Radio Rant: Jeremih feat. 50 Cent – Down On Me

Posted on May 26, 2011 by bgibs122

Ah…no more Gaga. Welcome back to Radio Rants, who am I dealing with this week?

…is that the “Birthday Sex” guy? That’s the “Birthday Sex” guy, isn’t it? I know I’m really harping on that one song, but that’s the only reason Jeremih’s famous. And I don’t even understand how that happened; “Birthday Sex” is a bottom of the barrel song that’s as sexy and sensual as “Business Time”.

“Down on Me” starts off with some of 50 Cent’s trademark mumbling. What’s he saying? Eh, I don’t know, probably 50’s usual: there’s some girl he’s chasing after, he’s rapping about how she moves, and the phrase “Push up on it” is probably used at least once. 50’s got a few different spots on the track, so lemmie just pull up some lyrics…

“So sexual, incredible, she beautiful, she edible”  When your options are a slant rhyme or cannibalism, just do the extra work and find another word for “incredible”.

“I got her, I won’t let her go” Yes, Fiddy, you treasure this woman you found shaking her ass at a club. Hell, if she makes eye contact, you might as well go ring shopping.

“Look how she twerk it, the way she work it make me wanna hit it, hit it, heaven when I’m in it, in it. If I do not fit, I’m gonna make it, girl you can take it” Alright, first off I think Fiddy just set a land speed record for rhyming “it” with “it” some half a dozen times. Second off, this just sounds creepy as fuck. Ok, fine, 50 sees a hot woman, we’ve all been there. Then we get to him not letting her go and if it doesn’t fit he’s going to make it fit? Dude, not cool. It’s not as bad as Enrique “Tonight I’m Fucking You” Iglesias, but this one still pisses me off.

Anyway, “Down on Me”‘s production is pretty subpar. It manages to be annoyingly busy and somehow empty at the same time. It also tries to compensate for doing nothing well by trying to do everything; just about every idea for “futuristic electronica” gets shoved in at least once, yet it never manages to sound good at all. The entire song just wasn’t put together well.

Then of course, there’s Jeremih, who manages to have even less personality here than he did on “Birthday Sex”. Instead of crappy R&B crooning, we have crappy Auto-Tune sing talking, because that’s a trend that needs to be continued. Even without the Auto-Tune, he’d probably sound robotic; he delivers the verses in a mumbling, never changing, flowless voice, and the chorus isn’t much better. He’s got his own batch of bad lyrics (“What, you work at Bally’s? Look at your physique, girl you are a beauty, well I am a beast”), but he never manages to be nearly as offensively terrible as 50.

Jeremih’s other problem is how completely D-list he is. he’s going for the BEP, 808-era Kanye style of dark, Auto-Tune, electro-pop, but he lacks any of the charisma to even come close to pulling it off. The fact that even with Auto-Tune he sounds like a nasally whiny pushover doesn’t help.

Yeah, “Down on Me” is one of the worst songs we’ve had here on Radio Rants in quite some time. 50 Cent’s questionable lines push a normally boring performance downhill, and Jeremih is one of those performers who straight up doesn’t have the qualities of a performer. Other songs we’ve had have been boring, or lacking the execution, but this is a generic sexariffic club jam that’d only be tolerable if you’re too drunk to hear it.

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Album Review: Lady Gaga – Born This Way

Posted on May 25, 2011 by bgibs122

Sometimes “hype” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

If The Fame was a celebration of celebrity as an idea, Born This Way is a celebration of being Lady Gaga. In the days of “Poker Face” and “Lovegame”, it was easy to write Lady Gaga off as a pretty (and talented) woman with a hell of a PR team. Nowadays, she stands at the pulpit of Mother Monster, proclaiming to all that she was Born This Way, and that acceptance and self-expression are the way. In a way, Born This Way is Lady Gaga’s first album as Lady Gaga; the first time we’re seeing her and all her ideas put into music.

