Yet Another Year In America February 25, 2010

[koganbot]

Peas do what Haiti couldn't, displacing Ke$ha at the top. Rihanna hits the chart again, but not with the song that would seem to be her album's obvious next single, "Te Amo," an excellent combination of lilt, catchiness, and burning regret. Maybe she or the record execs fear that its subject inhibits popularity: a woman coming on to Rihanna, with Rihanna not merely letting her down gently but also feeling empty for not being able to reciprocate, trying to enunciate "I love you" herself by pondering the other woman's "I love you." If the lesbian thing had been done for titillation by a Ke$ha or Britney or Katy the audience'd find it no big deal, but my guess is that the seriousness of "Te Amo" potentially makes it too disconcerting, even though the motion of the song is breezy enough.

Rihanna "Rude Boy": Her voice tends towards hard rubber here, ultimately flexible but you have to push it. There's superb tension when she wrenches into "wa-a-ant" and the riffs speed around her in short little ovals. Problem is that elsewhere in the song the voice isn't hard enough,* so the track ends up just nice. But it is nice. TICK.

OneRepublic "All The Right Moves": Large beats against slow sweetness, except the slow sweetness doesn't have mass or presence, and the whole thing recedes. NO TICK.

*The opposite problem to "Hard."

Comments

[askbask.livejournal.com]

I thought Rude Boy was a poor single choice from a business perspective, but it's burning up the charts in England (where Hard hasn't been released as a single)