Radio Rant: Lady Gaga – Judas

Posted on April 19, 2011 by bgibs122

Uh…

Um…

Shit.

Hey guys, I’m sorry. I usually grab a song from the Top 20, but this week’s entries are all either songs I already covered, or even worse, decent songs that don’t open themselves up to a lot of commentary. So I’m at a total loss, there’s nothing for me to look at this week. Wait, hang on…what’s this?

“Judas”? Wasn’t this supposed to come out on Tuesday? It’s out now on Saturday? Well hey, let’s take a listen! Wait, hold up, this is Holy Week, gotta say thanks. Ahem…Lord, Thank you for saving my ass with this song, and thank you for this performer, her batshit insanity, and most importantly, her inability to keep to a release date. Amen.

Yep, here we are with another Lady Gaga release because I never get to talk about her. To recap my stance on Miss Gaga: Decent music, irritating “artiste”. My three word review of “Born This Way” was “Bored this way”. Now let’s cut the foreplay and get to “Judas”.

I didn’t like “Born This Way” because of how tame it sounded. By comparison, “Judas” got me excited from the “Judas, Jud-ah-ah” hook. In fact, I really like the whole first minute of this song; it’s a return to Weird Gaga in terms of sound. In the first verse, Gaga herself sounds not entirely stable, like she’s in some sort of trance. The beat itself maintains a steady thump-thump, and the snyths mimic the “Judas-Jud-ah-ah” hook. It doesn’t so much strut as much as it does stagger; it’s sexy in a total trainwreck kind of way.

And the song’s transition to a super smooth pop chorus feels incredibly natural. Perhaps a little too busy musically, but only minorly so. The twinkling synths are a nice touch on top of the super catchy melody; I always want to sing along. “But I’m still in love with Judas, baby/I want your loving and I want your revenge, you and me could write a bad ro–” Hey, WAIT.

Dammit, Gaga, again? I thought we’d been through this; stop copying older songs. Even if they’re yours!

Alright, well…moving on from that, I do have to say that RedOne is definitely going to work on “Judas”. This might be his best work since “Poker Face”, the song that got me to take Lady Gaga seriously (PS: how tame does that video look in retrospect?). Anyway, speaking of “Poker Face”, “Judas” uses a sinister hook to transition to its bridge, much like the older song did. Launching the Lady Gaga Sing-Speak Bridge (TM) in 3…2…1…

“In the most biblical sense/I am beyond repetance/Fame hooker, prostitute wench, vomits her mind/But in the cultural sense/I just speak in future tense/Judas kiss me if offenced/Or wear your condom next time”

…huh. That…well, there was some gibberish to it, but that delivery sounded awesome. Definitely one of Gaga’s more menacing deliveries that actually sounded dangerous. I just don’t get what’s with the condom stuff. What’s that? I got the line wrong? Hang on, let me take another listen…

“…Or wear ear condom next time”

Huh? What? What is this, I don’t even…ear condom? What the hell, Gaga? Was it part of some Faustian bargain that every one of your hits has to have a godawful line in it somewhere? After that muckery, Gaga goes into her usual Lady Gaga Slow Sung Bridge Lead-In To Final Chorus (TM), we get a round of chorus with some very nice riffing added in, and then the song ends on that monster hook.

I know this review came out really snarky, and while I do have a few issues with “Judas”, it’s Lady Gaga’s best single in quite some time. RedOne’s work is, as already mentioned, outstanding, and Gaga herself sounds damn good; she’s off-kilter and spaced out on the verses, but still manages to pull a pop homerun on the chorus. The fact that the song is such a rewrite of “Bad Romance” bugs me in the same way that I felt after I realized that “Billionaire” was “Santeria” rewritten, but it’s still a good tune. Let’s just hope Gaga wrote some actual songs for Born This Way on her own.