And Lord does she mean all of them. Gaga’s previous work rarely ventured outside of her synthy club pop origins. Contrast that to Born This Way, which sees her throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks. Some songs, like the glam rock meets disco of opener “Marry the Night” end up working out great. Ditto with “Americano”, which fuses a mariachi band with a synthesizer, and the end result is too campy to not love. Other times…not so much. “Hair” is overblown even by Born This Way‘s bombastic standards. “Government Hooker” is the first song where the album stumbles, the song’s Nine Inch Nails-lite mixed with an operatic intro.

A plethora of problems dog Born This Way. First and foremost: this production is abysmal. While Lady Gaga’s persona had been sunk by excess in the past, it never showed up in her music. In addition to being too damn loud, there’s no breathing room; there are too many synths, instruments, layered vocals, and effects going; I doubt there’s a single moment of peace throughout the album’s seventy-three minutes. And yes, if you got the “full” seventeen song version of the album, you’re looking at an exhausting play time.

Then we have Gaga’s tendency to crib songs from older artists. As everyone tweeted the morning it came out, “Born This Way” sounds an awful like Madonna’s “Express Yourself”. Bits and pieces of that same melody pop up in “Black Jesus + Amen Fashion”, which seems just vaguely familiar enough to be irritating. I’m no Madonna expert, but “Scheiße” definitely calls back to the Material Girl. And then we’ve got “Fashion of His Love”, which channels “I Wanna Dance (With Somebody Who Loves Me)”. One or two would be permissible, but when almost 25% of the album brings another artist to mind, something’s not right.

This might shock some of you, but Gaga has a tendency to pander to her fans. Her Little Monster congregation shows her such devotion that it borders a cult, and it’s only natural for Gaga to give them a shoutout. But since Born This Way is boom or bust, she dedicated the album to them, and there are three “Be yourself!” anthems for them: “Born This Way”, “Hair”, and the ABBA-esque “Bad Kids”. The latter is the only really enjoyable of the three, though.

Interestingly enough, even though Born This Way is very clearly a Message Album, the lyrics are perhaps the weakest element of the entire schbang. Gaga has her message (variations on “Be yourself” and empowerment), but time after time, she delivers it in the bluntest way possible (“Don’t be a drag, just be a queen” is the lowest point), and never really expands on it. Repetition’s also a problem, and some choruses on Born This Way have the goal of fitting the song’s name in as many times as possible. A nitpick, but it bugs me: as a word, “Gaga” shows up in almost every song. Picky, but annoying all the same.

But there are plenty of redemptive songs here. The slowburner “Bloody Mary” is a welcome change from the club stompers before it, and the lyrics reach a high point. The messy “Electric Chapel” aside, Lady Gaga hits an unprecedented run of quality as the album ends: the dark groove on “Heavy Metal Lover” has an effortless cool and a solid hook, “The Queen” is too spirited to be held down, and “You and I” and “The Edge of Glory” fight for the title of Best Song.

“You and I” is a power ballad that gets surprisingly close to country at times. A fist in the air chorus, an absolutely powerful performance by Gaga, and guitars from Dr. Brian May combine for an over the top but utterly delightful penultimate track. Even though the album’s length is past daunting by the time “The Edge of Glory” comes, the song is worth listening to as an epic closure and one of Gaga’s best songs.

In some ways, Born This Way calls to mind Oasis’ infamous Be Here Now: an album hyped from here to eternity, but ends up being an overstuffed mess. The overall flaw with the album is that in its excess, bombast, preachiness, and claustrophobia, Lady Gaga’s music lost a lot of its own identity to whatever’s happening at the moment. There are good moments, to be sure, but there are also plenty of bad ones. Three out of five stars.

tl;dr: There are great songs, but fuck me, this album’s flawed. 3/5.

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Radio Rant: Lady Gaga – The Edge of Glory AND Hair

Posted on May 19, 2011 by bgibs122

For crying out–again?

I think by this point Lady Gaga’s legitmately trying to take over the world. Casualties in the Gagapocalypse already include iTunes, concert specials, tv stations, and–no, I’m not making this up–Farmville. Her campaign to appear on every screen you own is part of the promo for Born This Way, which will be released on Monday, meaning that either God or Gaga is going to claim us within a week.

