The Singles Jukebox

TIM MCGRAW FT. TAYLOR SWIFT & KEITH URBAN - HIGHWAY DON’T CARE
[5.29]

In which Taylor Swift is a hook singer and Keith Urban is a session guitarist…

Patrick St. Michel: As a meeting between two of country music’s biggest stars — and a pair with an interesting history, given Swift’s first single — “Highway Don’t Care” comes off like a bit of a letdown. She’s in the “ft.” spot, sure, but I still expected Swift to get a little more of the spotlight (even if what she has here sounds nice). McGraw is fine if nothing special, and Keith Urban shows up to lay down a silly guitar solo. I do really like the chorus though, especially the urgent “I do, I do” parts.
[6]

Crystal Xia: Country musicians spend a lot of time singing about the open country roads. They are a symbol of freedom, a place of reflection and quiet for these brooding musicians and they’re often romanticized. Tim McGraw turns that idea onto its head by reminding you that while the country road is open and free, it can get awful lonely. Sometimes the warmest thing on the quiet country road is the sound of the voice on the radio, played perfectly by always present Taylor Swift. That voice reminds you that what makes the distance worth it is the person waiting on the other side, the person who inspires you to sing along to the sappy love songs.
[7]

Brad Shoup: Tim made a fine turn toward the adult-alternative format on Emotional Traffic, and Two Lanes of Freedom largely keeps both the L.A.-pro vibe and vehicular themes (“Truck Yeah” is one concession to modern country play, but “Mexicoma” is the country song Ben Folds forgot to write). “Highway Don’t Care” feels rushed; the handoff from Tim (whose verses are a stuffy combo of mansplaining and omniscient narration, spiced with pop lilt) to Taylor and back would make Yohan & Usain jealous. Two Schonesque solos from Urban pad the proceedings. Maybe this plays better on I-95, I dunno.
[3]

Anthony Easton: I am not sure why Keith Urban is on this, and Swift is capable of so much more than just singing the line, “I can’t live without you, baby.” The guitars are a little too manic for a song that might work better in rueful mode, but the slick gleam of professionalism here makes all of it just a bit better
[5]

Alfred Soto: I can believe that hearing Taylor Swift on the radio would bring McGraw up short, and McGraw is up to playing the Old Guy sharing wisdom about the limits of songcraft when we ask it to make sense of our lives, but Urbanized solo notwithstanding, the chorus plods and the arrangement reduces Swift to supporting, nurturing female without hope of an Oscar nod for supporting actress.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: It’s structured like an R&B song, heavy on repeating phrases and interlocked parts — it even has a hook singer in T. Swift — even if the content is pure country, anthropomorphizing the open road in order to make a nakedly emotional plea. More cross-pollination, less mulleted guitar heroics, please.
[6]

Scott Mildenhall: Maybe they are trying to take their mind off him, attempting to find solace in some romanticised notion of “hitting the road,” deep down aware that the road could never offer them the love that he so desperately wants to; maybe his presumptuousness does have grounds. Or maybe they’re quite happy alone, who can say. Either way, songs-within-songs are always welcome, and the actual one itself is pleasant, though does go on a bit.
[6]

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IMAGINE DRAGONS - DEMONS
[2.17]

Bonus points for having a band name that at least offers a positive alternative to listening to their music…

Brad Shoup: Our modern rockers have forged some new Transatlantic accent. Marky Mumford and Dan Reynolds could switch hometowns and nothing would be amiss. If you only listened to modern rock, you’d be forgiven for thinking lyricism had long passed the peak-oil point. Garbled metaphors really are the worst. Cards fold themselves. Masquerades call you out. Blood runs stale. Keyboardists play Neil Diamond’s “America”. Bands whinge about scars. People clear their hard drives when they turn 35.
[1]

Anthony Easton: There is nothing beastly here, and even less that is demonic. The Christian obsessions are not well-closeted at all; there is potential for a work that combines a sinner’s self-loathing with a belief in the desire for saving — it begins by claiming to be a redemption song. The masochism of this reaches sublimated Catholic seminary levels, but it’s not really as interesting as work made in that context. It’s also kind of offensive, assuming the subject of the song (who I am assuming is a lover) can bring him out from the darkness. In a theological sense, he is replacing agape love with erotic love, which precludes the purpose of God. In a non-theological sense, he refuses his lover’s personhood. In a musical sense, sigh why bother.
[2]

Patrick St. Michel: If Three Doors Down thought, “Yeah man, we DO have a lot of important things to say!”
[1]

Alfred Soto: I don’t want to hear a two-dollar Chris Martin rhyming “greed” and “need.” I just learned: “plod” and “dud” don’t rhyme unless you’re Emily Dickinson.
[1]

Scott Mildenhall: Not the best song called “Demons”, not even the best one this year, but at least it isn’t a complete racket. The “Jar Of Hearts”-esque melody is catchy, but that becomes a problem when it very much is the only one in the song. It just doesn’t go anywhere, other than towards “quite annoying now” before the end of only a second or third listen.
[5]

Crystal Xia: This is the most nondescript song I’ve ever heard.
[3]

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PERFUME - MAGIC OF LOVE
[6.90]

More restrained Yasutaka Nakata fan-boy and fan-girlism!