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Album Review: Foo Fighters – Wasting Light

Posted on April 17, 2011 by bgibs122

Foo Fighters found superstardom through the path less taken: the power of the radio. Well, back when the radio still had power, anyway. Over their 16 year run, Foo Fighters have cranked out some great rock standards (resulting in an ass-kicking greatest hits), but they’ve never really had a consistently great album. After three steady albums and stellar singles, they’ve still kept their single quality up to scratch, but were starting to feel aged on 2007’s scattershot Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace.

So thank God for Josh Homme and Them Crooked Vultures. After that supergroup, Foo Fighters frontman and all around nice guy Dave Grohl took his main band back to his garage (literally), recorded the album on all analogue equipment, and for added 90s flavor brought back former guitarist Pat Smear and producer Butch Vig. His main objective for Wasting Light? Bring on the rock.

He succeeds! Wasting Light is one of the band’s best albums, and finally finds that consistency that’s been missing. No acoustic numbers, no instrumentals, just lots and lots of three guitar rock band onslaught. Opener “Bridge Burning” is the most exciting rock song I’ve heard all year, and a classic in the making: the intro and chorus absolutely rock, but it’s married to a melodic pre-chorus and deft verses. This dexterity is shown again in lead single “Rope”, which is one of the Foos’ most precise songs to date.

Wasting Light is given additional oomph from Vig’s production. One of about three superproducers responsible for 90’s alt, Vig makes sure that everything comes in perfectly clear without ever sounding too polished or inorganic. And while the band keeps the rock switch engaged for the entire album, there’s a fair bit of variety. The throat-destroying “White Limo” stomps like Songs for the Death-era Queens of the Stone Age while “Back & Forth” is almost delightfully poppy.

As far as standouts go, centerpiece “Arlandria” is worth noting. Opening with a riff out of Them Crooked Vultures before restraining itself again, the song builds and builds on itself to a fist-in-the-air chorus. The level of songcraft throughout the album is admirable already, but “Arlandria” takes it up another notch. Grohl himself seems to have stepped up his game for this album, too. At the 42, he still roars and screams in all the right places, and still perfectly matches the band’s loud-soft dynamics. Confrontations both past and present surface on Wasting Light‘s lyric sheet, especially on “I Should Have Known”, a mini-Nirvana reunion (Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic plays on this song, Butch Vig produced Nevermind), who’s lyrics bring K.Cobain himself to mind.

As great as this record is, there are still a few flaws. The uniformity of these songs bears heavily on a few of the later cuts (Wasting Light is a tad top heavy, despite a strong finish), and “Miss the Misery” comes off as a moody mess. Perhaps a calmer moment or two in the vein of older songs like “February Stars” or “Aurora” as a breather would have been helpful amidst the 48 minute Rock-a-thon. All in all, a solid Foo Fighters’ album that shows a band doing what they do best, 4 out of 5 stars.

tl;dr: Possibly the best Foo Fighters album in a decade, 4/5.

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Radio Rant: Jennifer Lopez – On the Floor feat. Pitbull

Posted on April 12, 2011 by bgibs122

Hey there, Radio Runts. You know where we haven’t been for a while?

Yep, the club. Sure, Britney’s album took us back last week, but it’s been a blissfully long while since we did a club pop Radio Rant. There’s been more interesting material out there to look at, and really…club pop kinda bores me. Yeah, it’s decent dance music, but I’d honestly rather throw down to something wacky like “Magic”. And even while the music is pretty danceable and catchy sometimes, club pop’s been responsible for some of the worst songs I’ve covered.

Then there’s our performer, Jennifer Lopez. J.Lo got popular back during the Latin pop boom in the early 00’s, and after that died out, she started taking on signs of being famous for being famous; bit roles in films, award presenter, perfumes, and humanitarian work. This year, she became a judge on American Idol to fulfill the role of The Chick. Or perhaps that’s why the got Steven Tyler, I don’t know.

Anyway, because of the major increase in screentime, J.Lo figured now’s as good a time as ever to stage her comeback, and thus we have “On the Floor”. Truth be told, J.Lo was fairly inconsequential in “her day”, so converting to 2011 synthy electro club pop just took a visit from producer RedOne.

