’t plan on doing one of these every single week, but I did want to get this installment out because in this one I’m trying to go back a few weeks and talk about some of the songs from a little earlier in the year while they’re still sort of relevant. In addition I’m going to talk about a couple of songs that never did get too high on the Billboard chart, but which did manage to catch my attention just the same.

Pompeii – Bastille

Let’s see, we’ve got a British band that’s ostensibly a rock band but whose sound doesn’t sound overly guitar driven, we’ve got all sorts of perhaps unearned bombast, and we’ve got lyrics that sound grandiose but don’t really make a whole lot of sense when you break them down… ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got a new Coldplay clone. And if Bastille are in the dubious position of being Coldplay wannabes this is almost certainly their attempt to recreate “Viva la Vida,” what with all the lyrics directly referencing a famous moment from pre-modern European history. Now this all sounds like an insult but the truth is, while I wouldn’t call myself a Coldplay fan, I don’t hate them as much as a lot of people do and have come to enjoy a number of their songs in spite of themselves and in much the same way I’ve found myself getting a decent amount of enjoyment out of this song even though I think it’s kind of ridiculous. Lyrics like “oh where do we begin/the ruble or our sins” are clearly pretentious as hell (also, you should obviously deal with the ruble first, that’s clearly the more immediate concern), but they do manage to sell them pretty well with the chanting in the background and furious drum beat.
B

Tiesto – Red Lights

According to the Billboard this song peaked at number 56 and has been falling off the list ever since then but no one seemed to give that memo to my local top 40 station because they’ve been playing it constantly for the last few weeks. I’m bringing it up because I was pretty charitable with the EDM in my last installment and wanted to bring in an example of how this genre can go wrong when the execution isn’t close to perfect. This Tiësto guy is a Dutch DJ who’s been a pretty big deal on the electronic circuit for at least a decade but has never really had a song chart in the US before, but given the current climate he’s clearly decided the time is right to give the mainstream a go. He’s done this by switching up his earlier trance style and hiring some professional songwriters, and by “some” songwriters I mean no fewer than five additional songwriters including the nobody they got to do the singing on this thing. With all that songwriting talent you’d think they’d come up with a better hook than “we could just run them red lights,” which is ridiculous firstly for it’s questionable grammar (folksy syntax is not something that should be attempted when you’re working in the most artificial and highly produced genre in all of music) and secondly because it just seems like a lame thing to be making a big deal about. If you look really closely at the lyrics it seems like this is supposed to be a metaphor about kicking off a relationship without all the usual obstacles, but on the type of casual listen that these kinds of songs are kind of written for it just seems like this dude is fantasizing about breaking traffic laws, and that is kind of lame. Also the production, which is supposed to be the star of the show, just seems pretty generic to me and I doubt that the EDM aficionados are going to be much more charitable given that this whole single was kind of a sellout move.
D

Not a Bad Thing – Justin Timberlake

I’m kind of a newcomer when solo Justin Timberlake is concerned. I wasn’t listening to pop radio at all when his first two solo records came out and even if I was there’s a good chance I would have switched channels immediately whenever one of his songs came on if only out of residual NSYNC hatred. However, I’ve mellowed now and have been more than willing to give him a shot over the course of the 20/20 experience era and have been met with mostly mixed results. Suit and Tie was pretty enjoyable and Mirrors was one of the best pop ballads of recent memory, but he’s had some duds off of these albums too (anyone remember TKO?). He has managed to finally score a third major hit in this era though with “Not a Bad” thing, which is an acoustic-ish song that has a kind of laid back almost group sing-along vibe. As usual, Timbaland gives this a very clean and very polished production and Timberlake’s singing is as good as you’d expect. The one thing that nags at me about it are the lyrics. I don’t know, there just seems to be something kind of arrogant about reassuring your woman that falling in love with you isn’t a bad thing, as if it’s a foregone conclusion that she will fall in love with you as soon as they let go of their baggage. Whatever, he sells it.
B+

Shakira – Empire

I don’t really remember a whole lot about what Shakira was like back in the day, she always just seemed like an also-ran who was never quite as famous as Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. She’s popped up from time to time since then, but she hasn’t really been able to keep her career stable since then. Now she’s apparently judging a singing competition show and is trying to make a comeback. This single apparently didn’t do great and peaked at number 58 but like with “Red Lights” my local radio station was a lot more enthusiastic about it than the rest of the country. Her last single (“Can't Remember to Forget You" which featured Rhianna) apparently charted a lot higher, but I hardly ever noticed it or remembered it. This song I don’t see myself forgetting for a long time though, if only because I think it’s kind of insane. They don’t say it as explicitly as some songs would, but this is plainly a song about sex. Not just sex, but apparently mind-blowingly amazing sex that is described through wildly melodramatic metaphors like “and the stars make love to the universe” and “like the empires of the world unite.” It’s almost like a modern version of Minnie Riperton’s “Lovin’ You” in that it basically features a woman talking about being put into a state of utter bliss by whatever sexual god she happens to be sleeping with and both have choruses that are basically meant to be representations of the moans she lets out during orgasm. So, yeah, the song’s naked carnality is enough to keep me fascinated in a “are you guys really doing this” kind of way, but there are other aspects of the song that keep me interested like it’s equally grandiose orchestration and also the way Shakira’s accent plays into it.
A-

Dark Horse – Katy Perry

So, over the years I’ve said some pretty disparaging things about Katy Perry. At one point I even went so far as to call her the second worst artist working today (behind Ke$ha). I still stand by what I said insofar as it pertains to her output at that time, however, I was sort of growing to tolerate her for a little while there. Most of her post-Teenage Dream output like “Wide Awake” was… not good, but at least inoffensive. I even got some guilty pleasure enjoyment out of “Roar.” But then she put out this ****ing song and killed any and all of the miniscule goodwill that she had been building. First of all, this is clearly an attempt to recapture the “magic” of her song “E.T.” This is a bad idea to begin with because “E.T.” is awful even by Katy Perry standard and is probably her worst song to date. Then they give it this bad, dated, crunk sounding beat complete with a chopped-and-screwed refrain (“there’s no coming back”). I will say that the idea of putting Perry in the role of some kind of witch/siren works better as a theme then whatever alien rape thing was going on in “E.T.,” but the lyrics are really stupid and don’t even seem to know what the phrase “dark horse” means. Then they choose Juicy J of all people to serve as a guest rapper for whatever reason. This guy is pretty washed up at this point and frankly he wasn’t exactly the greatest rapper in the world back when he was relevant. He probably does as best as could be expected given the dopey premise he has to work with, but still, the rhyming here is serviceable at best. This song sucks. I usually have pretty low standards for what I’ll sit through when I’m out driving but whenever this thing comes on I switch stations.
F