Something I should say because it bears mentioning: I’m not a Gaga hater. To be totally honest, my top seven or eight of her songs get frequent listens in my music library, and I really enjoyed most of The Fame Monster. Her schtick and the fanbase are what bug me. But I digress.

Part of the Born This Way hype storm has been releasing new singles. Between now and my previous Radio Rant, she’s come out with two, and I figured why not make it a double feature? Let’s start chronologically and alphabetically with “The Edge of Glory”.

Unlike just about every other Gaga song out there, “The Edge of Glory” actually takes awhile to lift off. It’s different, and really helps; a lot of Gaga (especially her Born This Way material) doesn’t really get to build because it starts off with such bombast that there’s nowhere to really go. Despite the fact that everything is covered in reverb, there’s nothing wrong with the first verse here.

And that verse leads right into what might be one of Lady Gaga’s best choruses. On top of great production, a (comparatively) less-is-more instrumentation, and a solid hook, the chorus succeeds because it feels so natural and genuinely personable. The arena rock guitar, soaring synth, and steady beat make it a great “lighter in the air” moment, too.

Although why is there so much repetition to these lyrics? I’m fine with repetition, but it’s never been something that Lady Gaga’s done this much. I think the last time I heard this much repetition in a pop song was “I Gotta Feeling”, although this time there are far fewer random Jewish phrases.

But we do get a random… saxophone?! Before the bridge, Clarence Clemons from the E Street Band comes in with a wailing sax solo while a few synths jam out beneath him. It’s not a bad solo at all, but it stops the momentum of the song dead in it’s tracks. But after the sax, let’s deal with the usual Gaga sing-talk bridge.

Wait, where is it?

What’s this? There’s no spoken bridge, just some synth and guitar jamming before the final giant chorus. Well…damn. I can’t hate on “The Edge of Glory”; the production’s great, music’s solid, Gaga sounds absolutely on-target…and most importantly, it sounds different. Gaga’s schtick was starting to wear out by the time “Judas” was released, and “The Edge of Glory” shows that yes, she can do something different and kind of daring. I liked it.

Let’s move onto Hair. At first, it has the same muted intro of “The Edge the edge the edge the edge of Glory”, although the sax makes another appearance this early in (…?). The music is a basic synth/electric piano progression that adds layers and layers as it gets to the chorus, and…oh man…

What the hell, RedOne? As “Hair” gets to the chorus, the production takes a turn from slightly too busy to sheer noise. I mean worse than “Born This Way” levels of noise, this is absolutely horrible. Damn shame, too, because the guitar and drum breakdown at “Free as my hair-air-air-air-air-air” is actually kinda cool sounding. And for the second verse, the song keeps the heavy metal groove going. It’s different, but with all the times that Gaga has said in interviews, “I love heavy metal and rock, really, I do. Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, yeah! PleasecanIgetcredibilitywithyouguys?” it makes sense.

Unfortunately, anything that held “Hair” together falls apart during the bridge, which devolves to Gaga belting “I’m my hair”, or something like it, while the backing music throws piano, synths, sax, and drums at the wall and hope something sticks. One more headache inducing chorus with some admittedly nice vocal embellishments, and “Hair” fades mercifully fades out.

There are a lot of problems with “Hair”. It’s got two or three hooks, none of which really stick out; the production, as mentioned, is a terrible wall of sound mess; and the song’s too long (despite having a shorter run time than “The Edge of Glory”) and doesn’t go anywhere. I’m sure there’s a good song in there somewhere, but as it stands, “Hair” is an overstuffed disaster.

And the lyrics, my God. Did Lady Gaga pull out her old diary from when she was 14 and use that for inspiration? “Dear Diary: Today my mom and dad wouldn’t let me dye my hair, and like, my life is so ruined!!!! Why won’t the let me be who I want to be?! They just don’t understand!!! Love and Unicorns, Stefani”. “Whenever I’m dressed cool/My parents up up a fight”, “Put on red highlights/Just because I want my friends to think I’m dynamite”, and “Mom will cut my hair at night” are just a few selec–wait a minute. Didn’t she say in “Born This Way” that her mom said, “We are all born superstars”, and that she “Rolled my hair and put my lipstick on”? Make up your mind! And did I mention she says the word “hair” more than Willow Smith did?