RedOne’s production is so-so. It recalls J.Lo’s Latin background in that it has a sleek, less hard-hitting or sleazy vibe than most other club songs. At the same time, I can’t help but feel like it’s two or three different ideas that got forced together; there’s no real cohesion to it. The song begins with some soft synths that recall one of RedOne’s more notable accomplishments (just sing the chorus over those synths, it fits). After that half a minute of niceness, Pitbull throws in some ad libs before the beat becomes the usual noisy fire-alarm squeal that we’ve all heard in about 12 different songs.

Pitbull. Bless his heart, Pitbull’s been trying for the past half a year now to be top dog, but it just isn’t taking. I’ve never heard any of his solo stuff, but based on his multiple features, he seems to be a poor man’s Ludacris, but with more Spanish and pop culture references thrown in. Like this gem, “I’m like Inception/I play with you brain!”. Wait, hang on.

What’s with rappers and referencing Inception? I mean, yeah, it’s a great movie, but why can’t we let some other 2010 hits get in on this? What would that even sound like?

Lil Wayne: “I came on her face, she said she wouldn’t swallow it. Now she only got one eye, True Grit.”
Drake: “Y’all running hard, y’all frontin’, I got The King’s Speech, y’all still stuttering”
Kanye West: “She tell me ‘Yeezey you the only one’. Now she follows me like Mila did in Black Swan”
Nicki Minaj: “Call me the greatest cuz I’m killing all the villains, smash’em into coins, Scott Pilgrim!”

Hm, right. Well, anyway, J.Lo turns in a decent performance on the verses which are about, you guessed it, breaking it down in the club. And in some sort of competition to out-loud the other one, she and Pitbull end up shouting geographical locations over each other as the verses end. In fact, on a closer listen, Pitbull’s kind of mumbling to himself over the course of the song. A lot of times it’s just a groan, but he also mentions “Dale” a few times. Did they just leave him in the recording booth with the mic on between takes?

But yeah, back to J.Lo. She does a decent job on the muted chorus. It’s not a really high energy performance, but it sounds kinda fun anyway. Catchy in that stupid sing-song way. Sorry I don’t have much to offer on this song, but it’s a little…boring, to be honest. Its subdued sections aren’t pretty enough to carry it, and even the energetic sections don’t get that amped up. Hell, the parody version has more bite to it than the original does. “On the Floor” isn’t a terribly offensive song, but it doesn’t make a case for itself, either.

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5 Rock Stars That Got Screwed By (Themselves and) Age

Posted on April 12, 2011 by bgibs122

You know what? Rock stars are people like the rest of us. Well, plus or minus millions of dollars, the fame, the fans, the egos, and the rampant drug use. But still, we’re all supposed to act wild in our younger days, only to scoff at idiocy as we get older. For some of us, the consequences are pretty minor. But in rock and roll’s “go big or go home” mentality…

5. David Bowie
“I am a GOD, you hear me?!”: Three words: Ziggy fucking Stardust.

Sure, T.Rex had started glam rock a year or two ahead, but David Bowie Ziggy Stardust’s album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars truly ran away with the concept. It wasn’t just campy hard rock, Bowie transformed himself from a mild mannered pop musician into an androgynous, bisexual alien from another planet. Imagine putting out music while looking like this, and then releasing an album looking like this, but even crazier. Bowie did it again with The Thin White Duke, a cocaine-fueled manifestation of a mental and physical breakdown.

Now?
After looking…contemporary for a high-profile 80’s career, Bowie mellowed out in the 90’s, and has aged with surprising grace (lookin’ at you, Cher). His modern day appearances are stylish and chic, but never bizarre. Sure, he’s been extremely quiet, a remaster here, curator there, but there’s nothing wrong with being the cool old grandpa.