Patrick St. Michel: “Perfume always sounds like innocent girls who fall in love with someone with pure heart.” That’s Kyary Pamyu Pamyu summing up Japan’s premier techno-pop trio better than anyone else ever has. The joke, though, is they (and especially producer Yasutaka Nakata) have made that romance factory efficient over the years. They’ve found time to explore interesting sonic terrain over the past few years, but “Magic Of Love” isn’t an example of that. Rather, it fits the mold of “proto-Perfume,” resembling singles like “Spring Of Life,” “VOICE,” “One Room Disco” and “Fushizen Na Girl.” This one does feature a few nifty details — the most immediate is how each member of the group gets a chance to sing free of Nakata’s electro filters, which is a nice change of pace from there last year of songs. Nakata himself give himself more space to experiment and have fun on those wordless bridges, another nice detour. But really, as long as Perfume keep making songs with choruses like this and release them just in time to appear on every summer mix I make, I’m going to keep the praise coming.
[8]

Iain Mew: The “Magic of Love” video emerging on the same day as that for “Invader Invader” by Kyary Pamyu Pamyu very nicely sets up narratives comparing the two Yautaka Nakata-produced acts. Although “Spending All My Time” and the Doraemon soundtracking “Mirai no Museum” took slight departures for different audiences, Perfume’s post-Kyary work seems quite focussed. It’s like Kyary is now the avenue for experiments in new genres and instruments, and Perfume’s songs are the result of poring over the same blueprints and finding tiny incremental improvements. “Magic of Love” is very close to “Spice,” the first time the Jukebox reviewed Perfume, built from cleanly intersecting synth lines with vocals poking through the filters. As such the song is not exciting, exactly, but it is gorgeous and the middle eight is a particular triumph of design.
[7]

Alfred Soto: We haven’t liked this act much, right? I needed to be reminded — their songs evaporate seconds after consumption. Here the vocals are as unctuous as the synth slime.
[4]

Jonathan Bogart: The video’s cavalcade of Pop Art colors and geometric shapes strike me as a far better visual metaphor for Nakata’s productions than Kyary’s overstuffed grotesques. As busy as his work is, it’s (maybe paradoxically) also clean, efficient, and precise. Perfume, who get to trade off vocals — even with themselves — rather than having to be a single hyperfocused star, ride the machine as efficiently as ever.
[7]

Brad Shoup: When Perfume is on, I’m in a very specific place, a place that Patrick Adams puts me with “Making Love” and “Spaced Out.” His synths ooze and unzip, his singers work on phrase; it’s heaven for me, but I understand if you start to check your clock. Of course, Perfume and their producer work in such a way that the vocals and synths twin: a mainframe that daydreams. It’s all so effervescent, as tenuous as bubbles: one listener can let the repetition transport, the other is ready to pop. Generally with Perfume, I’m transported.
[8]

Cecily Nowell-Smith: When I call this anaemic filter-house it’s not really a put-down. I imagine everyone involved in the Perfume project would be rather disappointed with themselves if their songs had even half the muscle of, I dunno, Stardust’s “Music Sounds Better With You”. Lightness is everything: the bubbles, the treble, the thin-edged voices. Without the video’s brightness, its synchronised mock-plugsuits and happy wallpaper dresses, this song might even be too light for the brain to hold on to. As fluttering and untouchable as a butterfly or the breeze.
[7]

Will Adams: This is Perfume operating at 75%. Granted, that’s still pretty good. The chorus is ace (though that’s almost a given at this point), and Nakata’s trickery this time around involve snippets of grinding synth noise inserted at the ends of phrases. Still, there’s something missing that keeps it from leaping into the glorious highs they hit last year.
[7]

Alex Ostroff: Frothy, shimmering, strangely efficient — here, a compliment. “Magic of Love” maximizes joy without becoming overbearing or overstaying its welcome. It’s gone as quickly as it’s arrived, but that’s a virtue, too, in its own way.
[7]