Random Bonus Song
“Hey Paula” by Paul and Paula

For this week’s random bonus song I drew February 11th 1963, when the biggest song in the country was a not-so-widely remembered pop song by a one-hit-wonder novelty act called Paul and Paula (they were actually named Ray and Jill, but adopted the names of the characters in the song). You know how most people think of American Graffiti as a movie about the 50s even though it was actually set in 1962? Yeah, that’s true about a lot of stuff from the early 60s and this incredibly square depiction of teenage courtship is no exception. In this duet a pair of recent high school graduates talk about being in love and planning on marriage in the most naïve terms possible. The whole thing is incredibly chaste and sexless and is entirely described in very safe confines of marriage and “true love.”

This is the kind of song that gets played ironically in movies right after the baby boomer couple get's a messy divorce, as if to say "remember when we thought it was all this simple." It’s when you listen to stuff like this that you begin to appreciate just how rebellious and different early rock and roll must have sounded to audiences of this time. Also the song has a really bizarre structure in which each singer is given a super short verse and then the two of them repeat the chorus twice before the very short tune ends. Still, I can kind of see why this song caught some people’s ears. “Paula” is a pretty decent singer (certainly better than “Paul”) and there is something kind of earwormy about the way the “Hey, Hey, Paul/Paula” line rolls off the singers' tongues.
C-

Ain’t it Fun – Paramore

Paramore is a band I completely slept on until very recently. They never really broke into pop radio until recently and they were also too soft to really get onto the Active Rock station I listen to. I’d heard the name thrown around but I’d always assumed that they were this really hipster indie band. Boy was I surprised to learn that they were actually really poppy and that their lead singer is that chick who sings the hook on that “Airplanes” song from a few years ago. Their first big radio single, “Still Into You,” sounded to me like something Carly Rae Jepson could have written, which isn’t to say that’s it’s terrible but it certainly wasn’t what I was expecting. But now that the shock is over I can appreciate that their actually a pretty tight pop outfit and their latest and most successful song is pretty damn catchy. That duh duh duh sound right after each line in the chorus is infectious, and I also like how the chorus can be read as either sincere or sarcastic. I might have liked if that same ambiguity had extended into the verses as well, but I guess you can’t have everything. I also could have done without the use of a black coir at the end, which is a trick that’s really beginning to be overly abused lately.
A-

Loyal- Chris Brown Ft. Lil Wayne & Tyga

This is one of those songs where, as you’re listening to it, you have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. The angel is saying “this is an shamelessly mysoginistic song performed by a man who is by all accounts a terrible human being” while the devil is saying “quit going soft on me, you know as well as I do that these hos ain’t loyal. Hate to say it, but the devil might have won out on this one. Alright as far as Chris Brown’s personal life goes… I don’t care. In my capacity as a film buff I’ve been more than willing to watch Roman Polanski and Mel Gibson movies and half the rappers I listen to at least want you to think that they’re hardened criminals and possibly killers, so no, I’m not going to be one of those people who thinks that choosing not to enjoy a Chris Brown song from time to time is an effective way to combat domestic violence. As for the morality of the lyrics… yeah, they’re pretty ****ed up, but I think there is something to be said for simply allowing yourself to go along with these kind of power-trips for four minute intervals and getting them out of your system so you can effectively be respectful to women the rest of the day. As for the song itself. I think it’s pretty catchy. Lil’ Wayne and Tyga both drop breezy little verses, Chris Brown’s hook is earwormy, and the overall production is quite good. The one place where it really falters is Chris Brown’s verse in the middle which consists of these weird interspaced sentence fragments.
B

Classic – MKTO

MKTO is a vocal duo, but when I first heard the song I thought there were more than two people singing on it, specifically I thought there were five people singing on it because this frankly sounds like the kind of song a boy band would put out. Its squeaky clean but not necessarily wholsesome lyrics complimenting a female combined with the way the two singings trade lines is straight out of the Backstreet Boys playbook as is the gimmicky “timeless beauty” concept. Pretty much the only thing that diverges from the usual boy band formula is the part where Malcolm Kelley goes into this really lame rap breakdown. Upon doing further research on these guys I find that they apparently met while filming a Nickelodeon show and if you do an image search of the white one you quickly find pictures of him trying very hard to look like Justin Bieber. So yeah, these guys are most certainly manufactured and the song is soulless, but it isn’t completely horrible so much as it’s just kind of lame. The listing off eras theme sort of works for it in a corny sort of way, and it isn’t terribly produced, but still I really have no use for this. It belongs on Radio Disney.
D+

Hangover – Psy Ft Snoop Dogg

My initial plans for this feature were to focus on the hits that I keep hearing over and over on the radio, but the truth is that the definition of “hit” has expanded and now songs that are largely spread by viral videos are just as big a part of our pop culture as anything. Billboard recognizes this, and that’s why the latest song by Psy just debuted at number 26 on their chart almost entirely off of Youtube views. This song is of course from the king of left field internet driven novelty songs. Gangnam Style has over two billion views to date, but trying to make that lightning strike twice is almost certainly a herculean task, which is why his immediate follow-up (“Gentleman”) wasn’t nearly as successful, in part because it was just trying to be the same kind of left field comedic K-pop but the joke just wasn’t as funny the second time. For his third major single he’s switching things up a bit and trying to find a medium ground between his usual brand of zany Asian comedy and regular old hit making and to do it he’s enlisted the help of none other than Snoop Dogg. This was probably an inspired choice because Snoop Dogg is someone with some legitimate Hip-Hop cred but who can also be pretty self-deprecating. It also helps that Snoop actually seems to be taking his job a little more seriously than he usually does. Most of the song is in English and parts of it, like the “drink it up and get sick / bottoms up get wasted” chorus could easily be mistaken for a legitimate American hit if not for the accent and a couple of giveaway lines and these parts are also surprisingly well produced to boot. The song gets really close to being just legitimately awesome, but it does really screw things up with its annoying “hangover hangover hangover…” refrain and the parts where the horns are just going crazy is also really unpleasant. Still, this is WAY better than I expected out of Psy of all people (I was not a Gangnam Style fan) and each time I listen to it the more I like it.
B+