4. Liam Gallagher
“I am a GOD, you hear me?!”: Some of today’s listees are in through their excessive weirdness. Liam  Gallagher is in through his sheer excess. His band Oasis had a song called “Cigarettes & Alcohol”, a celebration to middle class debauchery. Once the band made it big in 1994, the title could have more accurately been changed to “Cigarettes & Alcohol & Girls & Violence & Cocaine & Ego & Sure, I’ll try some kids’ cough syrup”. Gallagher’s public image makes John Mayer look like a nerdy band kid by comparison.

“I’ve even got some coke in this coat because I’m bored with you twats!”

Now?
You know how referring to someone as having the voice of a chainsmoker is never a good thing? Yeah, that really happens. Granted, Liam’s improved somewhat since then, but his voice hasn’t gotten over the years of dedicated abuse. Liam’s new band, Beady Eye, does more of the same rock and fookin’ roll that made Oasis famous, but on a lesser scale. At least it beats being reduced to guest judge on American Idol, doesn’t it?

3. Steve Tyler
“I am a GOD, you hear me?!”: Yep, America, we have our rock stars who lost their shit. If you don’t know who Aerosmith is, ask your mother. Then after you snap her out of the ensuing Nostalgia Stare,  she’ll probably tell you about the major crush she still has on frontman Steven Tyler (but don’t tell your father). From the late 70’s to the early 80’s, Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry were known as the Toxic Twins, partly for their shared songwriting credit, but mostly for taking an entire rave’s worth of drugs between them. A night.

Now?
No, that’s not your grandma dressed as a…what is that? Gothic…cowboy? Anyway, that’s Steven Tyler in his brand spanking new role as a judge on America’s favorite timewaster, American Idol. That’s just the latest in a year or two of news that’s seen Tyler injure himself on-stage, check into rehab again, play on again off again with Aerosmith, and now land an act as an Idol judge. While Bowie’s aged pretty gracefully (well, as gracefully as a guy known for jumpsuits can manage), Tyler’s still dressing like it’s 1979 and he’s got a gig, a stack of heroin, and three groupies waiting for him.

2. Axl Rose
“I am a GOD, you hear me?!”: There’s an unspoken rule in music that the public’s willingness to deal with an artist’s bullshit is directly related to the quality of their music. It’s why Ashlee Simpson got a swift foot in the ass after the SNL incident, yet Kanye West is still a respected artist. And very few (perhaps Kanye among them) have pushed this to the limits like 80’s Axl Rose. Fronting the rock band of the decade, Axl was able to get away with damn near anything. Hell, the man has started a riot before and still kept rolling chest deep in women, money, and fame.

"You guys had a riot? On account of me? My very own riot?"

Now?
Now Axl nearly epitomizes the term “wash up”. Guns N’ Roses still tours, but gone is the earth-shattering lineup that made Appetite For Destruction, and they’ve become notorious for showing up hours late, playing a little, and leaving early with no rhyme or reason. All those years of media taunting have finally started to pile up, too. Axl’s had so many fights and feuds over the years that Wikipedia had to say “Fuck it”, and gave him a page just for feuds and rivalries. Not to mention the complete lack of grace with which the man has aged.

1. Eddie Van Halen
“I am a GOD, you hear me?!”: Perhaps the most talented  entrant on this list (and it’s only non-singer), EVH is frequently referred to as one of the best (rock) guitarists of all time. His super technical, super speeding shredding and double tapping went on to influence an entire decade of guitarists, and between the spandex, the hair, the acrobatics, and the small-country’s worth of drugs and alcohol, Van Halen was the poster band of the 80’s.

Now?
The difference between Eddie and just about everyone else on this list is that everyone else at least had an upswing. Bowie’s become an elder statesman, Liam Gallagher still has his bloody rock band, Steven Tyler’s still a wacky personality, and Axl Rose still has…uh…heart? But EVH ain’t got shit. Decades of drug and alcohol use will take anyone down a few notches, but difference from top of his game Eddie to modern Eddie is just staggering. That, and he’s now one overcoat away from looking like the guy that keeps hassling you for smokes on the street.

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