David Lee: At one point during my solo three-hour drive between New York City and Boston the other day, the balmy cross breeze that resulted from my open windows began to weigh on my eyelids. Suddenly, “Magic of Love” started filtering out of my car’s speakers. This was the shot of energy I needed. I’m not sure I could say the same for a lot of contemporary music classified under the ever-elusive EDM label. Songs like Krewella’s “Alive” or Calvin Harris’s “I Need Your Love” offer up the equivalent of a sundae so overloaded with toppings - handclaps, pianos, basslines, reverb vocals - that they end up mounds of sheer sweetness. A prospect that I, despite my notorious sweet tooth, find boring. Sickening, even. And while some contend that Yasutaka Nakata has cemented the parameters of what constitutes a Perfume song, I experience “Love” as a complex journey through layers of aural flavor available to a dance producer. The song launches into airy synths from the get go and then bursts into an ecstatic chorus only to veer into a glittery beep-boop breakdown. If last summer’s stretches of sweltering weather serve as any kind of indicator for what to expect this year, I look forward to this blast of refreshment on those days when the air itself seems to sweat.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: If I didn’t know better, I’d say Perfume was going through its sophisti-pop phase based on this. It’s comforting as much as it is bright and carefree — J-pop has been mining these sounds to beautiful effect since the early 90s, what harm is a few extra years and a continent in the paradigm?
[7]

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CHANCE THE RAPPER FT. AB-SOUL - SMOKE AGAIN
[5.78]

Look into my eyes, for I am about to teach you about rhombi…

Crystal Xia: Acid Rap made me into a Chance fan, but “Smoke Again” is probably one of my least favorite tracks on it. Chance’s voice is particularly grating here, and that quality is brought out even more by the one-two punch of his drag out the last woooord of each line flow and that annoying siren noise in the hook. Ab-Soul has never sounded so uninspired.
[5]

Anthony Easton: “Lean all on the square, that’s a fucking rhombus” is the most delightful and mathematically accurate drug reference I have heard in recent memory. That I cannot tell whether it’s “potty” or “party” skeeves me a bit. Also their Dukes reference seems a little inaccurate.
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: “Smoke Again” doesn’t quite break into the top level of Acid Rap - that zone belongs to “Good Ass Intro,” “Pusha Man” and “Chain Smoker” - but comes in a very respectable fourth on the year’s best rap album so far. Those horn farts sound great, and are wisely never turned up loud enough to drown out Chance in all his near-raspy glory. He reminds me a little of Kendrick Lamar in his ability to bend his voice frequently, albeit Chance does it less for thematic reasons and more so because he seems to be getting a kick out of it. Ab-Soul’s bit is alright, but this one is all about showcasing Chance.
[8]

Alfred Soto: The way he leans into his whine at the end of verses is the most irritating mannerism since Ezra Koenig’s electro-chipmunk sample in “Ya Hey.” But as a De La Soul fan I’ve always got time for potty references, stupid rhymes and all.
[5]

Jonathan Bogart: The falsetto whine Chance (or somebody) employs as part of the background is reminding me of something from the 90s, but I can’t tell what. Hippy revivalism? G-funk? Jock Jams? It’s all part of the DNA of this song anyway, driven overachievers playing at lazy underachievement and almost passing.
[6]

Brad Shoup: More good vocalizing here; it’s almost like click tracks for the highest horn player. The brass we have is so close to sour, slowed like everything else here. Were the drums recorded? If so, I bet the drummer made amazing faces while going tick-bum-tick.
[6]

Jer Fairall: His rhymes are witty without being revelatory, his flow is adroitly playful without completely dodging a certain air of frat-boy smarminess, and the production—-well, this is just a mixtape track, right? In other words, I kinda get the hype, but I’m not yet willing to label him as anything greater than “promising” at this point.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: Those slowed-down horn parps and the slow-decay of the drumbeat are trippy enough on their own, and an ideal backdrop for Chance’s woozy flow and focused dedication to a rhyming scheme. His use of voice has a childlike sense of experimentation and play to it, how he seems to produce a line here like he’s grinning, and another like he’s gurning. Ab-Soul, on the other hand is a little on the childish side. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just that he seems a bit lucid for the track.
[6]

Alex Ostroff: Chance continues the trend (started by “Juice” and “NaNa”) of releasing tracks (that I love but are) unlikely to win over those seeking an entry point but who find his vocals slightly grating. The key to “Smoke Again” is the contrast between the screwed hook and woozy horns and his exaggeratedly nasal whine; this is some deliberate, thumb-in-your-eye, messing around for fun delivery. The palpable delight in the way he leans into the line about the rhombus speaks for itself. Still, when you have material as ingratiating and likeable as Acid Rap’s opening or closing triads, or the central trio — which include a swoonworthy interlude and a track great enough to make me enjoy Childish Gambino — putting out a video for a great track that is the definition of a grower is confusing.
[7]

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LANA DEL REY - YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL
[5.18]

One out of two’s still good, Leo.