Sing - Ed Sheeran

Ummm, okay. Looks like I’m not the only person who’s sick of hearing mopey English folk singers on the radio. Ed Sheeran, who has somehow endeared himself to the teenybobber crowd even though he’s a pudgy ginger, practically invented that particular segment of the 2010s hit parade and even he’s apparently said “**** it” and hired Pharrell Williams to completely change up his sound. Now he’s trying to channel Justine Timberlake with a touch of Robin Thicke and even a hint of Prince. I’m not exactly sure what to make of this. It seems like it’s very much a pose, but then again I certainly prefer it to Ed Sheeran when he’s “being himself.” As a career move I don’t think it’s going to pan out in the long run (he just doesn’t look like the guy who can pull this image off), but as derivative as it is I do enjoy it and I’m going to be giving most of the credit to Pharrell, whose use of Spanish guitars and well placed backup singers do make this a pretty catchy ride.
C+

Random Bonus Song
Aquarius / Let The Sunshine In by 5th Dimension

It’s interesting that I just happened to randomly pick an incredibly psychedelic late sixties song right after having randomly picked an incredibly square early sixties song last week. It’s amazing that in six short years we’d gone from “hey Paula I want to marry you” being a hit to having the chart topping song be an cover of a song about astrology from a hippie musical full of nudity. This song melody of course originated in the stage musical “Hair,” but this number one single was not from the original cast recording but is in fact a cover by a vocal group called The 5th Dimension, a group which had a number of hits but didn’t write their own music and haven’t really stood the test of time for the most part. I looked up the original Broadway versions of these songs, and while they haven’t been changed a ton, there are differences. I think what’s mainly changed is that The 5th Dimension have driven these songs into more of an R&B direction, especially Let the Sunshine In, which now sounds less like typical Broadway chorus work and more like a gospel choir responding to the man “preaching it” at the front. Overall I like that “Let the Sunshine In” section a lot more. “Aquarius” and its verses about Jupiter lining up with Mars sounds like stoned bull**** to me, and frankly whenever I hear the song all I can think about at this point is Steve Carrel getting deflowered. This is certainly a song of its time, and it’s earned its spot in the pop cultural landscape even if it isn’t necessarily my favorite.
B

Last weeks post didn't get much of a response, but I'm going to keep going just the same.

Love Runs Out – OneRepublic

I wouldn’t say I actively dislike OneRepublic, but they’ve never done much of anything to impress me either, in part because their music just seems insanely safe and manufactured. I guess I’ve always been oddly facinated by their song “All the Right Moves” (mainly because its lyrics make no sense at all) and I thought “Good Life” was pleasant enough, but their breakout hit “Apologize” did nothing for me and I got very sick of “Counting Stars” very fast. Almost every song this band writes seems to get used in a commercial, and there’s a reason for that, they all sound somewhat dramatic but in a very non-specific way that can apply just as easily to a product as to a human experience. Their latest output has been actively trying to seem a little more spontaneous and performance-like than their even more produced earlier output, but I don’t think it’s really working. This latest song in particular just bores the hell out of me. It just seems like an incredibly generically inoffensive rock song with hardly a single memorable aspect to it. There are worse “rock” songs crossing over onto radio (more on that later), but there are few that are quite this bland.
C-

Birthday- Katy Perry

And I’m forced to once again review a Katy Perry song, because I’m a glutton for punishment that way. Birthday is a corny-ass song penned by Max Martin and Dr. Luke with cheesy lyrics… I kind of like it. Every year some artist or other tries to get in on that Patty and Mildred Hill money by writing an updated birthday anthem, and I’ve certainly heard worse attempts than this. Of course given the lyrics here, which are about a woman giving sexual favors as a birthday gift, I’m not exactly sure what the target audience is. I can just picture parents who have only half listened to it playing this at their eight year old daughter’s birthday party without thinking through the implications until it’s too late. Anyway, the melody and tempo are what win me over with this song, it just has a really catchy rhythm to it and it has a kind of early 80s sound to it. The one weakness (aside from the stupid lyrics) is the “Let me get you in your birthday suit” bridge, which is dumb firstly because it dispenses whatever subtlety was left in the song but also because it kind of halts the energy that the song had been building. Still, this isn’t half bad by the extremely low standards that I have for Katy Perry song and it's probably her most tolerable song since “Hot n Cold.”
B-

Latch-Disclosure Ft. Sam Smith

I made it known earlier that I find the sound of Sam Smith’s voice kind of annoying, but I will say that he’s better used here than he was on his own “Stay With Me.” On this song he sounds less like Ed Sheeren singing “The A-Team” and more like Ed Sheeran singing “Sing,” and that’s an improvement I guess. I think he sounds better in the chorus than the verses, but either way the better vocals on the track is probably supplied by that sample of the lady saying “ne-ver” over and over again. Of course this is a track by an EDM DJ, so the lyrics are a bit minimal, but I like what’s there. This is one of those songs that seems innocent enough but starts to seem darker the closer you listen. When you hear lines like “Now I got you in my space / I won’t let go of you” and “Got you shackled in my embrace / I’m latching on to you” you start to wonder if this guy isn’t merely a paramour but rather, some kind of clinging stalker. In that sense this is almost like an EDM version of The Police’s “Every Breath You Take.” As for the production itself, well, it’s alright. Disclosure is a “Garage House” band, which doesn’t necessarily mean it has anything to do with Garage Rock or with garages of any kind for that matter. It’s actually an independent sub-genre of EDM that gets its name from the club that popularized it. I don’t know that I can really outline this genre’s defining features, but from what I can hear on the song it sounds like one of the more actively “electric” EDM songs. It almost sounds like the guys in Disclosure are intentionally working with cheaper drum machines and synths in order to give it that more computerized sound. I don’t know that this is something that anyone would actually want to hear at a club, but there is something kind of haunting about it just the same.
A-

