Another Year In America February 5, 2009

[koganbot]

The Taylor Swift album finally falls from number one to number two. The Bird And The Bee enter at 78. Meanwhile, on the singles chart, something happens, somewhere, probably. Possibly.

Lil Wayne "Prom Queen": OK, what's happening is Autotune, for the thirtieth (or three hundredth) consecutive week. A sketch of a voice, a blob of an accompaniment, I can't make sense of the decision not to put more dance in the blob (really, once upon a time people danced to rock music, really), but this has a tune and Wayne's got his usual panache even if the lyrics just go through the TV high-school motions. TICK.

Soulja Boy Tell 'Em f. Sammie "Kiss Me Thru The Phone": Soulja Boy gets sensitive. The orchestra is convincingly stately, but nothing in the vocals commands attention. I hate to say it, but this sounds phoned-in. NO TICK.

Katy Perry "Thinking Of You": Katy gets sensitive, kinda. She kissed the wrong guy. She didn't like it. The singing is obvious, of course, big NUANCE here, emotional crack in her voice there, but Katy's singing is actually the only thing that keeps this half afloat. NO TICK.

Jamie Foxx f. T-Pain "Blame It": This is some silly zeitgeist. The syllables do silly breakdowns, the words do silly rhymes (butt/what?), Autotune makes the world fizzy, sensitive soulfulness becomes light and funny. Borderline, but I'm smiling. TICK.

Comments

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

i just heard that lil wayne thing; bears unflattering resemblance to 'chop suey' by system of a down. sounds like an inverse of those weird chopped'n'skewed remixes where people made, say, papa roach sound crunk a few years ago.

that said, i quite like it in a 'that's sort of interesting in its badness' way.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

actually on the second lesson i've decided i quite like it. weezy sounds quite death metal in his strangulations. lyrics a bit emo but overall: strangely good. not quite rock, not quite hip hop, it's more in that sort of UNKLE-type electronica area.

[koganbot]

Yeah, my first reaction to "Prom Queen" was "No!" but then I compared it to the other three nothings on the list (one of which I ticked anyway) and decided it had enough something in it to warrant a tick. (That logic never got me to tick the Ting Tings, however.)

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

it's definitely got something to it. i think i possibly like how little sense it makes; the lyrics don't go with the riffs, the riffs don't go with each other, lil wayne's voice doesn't go with any of it and yet it's all been mashed together.

mmm, the katy perry is so bad it's embarassing. there's the epic WWI-themed video, too, (well possibly it's meant to be WWII but it seems to feature trenches, so overall confused) which is just ...well, awful beyond belief.

the ting tings are just very, very annoying though. whereas this lil wayne venture has an air of vague underdoggery about it, since he's trying to break into a new genre or whatever, they're just irrationally successful bores.