Patrick St. Michel: One complaint aimed at The Great Gatsby — the book, I have no idea about the movie — is that everything is a symbol, to the point of excess. A fair enough critique but I think it’s still better than the opposite - SparkNotes obviousness. “Young And Beautiful” features no subtlety, everything Lana Del Rey sings about being direct (“will you still love me/when I’m no longer beautiful?”). It’s a touch too straightforward, betraying the unsavory emotions that lurked beneath her best songs (“Video Games,” mostly). Still, like all her music, it earns some points for just sounding so grand, even if what’s sung over it isn’t at all.
[5]

Anthony Easton: The Gatsby soundtrack is brilliant, better than the movie at updating the tragic amorality of Gatsby’s relationship to both money and people. Lana Del Rey, with her languor, and her cleverness at persona-building, plus the updating of the jazz chanteuse persona would seem to be a perfect fit. But it might have been too perfect considering Luhrman’s skills mostly rest on the integration of contemporary modes into melodramatic histories and recasting that integration into an overly processed spectacle — a filmic reproduction of a music hall re-working of an operatic practice of a textual source — a matryoshka doll effect. Rey’s inability to go past the first second or level of that practice is a disappointment. However, there are things to recommend this: her tone is silvery, her ache of loss is earnest enough, I enjoyed how she delivered lines that should just collapse into absurdity (electric soul), and even the pleading to God is both exquisite and terribly placed.
[6]

Alfred Soto: As those strings saw away, Del Rey is in her own Deanna Durbin vehicle, her cool nasality giving confessions (rhyming his “body” with “makes me wanna party”) genuine camp value.
[5]

Jer Fairall: Overstated, garish and tasteless, Lana Del Rey and Baz Luhrmann movies are practically made for each other. I can actually somewhat get on board with the particular melodramatic sweep of this one, at least as long as she’s wistfully evoking “hot summer days / rock and roll / the way you’d play for me at your show;” even if only the 1/3 of that equation makes sense in context, it’s a lovely little moment nonetheless. But any Lana Del Rey song is always going to leave her often cataclysmically awful lyrics to contend with (“will you still love me when I got nothing but my aching soul” isn’t even the biggest howler here) and the sad fact that, as a vocalist, I’m finding less and less to distinguish her from Christina Perri anymore.
[5]

Mallory O’Donnell: Myopic, self-obsessed plodding dirge masquerading as a paean to a killer guy, pretending (worse yet) to be modern (“makes me wanna party?”) despite the pre-Prohibition vocal drag. There’s nothing wrong with singing per se, why you wanna wear it out so bad?
[2]

Katherine St Asaph: Lana Del Rey is perfect for Gatsby. She’s exactly the singer Gatsby would hire. And though the pace is stodgy and the bridge worse, she’s better on material that demands gravitas (earned or not) than when she’s just trolling everyone. Or maybe I’m just overrating the parts where her voice sounds like Helen Marnie.
[5]

Brad Shoup: The percussive strokes sound like shovels hitting dirt, or maybe buckets bailing water. The combination of orchestral support and mundane concerns have borne fruit for her; replacing the details with this tense little ball of text/subtext is kind of a downgrade. Most pop music has been made knowing (and ignoring) the answer to Del Rey’s question. I guess every once in a while, someone’s gotta say it.
[5]

Will Adams: It’s her way with melody, I think, that lets me forget that a song titled “Young and Beautiful” for an expensive Gatsby adaptation is the year’s biggest moment of self-parody. Well, that and the body/party rhyme. The lovely pre-chorus – when Lana crescendos as the strings swell – reminded me of her songwriting craft, the somber affect that so clearly separates empathy from sympathy. Yes, diminishing returns apply here, but for the moment I can still enjoy her.
[7]

Alex Ostroff: “All that grace, all that body, all that face makes me wanna party,” Lana intones, before declaring her faith that her man will love her past the horizon of youth and beauty, but “Body Party” — textually corporeal, visceral and lustful — effortlessly signifies devotion, spirituality and romance that all the orchestral grandeur in the world can’t muster here. Lana signifies ennui and dissatisfaction, which works best undercutting her lyrics implicitly, à la “Video Games,” rather than underpinning explicit insecurities. If I remain unmoved, I also remain oddly transfixed.
[4]