Pills and Potions-Nicki Minaj

What a disappointment Nicki Minaj has turned out to be. When I first heard her blistering verse on Kanye West’s “Monster” I thought for sure that we’d finally found that Holy Grail of Hip Hop: the lyrically gifted female MC to fill the void left by Lauryn Hill and Missy Elliot. But no, instead Minaj has decided that she’d rather be some kind of horrible fusion of Rhianna and Katy Perry and make a bunch of pop hits that barely have any actual rapping in them. To be fair, her latest single is a little more dignified than “Starships” and “Super Bass,” but it still isn’t really what I’ve been wanting out of her. I guess having someone rap over Enya sounding New Age music was a worthwhile experiment, but I don’t think it really has the lyrical content to back up the song’s tonal ambitions. When Minaj launches into her rather slow and straightforward raps they really just don’t have either the potency or creativity to really be at all memorable. This needed to really tell a story or at least reveal some real vulnerability, but instead it’s just a passive aggressive “**** the haters” track that seems to be throwing a couple of subliminals at someone.
C

Maps- Maroon 5

Back when they first started Maroon 5 were in that Coldplay zone of bands that I wasn’t a fan of but also didn’t hate as much as everyone else seemed to. Then the “Moves Like Jagger” era started, and that was all I needed to jump on board the hate train. Their latest song isn’t their worst, but it’s certainly one of their dullest. To be fair, the song’s hook is somewhat catchy (especially the way he yodels “following, following, following”), but for the most part I think Adam Levine’s voice here is just unbearable. Something about its very tone makes me want to punch something. Lyrically it’s just a very standard relationship song with a really pointless map/navigation motif, and the instrumentation is just bland as hell.
D

Random Bonus Song
2-21-1961: "Pony Time" by Chubby Checker

I don’t know why this date generator keeps giving me songs from the 60s, but here goes. Chubby Checker’s recording of “The Twist” is obviously one of the most seminal recordings of the pre-British Invasion rock era, and it invented the “dance craze” as a template for launching short lived careers that lasts to this very day. If not for Chubby Checker we may never have gotten Soljah Boy, or Los Del Rio, or Cali Swag District or… come to think about it, I’m not really helping the guy’s case. Anyway, Chubby Checker, is often considered to be a one hit wonder, which is true in the sense that he only put out one song that anyone remembers or cares about, but the truth is that he had enough momentum coming off of “The Twist” to still garner a handful of other hits including this song “Pony Time.” “Pony” would prove to be an interesting word to use in your follow-up single, because this song pretty much cemented Checker as a one trick pony. This song is absolutely shameless in its attempt to recapture the success of “The Twist,” in fact it’s damn near the exact same song except not nearly as good. The songs have almost the exact same structure, Checker sings them exactly the same, and the lyrics are pretty similar. Pretty much the only really notable difference (aside from the fact that it’s describing a much stupider dance with a goofier name) is the way the background vocals sound, and they’re really annoying. A couple of the previous song’s strengths do rub off on this one, but the whole thing suffers massively by comparison.
D-

The "Non-Crossover" Edition
Alright, so I think I'm rapidly approaching the point where I've already covered most of the ubiquitous hits out there, so, I'm going to take a short break from covering the very biggest of Top 40 hits this week. Instead I'm going to take a look at what's going on on the individual genre charts and review some of the songs that have been popular within specialized radio formats but which haven't really "crossed over" onto the generalized pop music hits stations. Note: I wrote this about two weeks ago, so chart number I quote are a bit out of date.


From the Rap Charts: "Believe Me" by Lil Wayne Ft. Drake

Lil Wayne’s probably never going to be as popular as he was in 2008 again, but he has mostly managed to hold his own on the rap charts over the years. By and large I like the guy. He has some serious quality control problems and puts out a lot of wack ****, but when he’s at his best he’s a lyrical monster who throws down all kinds of wickedly clever lines. I also like Drake for the most part, though I didn’t like much of the material from his last album very much. Still I don’t generally get all that excited when these guys work together because, frankly, their styles don’t really blend all that well. Drake is at his best when he’s wearing his heart on his sleave, and while he can occasionally pull off the badass rap superstar pose he really kind of looks strange when he’s hanging out with people who carry themselves like straight up thugs. What’s more his flow is usually very slick and controlled while Lil Wayne is frankly a crazy person with an Ol’ Dirty Bastard streak throughout his music. This particular song is pretty par for the course for both of these guys. I can see why it didn’t cross over to pop radio at all too, it’s got a very minimal beat and not much of a hook. The appeal here is all in the rhymes and quotables, and it does have its fair share of both, and when broken down line by line it’s pretty strong. What it lacks though is an over-arching theme to hold it all together or really much of anything else to make it stand out to someone who isn’t actively following every word.
C+

From the Alternative Charts: "Fever" by The Black Keys

The Black Keys are like the great white hope for people who are really into traditional rock and roll and really want it to retake its former place as the center of the musical landscape. They have a mostly guitar driven sound that is very identifiably “rock” and they also aren’t afraid to be very mainstream, unlike the hipstery people who dominate the self-labeled “indie” acts who’ve been dominating the genre for the last ten years or so. I think The Black Keys have made a number of good songs over the last couple of years, but this isn’t one of them. In fact this is the kind of dull single that has me worried that they’ve really fallen off. That’s the thing about rock bands, they don’t have a cadre of producers, executives, and songwriters watching over their shoulders to “ensure” that they produce a couple of hit singles on every album and as such they’re occasionally forced to put out a sub-par track like this every once in a while. Well, maybe “sub-par” is a bit harsh. This isn’t a bad song really, and it would have made a pretty good deep album cut, but as a single it just isn’t distinctive at all and the repetition of “fever” over and over again just doesn’t really distinguish it at all.
C-