Then there’s the whole “Free as my hair” thing. Yeah, yeah, you were (cough) born this way, baby, be yourself…I get that, but am I really supposed to believe that Lady Gaga, of all people, has her self-expression suffocated? Also, “I am my hair”. Right, I can agree with that, we’re all our hair. We’re all our dyed, frequently manipulated, and falling out hair. This is a dumb metaphor.

This turned out to be a polarizing pair of songs. On one hand we have “The Edge of Glory”, an absolutely wonderful pop song that’s, at least I think, in the top five as far as her singles go. Then we have “Hair”, an utter trainwreck with a metaphor that’s “Firework” bad. Well, come back next week for the album review!

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Album Review: The Mountain Goats – All Eternals Deck

Posted on May 17, 2011 by bgibs122

Yeah, I know it’s been forever.

Anyway, change and evolution in an artist’s can be a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. Audiences and critics are just as likely to call an artist out for doing some tweaking or pushing their boundaries as they are for not changing a thing. It seems like the only way to avoid derision is to make the change with complete conviction, or to make sure that you’re damn good at what you do.

The latter is good news for John Darnielle and The Mountain Goats. In any of the groups incarnations from Darnielle alone with an acoustic guitar to the band’s current rock trio set up, listeners always know what they’ll get with The Mountain Goats: poetic, literary, and dark lyrics, Darnielle’s distinctive bleat, and smart instrumentation. All Eternals Deck only has one change to add; the band’s lo-fi roots are almost completely removed.

That’s not a bad thing. Actually, the gentle beat of opener “Damn These Vampires” wouldn’t have the pull it has if the song sounded ragged around the edges. The production on All Eternals Deck hits the sweet spot: it’s perfectly crisp and clear while still sounding organic. Such a production benefits downbeat, gorgeously arranged songs like “Age of Kings” and “Outer Scorpion Squadron”. The latter in particular stands out; piano and strings rise and fall while Darnielle delivers some genuinely tearjerker lyrics (“Ghost of my childhood stay with me, if you will/Find a place where there is water, hold your breath til you’re still”).

But All Eternals Deck isn’t 13 toothless tales of tragedy. The Mountain Goats are, in practice, a three piece band, and a solid one at that. “Estate Sale Sign” gives the album an early shot in the arm of energy through barebones folk punk instrumentation, and its propulsion is matched only by “Prowl Great Cain”.The band is more muted, but just as lively on other cuts; “The Autopsy Garland” has a tense atmosphere made only more threatening with the repeated lyric “You don’t want to see these guys without their masks on”.

The most singular track on All Eternals Deck is “High Hawk Season”, which is situated right in the middle of the album. Darnielle goes it alone with his acoustic guitar, and in place of backing instruments, he is joined by a men’s a capella quartet. The song is lyrically a call to arms, and by the final cry of “We are young supernovas, and the heat’s about to break!” damn if I don’t want to shout along.

One of–if not the–hallmarks of The Mountain Goats is Darnielle’s lyrics. Literary, poetic, and often very dark, his lyrics have a storyteller’s spin and  a knack for smart couplets that transcend Facebook statuses and tweets. While All Eternals Deck doesn’t have any particular lyrical theme, survival and perseverance come up multiple times in “Liza Forever Minnelli”, “For Charles Bronson”, and “Damn These Vampires”. Elsewhere, the usual meditations on life and circumstances come up, offering a mix of despair and hope: things suck, but we’ll get out of it. Maybe.

All Eternals Deck is an incredibly consistent album. Whether it’s the rollicking “Estate Sale Sign” or reflective “Outer Scorpion Squadron”, the quality never really dips. By that same token, it’s hard to look at one song as the definitive “best” since even the less “interesting” songs are still enjoyable. Easily 4 stars.

tl;dr: The Mountain Goats offer more of the same, but why complain when they do what they do so well? 4/5.

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