Sabina Tang: These days, the furore around Lana Del Rey’s initial videos seems beside the point, first and foremost because her execution improved thereafter by leaps and bounds. Like Stefani Germanotta, Lizzie Grant spent her first two successful albums refining her songwriting and doubling down on her aesthetics. Like Lady Gaga, Lana Del Rey is less a coherent alter ego than a concept-nexus, a brand. One is a Lana Del Rey Girl in the same sense that one might be a Valley Girl, an Uptown Girl, a Vargas Girl… The commonality of the Lana Del Rey Girl — “Video Games“‘s girlfriend, “Ride“‘s biker moll, “National Anthem“‘s First Lady, “Cola“‘s home-wrecker, the girl in “American” whose brown-skinned lover is only like an American — is that she is much seen (being beautiful) and little heard (being dim, or at any rate not a feminist). She imagines life as a movie, is assigned no lines, and ends her life in a meat freezer. She is a vessel for the hopes and dreams of men; no one wants to hear her talk, other women least of all. Lana Del Rey gives her a voice — always first person, never the observer’s third — but the crux of the project is that she doesn’t sugarcoat. The Lana Del Rey Girl opens her mouth to reveal that she is dim, venal, romanticizes destructive love and has an unhealthy need for male approval. She’s erotically drawn to older men and sweetly calls their wives “bitch” under her breath. She probably can’t spell feminist. In other words, she’s Daisy Buchanan’s original “beautiful little fool.” So who better than Lana to put words in Daisy’s mouth and do her narcissism justice? What other female singer-songwriter voice can ask and answer, “Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful — I know you will, I know you will”? Who else can sigh in all seriousness, “You make me shine — like diamonds”? This may be a bog-standard Paradise-era cut, but the Luhrmann Gatsby is Lana Del Rey’s Gatsby, through and through.
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: Daisy Buchanan’s theme, I take it. But Lana Del Rey’s voice still only sounds like a parody of money.
[5]

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MARIA MAGDALENA - CADA VEZ MAS CERCA
[7.57]

A sensation if we have our way (and we will!).

Iain Mew: The weighty chunks of synth bear a resemblance to Austra’s “Beat and the Pulse” and set “Cada Vez Mas Cerca” up like it’s going to be something similarly dark. In fact, the rest of the song skates over that darkness barely touching it, pirouetting and pausing occasionally to fire off some lasers and a fragment of “Radio Gaga.” Yeah, it’s silly, but why question moves that come off as joyfully as these?
[8]

Alfred Soto: The chilly sequencers melt the second Magdalena and a synthesizer squabble over which high notes they should harmonize with. Unlike many electronic anthems which emphasize the narrator’s physical and emotional distance, this one wants to wetly sing in your ear.
[7]

Edward Okulicz: I’ve never met a “Fade to Grey” cousin I didn’t like, and Maria Magdalena sings this like she’s not sure if it’s symphonic disco or someone playing around with settings on a cheap electric piano. The mismatch works, though, with her voice high and ethereal and the bass earthy and warm.
[8]

Brad Shoup: There’s a carnivalesque melodic bent to the opening line, something Gwen Stefani might tend toward. MM is in the same range, but without the… let’s say individuation. There’s a max poignance beyond which repeating the title doesn’t add, but she’s going there anyway. It’s those chill synthsheets she hangs at the end that truly transport.
[6]

Anthony Easton: The intro, which is just nostalgic enough to remind one of the disco, and refute the cult of the new, transitions into a vocal that rides above it. It’s like a glittery dolphin on an ocean of molten cheddar. The use of disco lasers, perhaps the subtlest in history, suggests the dolphin is bringing sailors back to the land.
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: Even five years ago those percussive strikes would have dredged up the word “electroclash,” but if anything the newest Chilean indie-electro sensation is going back to mutant-disco roots, if not to the roots of all electronic pop; those high tones are unmistakably Summery.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: This is what I wish Kate Boy sounded like.
[8]

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KATY B - WHAT LOVE IS MADE OF
[5.88]

We’re tough because we love…

Alfred Soto: Alright already: Katy’s gonna show you she can sing a straightforward dance track with all the fixin’s. To make sure you’re not asleep, she goes apeshit over the outro.
[7]

Iain Mew: You have to say that Katy’s timing is fantastic. Releasing a song with the line “say I’m the special one” just as Mourinho speculation reaches fever pitch? Perfect. As for riding the house wave, since she seemed to be doing fine before that it might just mean more competition, but this single suggests she should still have the right blend of relateable and dazzling to stand out.
[7]

Brad Shoup: “Something about your style/The clothes you wear/You get it right”: these are the sorts of lines I could enjoy from a singer with bite, nonchalance, ego. Katy, to the extent I know her singles, has evinced none of these, so this becomes just more passable house filler.
[4]

Scott Mildenhall: The stars seem to have aligned for Katy B. With the growing “dance music not made by David Guetta is back!” narrative in British pop there’s been no more fertile an environment for her to release music in a long, long time - RD must be kicking themselves. Given that, this is an interesting way to return. Lacking the warmth and yearning the lyrics demand - lyrics that include the lines “And I could stay like this for days; looking at your beautiful face,” which might have been deemed laughable in the hands of a lesser vocalist, or less respected artist — it’s understated to the point of album-trackness. In “Katy On A Mission” she had one hell of a debut single, and she could have chose to make a similarly entrancing entrance this time around, a declaration of her claim to the chart throne. But in the main, that’s not her style.
[6]

