Yet Another Year In America December 30, 2010

[koganbot]

So the year ended with a big whiff.

The Lonely Island ft. Akon "I Just Had Sex": I just took a shit. NO TICK.

Keri Hilson "Pretty Girl Rock": She rhymes "very" and "derriere," asks us not to hate her 'cause she's beautiful, so I guess this is a send-up of something or other. Slick, pleasing, forgettable. I don't understand Keri, why half the time she deliberately goes slight and blank. Does she think it's stylish? BORDERLINE NONTICK.

Far East Movement ft. Ryan Tedder "Rocketeer": The song's a passably pretty smoothie, given rough dumpster-lid beats that don't make it any less negligible. Usually dance groups save something like this for their third or fourth single, the track where they get all sentimental and show their supposed emotional range. As a number two, it's a momentum killer, at least for me, though it's hitting the chart so what do I know? But man, they've got much better tracks than this. NO TICK.

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I love that Keri Hilson song, and don't think she's blank on it at all - slight and playful, sure, but I think it's a really fun song. The video reinforces that it's about self-affirmation rather than vanity - Tom described it as a whistlestop tour of Black pop cultural beauty. It makes for an interesting compare and contrast exercise with her other big video last year, for "The Way You Love Me", as well - that one contains your annual quota of crotch-grinds and more, and was greeted by a torrent of slut-shaming.

With all that said, my favourite song on her album is "All The Boys", which I described on Twitter as "like accidentally finding a bunch of love letters from your exes on the eve of your wedding". Keri is kind of interesting to me atm - she's basically kinda boring, never really transcends being the industry songwriter she started out as, but when she gets me she really gets me.

[koganbot]

Good, I'll try to hear it the way you do. It's a pretty tune, and indeed is playful, so maybe I can come to see the slightness as a virtue, like here's a nice little wisp and a tendril.