From the R&B Charts: "Na Na" by Trey Songz

This one's closer to being a crossover success than some of these, but it's mostly stuck to the more "rhythmic" pop stations and isn't really across the board ubiquitous. Trey Songz is part of the larger wave of artists who are ostensibly R&B singers but who spend so much time hanging around with rappers and pick up a lot of conventions from the rap world and as such are often mistaken for hip-hop artists. He’s an artist who could probably be a lot more famous than he is if he just had a more interesting musical personality or could just find some sort of half-way interesting gimmick. Instead he carries himself like a pretty standard luxury afficianado/club dweller and makes a lot of generally bland music to go along with his bland persona. I feel like I’m not entirely doing my duty when I simply declare a song to be “boring,” but this song really isn’t giving me a lot to work with. It seems to be going for this sort of lonely atmosphere and it achieves that to some extent, but the lyrics and Trey Songz’ rather generic lyrics ultimately prevent this from being very memorable at all.
D

From the Mainstream Rock Chart: "Painkiller" by Three Day’s Grace

First of all, I think it’s kind of hilarious how much of a misnomer the “mainstream rock” chart has become. The chart is really more reflective of a radio format than it is of what is and isn’t in “the mainstream” and most of the songs towards the top of the so-called “alternative” chart sell way better than the ones at the top of this one. Still, this is a genre I know more about than I probably should. I’ve been listening to an “active rock” station for years now, in part because they still play a lot of older rock songs that still aren’t what you’d call “classic rock” (mostly a lot of grunge and other heavier 90s alternative tracks) but whenever they play a new song I usually switch the station. Mainstream rock has been in a “post-Grunge” rut for years now and most of the music made since around 2003 has kind of sounded the same to me. I can hardly distinguish between the likes of Theory of a Dead Man and Seether and Shinedown or this band Three Days Grace. The song that’s propelled them to the top of this pathetic little mountain of a chart is called Painkiller, which is written from the perspective of a drug who wants to be “the one to numb you out.” That’s at least a little more ambitious than the “I hate my parents” and “I’m going to kick you ass” tracks that often dominate this genre, but it’s also something that Metallica already did almost thirty years ago with their classic “Master of Puppets” and they did it with much better riffs than these guys can muster.
D-

From the Country Chart: “Play it Again” by Luke Bryan

All the other genres I’ve looked at are genres that I do know a thing or two about and have some business commenting upon, but I actively avoid knowing anything about country music. It’s stupid music for hillbillies and cowboy hat aficionados, and I want nothing to do with it. However, taking a survey of the modern music landscape while completely ignoring it would be pretty silly, so I’ll give them one chance.

So, as of this writing the number one song on the country charts is by a guy named Luke Bryan… I don’t know anything about him. I just looked over his Wikipedia page, and there’s not much of anything interesting to report. The song is pretty standard tune recounting an evening in which a guy is hanging out with a girl (in his truck naturally, because in this genre only pussies ride sedans) and the girl hears a song she likes on the radio and says “play it again” because she somehow thinks this will make the radio DJ play it again. They then switch between a bunch of stations until they finally hear it again. I don’t know if these are impoverished rednecks or something, but a halfway decent smartphone probably would have solved their problem. This is 2014, you don’t need to depend on radio to hear a song when you want to. Otherwise this sounds like it follows the Nashville rulebook pretty closely. Bryan’s singing style sounds like every other male country star out there and the songwriting and instrumentation also sound pretty standard.
D+

Random Bonus Song
11-19-1998: "One Week" by Barenaked Ladies:

This week for the random bonus track I drew November 19th 1998, the (ironically) one week that the number one slot was held by a band called Barenaked Ladies, who managed to score a hit out of left field with an alt rock rap novelty song called “One Week.” This is the second time I’ve drawn a random bonus song that was recorded within my lifetime , and while I do remember “The Sign,” my memories of this one are a lot clearer. Still, I hadn’t really heard it in the better part of a decade and now that I’ve given it another spin I’m pleased to report that still holds up.

There are basically two songs going on here: one is a traditional power pop song in which our protagonist uses this neat chronology conceit to recount the various stages of conflict he has with his long-suffering girlfriend, and the other is a series of rapped verses that talk about the character’s neurosis while also dropping all sorts of references to geeky stuff from the 90s like “The X-Files” and “Sailor Moon.” You’d think this would seem very unbalanced, but the two halves really inform each other in some interesting ways. The rapped verses help give you a good idea of what kind of person we’re dealing with; he’s the kind of guy who laughs at a funeral and wears his heart on his sleeve while also having stuff like Aquaman on his mind all the time (got no idea what the line about him taking off his shirt is supposed to be about though). Knowing all that it isn’t hard to understand why his girlfriend frequently gets fed up with that and also why the guy keeps finding himself reluctantly apologizing all the time. In that way I think this song is actually incredibly relatable despite all the potentially alienating pop culture references.

This isn’t just a hit because of some clever lyrics though; it’s also catchy as hell. It’s got a strong riff, some really well timed synch hits, and is generally powered by a very loose and enjoyable sound. Guitarist Ed Robertson actually proves to have a pretty serviceable lyrical flow and his stream of conscious lyrics do a great job of staying within the tone of the whole song while also dropping all kinds of tidbits. Dropping random references like “Harrison Ford I’m feeling Frantic” can be dangerous; if you go too far with it you can seem off-putting (see LFO’s infamously horrible “Girls of the Summer” for an example of this). Really though, the whole song actually walks a pretty fine tightrope. It could be called a novelty song, but it sounds just enough like a real song about a relationship that it didn’t sound all that out of place on mainstream radio. The song that was simultaneously ahead of its time and also a product of its time. It was dropping obscure pop culture references years before the term “nerdcore” was coined and before geek culture was coopted by the mainstream fixtures like "The Big Bang Theory," and on the other hand it is very much a relic in that it did this through very traditional channels. Today this kind of thing wouldn’t be conceived as a pop song, it would be conceived as a Youtube video and if it were lucky it would achieve meme status after competing with the dozens of like-minded competitors. Fortunately, the song came out at the one point in history where it really seemed unique and caught on in a big way. To the best of my knowledge it’s the only number one hit to feature an overt Akira Kurosawa reference, and that alone makes it alright in my book.
A

Alright, I've clearly got some catching up to do. This is what I was working on before I got distracted with other stuff so it might be slightly out of date, but here it is. I'll get to some more recent stuff soon enough.