Will Adams: The chorus doesn’t do justice to the titular hook, the gummy bassline disrupting the glassy house that the verses present. Katy’s voice remains the star, cool in the lower register and cooler when belting. Sonically, “What Love Is Made Of” isn’t entirely necessary as long as the superior “Aaliyah” is around, but I can still be charitable to those chord stabs.
[6]

Edward Okulicz: Fantastic sounds, great voice — it’s Katy B, what do you expect? — but the song’s dead inside, and the lifelessness is contagious. A vocal as powerful as the one on “Witches Brew” or as sweet as “Movement” or as determined as “Katy on a Mission” would have brought it back to life, but the chorus is all detached promises without payoff.
[5]

Crystal Xia: This doesn’t pop in the same way that “Broken Record” or “Aaliyah” do, and the transition from chorus back to verse is a little abrupt and awkward. Still, let’s be real: an okay Katy B track is still a good track. None of these features that Katy finds enthralling in her dude that she’s describing are new or original (his smile, eyes, style, mind), but Katy has a way of making everything sound fresh. You can catch me sidewalk dancing to this, mouthing along to the words on a beautiful spring day.
[7]

Jonathan Bogart: Two years ago it might have flown as a third or fourth single, but two years ago she didn’t have Jessie Ware nipping at her heels and remaking the case for velvet gloves over iron voices and careful production in dance music. Here’s hoping she has something either more thoughtful or more exciting up her sleeve.
[5]

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KYARY PAMYU PAMYU - INVADER INVADER
[7.33]

It’s critically-acclaimed female global dance sensations Tuesday!

Patrick St. Michel: Joseph Campbell’s monomyth pattern starts with a hero finding themselves in an ordinary place, before receiving the “call to adventure,” which will thrust them into alien worlds. Kyary Pamyu Pamyu’s earliest songs concerned themselves with childlike glee, bouncing around on a fuel made up of beauty products, sweets and single syllables. Yet on October 2012 single “Fashion Monster,” Kyary starts growing up, and becomes aware of how some people perceive her home, Harajuku, and the fashion coming from it. It’s self-awareness that signals growing up, and her next single served as an official coming-of-age celebration. Then she dove into her home nation’s past, which prepared her for her journey to an unknown land. It’s appropriate “Invader Invader” debuted live during her brief United States tour this Spring because it’s all about spreading the Kyary goodness around the globe. “Let’s conquer the world!” goes part of the chorus, and Kyary’s probably the only Japanese pop star going, give or take Perfume, who can actually do what no J-Pop act has done before — actually get decent attention outside of Asia. “Invader” features all the hallmarks of a great Kyary song — ear-worm chorus, bleepy touches, a bouncy tempo, a lighthearted feel. Yet “Invader” also finds her refusing to pander, avoiding the mistakes of Pink Lady and Hikaru Utada. And yeah, I see the brostep breakdown, but that’s part of the reason this gets bumped up one more point. The drop, along with the elementary-school-recorder-class vibe and Kyary’s presentation in general, is confrontational, “Invader” pushing everything that defines Kyary (pop, “kawaii”-ness, a touch of the grotesque manifest as wub-wub) to the front. People in Japan and abroad love her because of these things… but lots of people also hate her for these very same qualities. Here, she makes like the best and brushes those folks aside and just does Kyary. Hell of a start in the unknown.
[10]

Alfred Soto: Wow — late nineties Stereolab played at 45 rpm. I’d tolerate the scrunches and whooshes and tricky rhythm changes if the vocals didn’t grate. Terrific guitar outro though.
[4]

Anthony Easton: The rough-textured (almost noise) brackish sounds that come around the two minute mark, distance the cute for cute sake vocals of the rest of the track, while the brief hint of sped-up bells around the end of the song rachet up to a level of almost uncomfortable parody. The distance from genre and the falling completely into genre, competing against each other, suggests a kind of arch formalism that has not quite decayed.
[7]

Brad Shoup: Chiptune, brostep, maybe a little Marnie Stern: Yasutaka Nakata always seems to locate placidity in the funnest places. Here, he hacks out a chill space after awesomely annoying ringtone klaxons and brutalist guitar lines. “I guess I’m an invader,” grins Kyary, but with a track this teeming, she’s operating in stealth.
[7]

Mallory O’Donnell: YMO as seven year old girls married to dragons. Best part: with almost any rudimentary sound editing software you can edit out all the dubstep bits.
[7]

