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koganbotTaylor Swift's "Mean" at 11 is two spots ahead of Taylor Swift's "Mine" at 13. Monica's "Love All Over Me" at 71 is two spots ahead of Josh Turner's "All Over Me" at 73.
Taylor Swift "Mean": This is a fun song! How come nobody told me it was a fun song! Sorta a kid's song, too, or meant to recall one, nice little plinkity-plink-along acoustic instruments and a sing-along spirit, invoking silliness and sounding jaunty while a deadly serious Taylor sings in the voice of a ten-year-old, dreaming of one day growing up big and moving out of the hurt-zone and into the big city (first country song to do that, to want to be big in the big city!). But it also gets real personal and uneasy, Taylor suddenly digging in, the guy not only big enough to hit her but lethal enough to make fun of her singing, and Taylor speculating that he once got pushed around himself, somebody made him cold before he went after Taylor, and Taylor now saying the cycle ends right here - but the cycle doesn't end here, since Taylor herself continues it in this very song, wishing the guy not enlightenment and peace, but bitterness and loneliness. So it's Taylor with ice in her, hot ice heating up the song, Taylor not so great at self-knowledge but making this catchy little ditty matter, as the brilliantly fun girls sing arm-in-gleeful-arm in the background: "Why you gotta be so mean?" One BIG MEAN TICK!
Shakira ft. Dizzee Rascal (English version) or El Cata (Spanish version) (Billboard lists both versions together) "Loca": In English, Shakira wields precise high-pitched scalpels, Dizzee is credibly half-harried and half-tough, and they really catch fire together at the end, call-and-response lifting off forcefully from a bed of electrobubbles; but still, that ending is the only part to take this beyond being a good little dance track. Not that there's anything wrong with good little dance tracks. But in the Spanish version Shakira's voice is in the music in a way it's not in English, her whispers more pouty, her rapping more plaintive, and her vocal darts more shark-like and dangerous. El Cata is negligible, and she and he forgo the ending crossfire she did so well with Dizzee; but the horns call to her hard as Dizzee, she punching back with cries of "Loca." TICKA.
Zac Brown ft. Alan Jackson "As She's Walking Away": The tight two-part harmonies create a pleasing tingle, and the two-step in the breaks promise to make this the first Zac Brown single I might enjoy hearing again. "When your heart won't tell your mind to tell your mouth what to say." Nice little advice song, the advice being ask her to dance. Alan gets not just harmonizing duties but his own verse. If he'd gotten another this'd be a divertingly off-hand track; as it is it ends up a tad too off-hand. BORDERLINE NONTICK.
P.S. Convo about "Mean" over on the Jukebox "Back To December" comment thread, which Dave refers to down in this comment thread.
Taylor Swift "Mean": This is a fun song! How come nobody told me it was a fun song! Sorta a kid's song, too, or meant to recall one, nice little plinkity-plink-along acoustic instruments and a sing-along spirit, invoking silliness and sounding jaunty while a deadly serious Taylor sings in the voice of a ten-year-old, dreaming of one day growing up big and moving out of the hurt-zone and into the big city (first country song to do that, to want to be big in the big city!). But it also gets real personal and uneasy, Taylor suddenly digging in, the guy not only big enough to hit her but lethal enough to make fun of her singing, and Taylor speculating that he once got pushed around himself, somebody made him cold before he went after Taylor, and Taylor now saying the cycle ends right here - but the cycle doesn't end here, since Taylor herself continues it in this very song, wishing the guy not enlightenment and peace, but bitterness and loneliness. So it's Taylor with ice in her, hot ice heating up the song, Taylor not so great at self-knowledge but making this catchy little ditty matter, as the brilliantly fun girls sing arm-in-gleeful-arm in the background: "Why you gotta be so mean?" One BIG MEAN TICK!
Shakira ft. Dizzee Rascal (English version) or El Cata (Spanish version) (Billboard lists both versions together) "Loca": In English, Shakira wields precise high-pitched scalpels, Dizzee is credibly half-harried and half-tough, and they really catch fire together at the end, call-and-response lifting off forcefully from a bed of electrobubbles; but still, that ending is the only part to take this beyond being a good little dance track. Not that there's anything wrong with good little dance tracks. But in the Spanish version Shakira's voice is in the music in a way it's not in English, her whispers more pouty, her rapping more plaintive, and her vocal darts more shark-like and dangerous. El Cata is negligible, and she and he forgo the ending crossfire she did so well with Dizzee; but the horns call to her hard as Dizzee, she punching back with cries of "Loca." TICKA.
Zac Brown ft. Alan Jackson "As She's Walking Away": The tight two-part harmonies create a pleasing tingle, and the two-step in the breaks promise to make this the first Zac Brown single I might enjoy hearing again. "When your heart won't tell your mind to tell your mouth what to say." Nice little advice song, the advice being ask her to dance. Alan gets not just harmonizing duties but his own verse. If he'd gotten another this'd be a divertingly off-hand track; as it is it ends up a tad too off-hand. BORDERLINE NONTICK.
P.S. Convo about "Mean" over on the Jukebox "Back To December" comment thread, which Dave refers to down in this comment thread.
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Date: 2010-11-03 03:51 pm (UTC)I think the hypocrisy in "Mean" is the songwriter's as well as the character's, but it's not a gamekiller for me any more than similar hypocrisy was in Ashlee's "Boyfriend," the one where Ashlee claims "I'm bigger than that" but manifestly isn't, seeing as how she's calling Lindsay out in front of the whole world, which Lindsay, for all her flaws, never did to her.
(Btw, hilarious story which I got from a Kara DioGuardi interview several years ago in the Boston Globe: Lindsay was working with Kara on a lot of A Little More Personal (Raw) and wanted to write an answer song to "Boyfriend" with Kara, but Kara talked her out of it - which is too bad, since Kara had helped Ashlee write "Boyfriend," and this way Kara could have facilitated both sides of the argument!)