Demi Lavato ft. Cher Lloyd – Really Don’t Care

When I talked about the Jason Derulo song “Wiggle” I suggested that Derulo was the R&B equivalent of Flo Rida in that he seemed to rack up hit after hit while still failing to really become a household name because he and his music was largely devoid of personality. I’d say that Demi Lavato is probably the pop teenybopper equivalent of Flo Rida and Derulo. She’s had a handful of song chart pretty damn high and yet I could hardly tell you anything about her or pick her picture out of a lineup. With this song she seems to be trying to get her Kelly Clarkson on by singing a “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)” style post-breakup empowerment/wish fulfilment song about how much she doesn’t care what becomes of her ex. It’s pretty by-the-numbers and it also features another singer named Cher Lloyd for all of twenty snotty mostly unpleasant seconds… not sure why they bothered with that. Anyway, this is pretty standard as far as these things go and will probably appeal to people who want a song like this in their lives.
C

KONGOS – Come With Me Now

About two years ago there was a mini-boom in indie rock led by acts like Foster the People, Of Monsters and Men, fun, and The Capital Cities and while I’m not normally an indie rock fan I did mostly think the crossover stuff was a breath of fresh air on top 40 radio. That’s mostly been replaced by the EDM mini-boom, but you still have the occasional left field rock song like this break through. You might recognize the song from the HBO promos that have been airing, it’s a sort of accordion-driven jam with a fairly hard edged vocal delivery. Apparently the song was first released three years ago but only just started getting airplay this year and has been a real sleeper hit in many ways. The band, which is from South Africa, say the song was heavily influenced by the sound of Kwaito music but with more of a folksy edge. I don’t know how much of a future this KONGOS band has in the mainstream after this, but I will say I’m impressed by what I’ve heard so far.
A-

Becky G – Shower

I had this Becky G character pegged as a Disney protégé, but apparently she mostly rose to fame simply by posting Youtube videos and was discovered by Dr. Luke (yeah, that guy again), who co-wrote and produced this single. Here’s the really weird thing: this is charting on the rap charts. When I first saw that I assumed it was some kind of computer glitch on the Billboard website, but I gave it another listen and I guess I can see how her speak-singing could be mistaken for rap, but almost none of the lines actually rhyme. Anyway, if I look at this strictly as a pop song there is something to this track that interests me. Dr. Luke does apply his dark arts to good effect; those background singers in the chorus going “la di la da” really do elevate things. As for the lyrics, well, they’re super bubblegum but something about them feels a little more genuine than a lot of these sort of songs. There’s a kind of lovestruck innocence to the song, which is an odd thing to say given that I also have a theory that most of these lines are coded masturbation references. I think where the song really loses its way is the hook. As hard as those background singers try to elevate things “You’ve got me singing in the shower” is just a really bizarre way to tell someone you like them, and building an entire song around that line was just not a great idea.
B-

Chandalier – Sia

“American Idol” ushered in an era where everyone and their mother had strong feeling about singing ability, but I generally haven’t been one to get to worked up about pop singers having perfect pitch and vocal control. Put it this way: I’m the one guy who didn’t have too much of a problem with Russell Crowe’s singing in Les Miserable. That said, I REALLY hate the way that Sia sings this song. Sia is of course probably best known for singing the hook on the song “Wild Ones,” which is a song that’s forgettable even by Flo Rida standards. She also had a minor hit working with David Guetta and now she has a hit where she’s working more or less solo. The writing on this song isn’t terrible, the whole “swing from the chandelier” metaphor conjures up a fairly ridiculous image, but I sort of get what they’re going for and I also kind of like the way the song builds towards catharsis. What I don’t like is the way Sia belts out “CHAN-DA-LEEEHEEEER” and clearly struggles to do so. She just can’t hit the high notes throughout. It’s like nails on a chaulkboard.
D

Charli XCX – Boom Clap

I’m not sure I really understand what this Charli XCX chick is supposed to be. I mostly know her as the featured performer on a pair of hit singles by Icona Pop and Iggy Azalea where she’s less of a singer and more of a chanter, almost like the world’s highest paid cheerleader. Also, a trail of destruction seems to be found wherever she goes. In “I Love It” she crashed a car into a bridge and watched it burn, in “Fancy” she trashed a hotel and got drunk at a mini-bar, and now that she’s finally writing a love song she uses a metaphor that sounds like some kind of explosion. Anyway, this song is apparently off of the soundtrack to “The Fault in Our Stars” and features a bit more conventional singing from Charli XCX (what the hell is up with that name?) than her previous hits, but the most notable aspect is the chorus, which is once again primarily chanted. I’m not entirely sure what to make of it, I do think that chorus is fairly catchy which is probably all that really matters, but the delivery sounds less like something someone would say when telling their partner they love them and more like something they’d say when they’re about to throw their **** into a bag and pushed it down the stairs. Also the bridge, in which she mumbles “You let me lose my shadow,” really sounds kind of ridiculous.
C+

Random Bonus Song
6/6/1989: "Wind Beneath My Wings" by Bette Midler

I kind of groaned when the random date generator popped out June 6th 1989 and I realized the song I’d have to cover is Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings.” Much like the movie “Beaches” from which this track was originally used, I think of this less as a song and more as a punchline, a sort of go-to example of cheesiness. One thing I didn’t know about it was that this was actually originally written about ten year’s earlier and had already become something of a standard by the time Bette Midler made this, the most famous recording of the song. I’ve also never stopped and considered before what an oddity this was on the pop charts. How often to middle aged female crooners find themselves getting number one hits? The fact that this caught on during the coked up energetic atmosphere of the late 80s music scene makes it all the more strange (to put it in perspective, the next number one song was by The New Kids on the Block).