Iain Mew: I’ll start with the dubstep, because I sort of have to. First, it is a very Nakata bit of dubstep. It’s still pleasurably abrasive, but it’s also meticulous and controlled, just a few noises stabilised by a constant beat that carries on after. Secondly, the moment when the noise ends and is replaced by the cheeriest twinkle of piano is amazing, playing up the comic absurdity of a Kyary Pamyu Pamyu song with a dubstep section and then riding it out flawlessly. The preview of that moment after the first chorus works the same trick just as well on a smaller scale. Elsewhere is actually where the most chaos happens, from Kyary’s “whoa whoa whoa” stretching the tune to its limits to the broken merry-go-round synth sections, every bit a surprise and delight. In some ways it’s finally the song to match her visuals, and it’s probably her best single to date.
[9]

Will Adams: No surprise, Nakata is just as skilled at dubstep as he is at the dancepop that first caught my attention with Perfume. “Invader Invader” is cut from the same cloth as “Fashion Monster,” its uptempo bounce supporting a chorus that asks you to jump off your feet. The winning moment, however, is the second verse, when the harder half-time beats meet with beautiful piano arpeggios. Kyary continues to win me over with her maximalist pop.
[8]

Jonathan Bogart: Her sonic aesthetic finally catches up to the gonzo of her visual aesthetic. It’s fitting, in a way, that dubstep is what gets her there: the most vulgarly lead-footed sound in modern pop still retains its synapse-scrambling potentialities when juxtaposed against the clockwork sugar-rush of Kyary’s baseline sound.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: The sound of five toy motion detectors cheering each other on as they overclock.
[7]

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VAMPIRE WEEKEND - YA HEY
[5.33]

And not a one of these guys is named Jason, but let’s pretend…

Katherine St Asaph: “You know how some couples have get-out-of-jail-free cards where you’re OK to hypothetically hook up with whichever celebrity? Society should have that concept except for punching people in the face. And one of mine would be Ezra from Vampire Weekend.” — me, on Gchat, grousing about these fucks before hearing the album. Given this, the prospect of Ezra and co. invoking the Lumineers or Outkast (or DragonForce! …nah) for the wiseass portion of their twentysomething existential crisis was not particularly compelling. And lo and behold, Ezra and co. bellyaching about Babylon like they just heard a Snoop Lion song are not particularly compelling — but either the frustrating or relieving thing about Vampire Weekend is they’re one of those bands where the music really does outweigh the annoyance. Here, it’s done with some pretty traditional tools — obligatory choirs seldom sound so celestial.
[6]

Alfred Soto: It’s about the Lord God, apparently — Yahweh. I award Ezra Koenig no bonus points for lyrical ambition because we knew he was a smart fucker already, as at least nine other, better tracks on Modern Vampires of the City prove. Horrid chipmunk-processed title hook aside, the track sounds delicious: thick dub bass, synthesized textures that shift depending on Koenig’s register, Chris Tomson’s drums getting the right sound from his martial rhythms. But this ain’t no single.
[7]

Mallory O’Donnell: I was gonna say Paul Simon produced by the Buggles but Trevor Horn’s tools are more pro than these. Still, at least now they’re allowed to see other bands.
[4]

Anthony Easton: It feels weird to have white boy prepsters who had previously copied Byrne copying west Africa, into working some genuinely lyrical sophistication, using Rasta argot to braid the personal and political. It actually sounds curious and beautiful and weirdly evades the racism.
[7]

Patrick St. Michel: Another Vampire Weekend song that will keep the believers Tweeting praises and those who loathe these guys side-eyeing the others…while us in the middle sit here and wonder why these dudes can stop flexing those college degrees and just write more straight-up pop songs for a change. Oh, wait hold on, this song actually contains one of the most annoying sounds to ever appear in a Vampire Weekend song, those pitch-shifted coos. Cool, a Vampire Weekend song I can hate because it actually grates.
[2]

Brad Shoup: An apostrophe to the Almighty that isn’t XTC’s “Dear God”? I’m in. The Vamps try to stretch one (great) conceit past a dropout where the gutpunch goes, but they already did their damage. Koenig consoles an unknowable God; how’s that for the hook? Jehovah isn’t treated as such, not quite: he’s labelled a saint (quite the demotion), called out on his mistakes, tucked into bed by a parent who’s headed to the corner store for cigarettes. The refrain packs what I recognize as truth: He is and it is what they are. Marvel or move on. The rest is men notoriously grappling with themselves, mastering hooks and production touches (the stomp is a leaner “Take a Walk,” the choral bits are terrifically ambiguous, the baroque piano runs their fussy image up the flagpole) as rapidly as they discard the comforts of knowledge. To explain one line, RapGenius superuser Maureen Miller puts a Richard Hofstadter tome in the blender. Had Koenig & co. really exposed themselves to God’s back, she might have had to burn her place down.
[8]