The first thing that I noticed listening to the song this time is just how incredibly dated the production is. The song is driven by some very poor sounding synth-lines that sound like they came from some horrible Casio keyboard. As for the lyrics, they’re pretty damn corny. I don’t know, the whole thing is just insanely earnest a mawkish. This is plainly not a song written to be “cool,” it’s written to pull at the heartstrings of frumpy middle aged women who don’t give a **** anymore and just want to weep about things. Personally, I can’t stand it, but if ever there was a song that wasn’t made to impress the likes of me it was this one.
D

Too much catching up to do. I don't know how much longer I can do this. I tried watching the VMAs this year and they made me feel old and creepy, I had something of an epiphany midway through it that I was wasting my life following this crap and made something of a resolution to seek out more challenging music... well I haven't gotten around to doing that yet so for the time being here's an update.

Break Fee- Ariana Grande Ft. Zedd

Nothing about what I’ve heard from this Zedd guy makes me think he’s actually a very good DJ. Most of his electronic noise sounds pretty clichéd, but what he seems to excel at is channeling his EDM into actual songs. He certainly did that with his song “Clarity,” which is one of the best examples of radio EDM to date and he also does that with this song, which also serves as Ariana Grande’s follow-up to her smash hit “Problem.” I must say, I find it odd that the label decided to pair this up with a campy Barbarella referencing video, because it’s actually a pretty straight-faced breakup song. At first glance it may sound like one of those “empowering” breakup songs like “Really Don’t Care” but I think it’s actually a little more complicated than that and that. To me “this is the part where I break free” sounds less like someone making a defiant stand and more like someone mustering up the courage to “break free” when they haven’t been able to do so before. Grande is pretty good in Disco Diva mode, but there are some things holding the song back. For one, that dub-step-ish outro kind of sucks. Also, and I’m generally not a grammer nazi when it comes to pop songs but “now that I’ve become who I really are” is one of the stupidest lyrics I’m ever heard. “Now that I know who you really are” would fit just as well both in the rhyme scheme and thematically.
B
BTW, this is the first song of the day that Max Martin has a writing credit on

Don’t- Ed Sheeran

Ed Sheeran is sort of like the male version of a Taylor Swift (who he’s incidentally collaborated with) in that he is clearly operating in a pop landscape but still sort of wants to be taken seriously as a songwriter. He was known as the white guy with acoustic guitar for teenybobbers for a while but he’s sort of trying to transition into more adult fare now, which is probably why he’s written a song with the line “don’t **** with my love” as part of the chorus but has also been forced to bleep out all profanity even on the album version (but not on the Rick Ross remix that somehow exists). This song in particular is sort of an oddity in that it is a story song, which is rare on the pop charts in and of itself but is even more rare in that it appears to be told from the perspective of an actual touring musician instead of some universalized everyman. That this song is also sort of calling out a fellow musician for being a cheating whore also give the song an extra layer of tabloid interest. Sheeran has said that this duplicitous slut is “100 percent not Taylor Swift,” but I think the song is significantly more entertaining if it 100 percent is about her so I’m just going to run with that assumption. Anyway, in the grand scheme of things the lyrics here aren’t really all that noteworthy, it’s basically a straight-faced version of Biz Markie’s “Just a Friend” but I think there’s enough going on in it to keep me interested.
B-

Anaconda – Nicki Minaj

…what the **** is this ****? This is a single? How? This doesn’t even sound like it should be an album track, at best it sounds like a joke you’d sneak in as a hidden track after four minutes of silence at the end of a CD back before iTunes gave away actual song lengths. Just…what? Alright, so 80% of this is just a remix of Sir-Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back,” which is a novelty track that’s lost all novelty after over twenty years of references like this. It’s not remixed particularly well I might add, in fact it sounds like a completely unlistenable mess. When Minaj actually does rap on the track what she has to say is completely vapid nonsense. I refuse to believe that anyone actually enjoys listening to this, instead it sounds like a blatant provocation. The business plan seems to be to make something so WTF inducing that it will force people to talk about it and drive curious eyeballs in its direction. In fact I’m probably playing into this evil scheme by talking about it now… well played.
F

Amnesia- 5 Seconds of Summer

5 Seconds of Summer are basically one rung above a boy band on the respectability scale. They do ostensibly play instruments and they weren’t assembled by a record label, but they did rise to prominence touring with One Direction so I wouldn’t say they’re that above the moniker even if they take the Jonas Brothers form instead of the Backstreet Boys form. Their last single “You Look So Perfect” was actually a pretty decent song from a composition/production standpoint but had fairly ridiculous lyrics that namechecked American Apparel underwear. This next song is a lot more down-tempo and I wouldn’t even really call this a rock song at all. This is an “after the breakup” song, and I’d say it sits somewhere between “You Oughta Know” and “Someone Like You” on the bitter-ex-o-meter, but probably closer to the later than the former. Lyrically it seems like an attempt to get onto the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind soundtrack ten years after the fact, and musically, well musically it’s just boring. All in all it’s a pretty basic song, we’ve heard tracks that sound just like it before and we’ll probably hear songs like it again. Just really, really average.
C

Black Widow- Iggy Azalea

When I reviewed “Fancy” I focused a lot on how fake and inauthentic Iggy Azalea’s fake accent and intonations sound, but with this song I’m less concerned with the voice’s authenticity and would rather just focus on how unpleasant it sounds. For all its problems, “Fancy” did at least sound and feel like an actual rap song, but with this song she seems to be trying to adopt a Nelly-style sing-songy flow that really suites her even less than whatever she was doing before. Lyrically this is yet another one of these angry break-up songs about how awful the boyfriend of the singer was and how glad they are to be rid of him, the twist being that she’s not just leaving the guy she wants him to suffer for his transgressions and is generally vague about how she plans to do it. I’ll give the song some credit for spending more time actually exploring why this relationship is ****ed up than some similar songs, but the execution just doesn’t work. Azalea is just a very untalented MC and doesn’t really bring many clever rhymes to the table.
D