Jer Fairall: Charges of glibness won’t fly here: Koenig’s vocal is graceful enough that even if you don’t choose to follow along with the ponderous spiritual ramble of the lyric, his delivery brings with it enough gravity that it all feels sincere (even the invocations of Desmond Dekker and the Stones, a religion I do understand, feel reverential rather than back-pattingly clever). Charges of obnoxiousness still might, though: as many lovely notes as this hits in its languid five-minute sprawl, the African choral chant chiefly among them, someone here still thought that including those horribly grating chipmunk vocals on the chorus was a good idea.
[6]

Ian Mathers: If anything, this makes “Step” sound even better; there is absolutely no reason this one needs to be five minutes long, and for maybe the first time there’s not even a single line I appreciated in any sense. There’s still some basic melodic nous here, but that’s not going to get me coming back.
[3]

Jonathan Bogart: I fully admit to never having given these guys a chance. Maybe two, five, ten years from now I’ll be rooting through some old hard drive, come across an mp3, have tears spring to my eyes from the first notes, and become a belieVWer. But for now it’s still just another collection of signifiers — yelpy vocals, funkless rhythm, spindly instrumentation, fussily precious production details, vague religious allusions — without any attendant significance.
[5]

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JASON ALDEAN - 1994
[5.00]

Jasons Monday doesn’t leave us with many options…

Josh Langhoff: Joe Diffie’s 1994 chart-toppers summed up their strain of the country zeitgeist pretty well: good natured blues-derived novelties with crossover line dance appeal, just like “I Like It, I Love It,” “Sold (The Grundy County Auction Incident),” Alan Jackson’s two steps, and everybody’s lordly ruler “Achy Breaky Heart.” In those years before Shania Twain swept in with her lasers, even the non-country kids (hi!) could differentiate these songs at school dances, though we usually admired the FFA kids’ choreography from the sidelines. Aldean and his songwriters take the short walk from “Pickup Man” and company to today’s glut of country chunk rockers, just one step further from the blues. Their novelty elements — Diffie shoutouts, a loony guitar outro, and rapping that’s slower than John Michael Montgomery’s auctioneer — fall safely within the tradition. The non-country kids’ll still call this country, though with its torpid beat, I can’t imagine the FFA kids’ moves will look as impressive. (On the other hand, those earlier songs also land in my 6-7 range, and unlike them, “1994” reminds me of Prince’s 1995 banger “Now.” Come on come on, hicks on the floor.)
[6]

Alfred Soto: Taking the title literally, I anticipated drum loops out of Beck and Hole guitar riffs. But no. We get a little “3rd Rock” in our hip-hop and shimmers in our atmosphere. Aldean has neither honky tonk nor attitude.
[2]

Brad Shoup: Between this and “Boys ‘Round Here”, it seems hick-hop’s found its footing, striking the right balance between hip-hop and country signifying. (They both reference Cali Swag District, so we still have a ways to go.) But the most important thing is the track: Aldean deploys guitars masterfully, and the turnover of riffs ‘n’ whines is absurdly catchy. His voice is still thin as hell; he needs multiple tracks on the verses, and when they’re removed for the hook, he sounds like a twerp. Evoking a better time is a sucker’s move; paying tribute is nearly always awesome, and shooting shine to a mullet-sporting twanger from 20 years ago is so winning. And so is the line “hop in this truck… AKA time machine”.
[8]

Patrick St. Michel: Buzzfeed articles take more care in getting the past right.
[1]

Anthony Easton: Ten questions about this: 1) Why 1994? 2) Why Joe Diffie? 3) Grey Goose isn’t really honky-tonk, is it? 4) “Pick Up Man” comes from Muddy Waters, right? (I mean, it was Diffie, but can it be traced to that origin?) 5) Is teaching someone to Diffie like doing the dougie? 6) Can you get Goose in fifths? 7) What purpose does the coda serve? 8) Is “country” still a meaningful genre signifier? 9) Do the rock guitars of “Pick Up Man” mean something different than this? 10) What would Aldean trade his pickup truck for, if not a Coupe de Ville?
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Jason exclaims “atmosphere” like this is Bring It On and he’s the newest, burliest member of the Toros. Bring It On, of course, is partly about wanton appropriation, which is fitting; Aldean’s got his nostalgia going not only for Joe Diffie but hip-hop, or at least hip-hop as circumscribed by “Teach Me How to Dougie,” “Jump” (the “Joe! Joe! Joe!” part) and “The Real Slim Shady.” Country’s often gone here before, both historically and this goddamn year; if this is the best of the recent offerings, it’s because why Aldean may embarrass himself, he’s not drawing lines like Blake Shelton, nor does the embarrassment go much beyond “C-O-U-N-T-R-Y.” He’s also got a crunchier hook.
[6]

Jonathan Bogart: I mean, Joe Diffie is no Springsteen.
[6]

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