Shake it Off – Taylor Swift

I’ve never been a fan of Taylor Swift, but then again very few people of my age and gender really were. It was always easy to just say “that’s not for me” and move on, in part because they weren’t really playing her stuff on top 40 radio, the same is not the case with the new post-sellout Swift. Over the course of her last album she turned from an overly-earnest singer-songwriter to a not overly talented pop singer who pronounced “ee” to strongly in every damn song and somehow got way more radio-play in the process. Now she’s back and for some reason has looked to Jay-Z as a musical role model. This song is basically a pop version of Hov’s 2003 hit “Dirt off Your Shoulder,” except that Ms. Swift is much less convincing at trying to make it look like she’s feeling like a pimp. Swift was never really that great of a vocalist, the whole appeal was supposed to be that she could write songs that tapped into the teenage girl experience so I don’t for the life of me know why they’ve tapped her to sing this generic Max Martin penned pop song. It’s harmless enough for most of it’s runtime, but then it hits that spoken word bridge towards the end and oh my god is it bad. “You could have been getting down to this sick beat”? “Hella good hair”? WTF? What the hell were they thinking?
D+
For those keeping track this is the second song today with a Max Martin writing credit

Rather Be- Clean Bandit (Ft. Jess Glynne)

Clean Bandit is a British group that combines electronic music with classical instrumentation. I’m not sure what the majority of their work sounds like but if this track is any indication they definitely have my attention. This is a really immaculately produced track that has a good driving beat, a soaring chorus, and a really pleasant sound all around that feels modern and cool without feeling too much like it’s just dance club noise with lyrics put over it. The downside is that the lyrics are a little clichéd. “When I am with you there’s no place I’d rather be” is not a wildly creative sentiment by any means and I feel like I’ve heard the “from [insert place] to [insert place]” line over and over again throughout popular music. Still, Jess Glynne still sells these lines pretty well and that opening “we’re a thousand miles from comfort” line always gets to me.
A-

This is How We Do- Katy Perry

Jesus Christ, it’s like it’s three steps back for every one step forward with this chick. I thought for sure that Katy Perry had hit her nadir with Dark Horse, but this is probably her worst song yet. First of all, 50 Cent called and he wants his chorus back. I don’t know how you take the chorus from a Gangster Rap classic and turn it into a diddy about a bunch of young women up to some Sex and the City antics? Really though there aren’t all that many lyrics in this song at all, like, 90% of it are repetions of the lines “This is how we do” and “it’s no big deal.” That second line is particularly odd because absolutely nothing mentioned in the song would never be mistaken as a “big deal” by anyone, it’s just a bunch of typical behavior for an upper middle class white girl. It doesn’t really step in the realm of the WTF until its second half where she stops bothering to write verses and just starts giving shout outs to random idiots for doing stuff like “buying bottle service with your rent money” before turning into this weird call and response between Perry and a DJ. This is the dregs of popular music.
F
This is the third song of the day with a Max Martin writing credit

All About that Bass - Meghan Trainor

If we’ve learned anything from “Same Love” and “Royals” it’s that shamelessly pandering to the highest common denominator can be about as annoying as pandering to the lowest common denominator. In the last year or so artists have come to realize that getting press on the internet for writing “positive” songs about certain social issues can get you attention. I don’t have a problem with pop songs addressing social issues but some of these songs do it in ways that are pathetically on the nose and artless, they’re just telling certain activists exactly what they want to hear exactly the way they want to hear exactly the way they want to hear it and are getting a lot of undeserved attention because of it. “All About That Bass” by Meghan Trainor is definitely from that school of songwriting and its issue of choice is body issues. This is a well tred issue in pop music but it usually gets addressed by skinny hypocrites like Christina Aguilera (Beautiful), Beyoncé (Pretty Hurts), Katy Perry (Firework), or Pink (****ing Perfect) and usually comes off like a lecture about seeking world peace delivered by General Patton. This song is at least sung by an actual fat girl, so at least there’s something different this time around, but it feels less like a song and more like a Jezebel article that has been set to Doo-Wop music of all things.
C-

Sky Full of Stars- Coldplay

I really wish I hated Coldplay... the people who do hate Coldplay seem to have a lot of fun doing so and I wish I was in on the fun. I certainly understand where the hostility towards the band comes from, people who demand their rock come from the punk tradition would have no use for them and that Chris Martin has one of the most punchable faces in the world… but I don’t know, their music just sounds so… nice. I don’t really have any desire to own any of their albums, but they put out singles like “Clocks” and “Viva La Vita” which have such lush tonal qualities and sweepingly epic sounds that I really can’t find myself getting too mad at them. This latest single is very much a piece with the other songs of their that I’ve enjoyed. “You’re a sky full of stars” sort of comes off like a sort of cheesy pick-up line, but the way he sings “such a heavenly view” still kind of gets to me. In general this is just better than most of the crap on Top 40 radio right now, which may say more about the charts than it does about Coldplay.
B

Bang Bang- Jessie J (ft. Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj)

Well what made people think this was a good idea? Let’s see, we’ve got a collabo between two singers and a rapper, we’ve got a ludicrous obsession with “good girls” and “bad girls,” we’ve got a repetition of the phrase “I know you want it,” some questionable gender politics… yeah this is pretty clearly aping the “Blurred Lines” formula. Pretty much all that’s missing is the most important ingredient: a great retro beat. This song has instead gone for this odd chant thing, which sounds really familiar but which I can’t quite place, sort of a 20s Broadway type thing. Jessie J called the making of the song a real “real females, come together, empowering, supportive” experience, which is odd given that aside from the Nicki Minaj part this song was entirely written by three men, and it shows. The song may pose as something empowering but the lyrics entirely paint the singers’ self-worth in terms of their ability to please men. Is there a saving grace here? Well, that Nicki Minaj verse actually isn’t too bad. It’s not great or anything but there’s some real speed and force to it and it’s a lot better than what we usually hear from her and certainly better than anything in “Anaconda.”
D+
And with his credit on this song we come to four songs credited to Max Martin out of eleven. How rich is this man?