Top Ten Worst Hit Songs of 2011 (5-1)

Posted on December 18, 2011 by bgibs122

5. Lady Antebellum – Just a Kiss

Last year, Lady A made end of the year lists with the Grammy winning “Need You Now”, a   somber if not sober tune about being miserable and drunk-dialing your ex. The band’s misplaced grandiosity fit “Need You Now”, because drunk-dialing itself has a sort of misplaced grandiosity; it feels damn important when you’re doing it, but the next morning, you’re usually thinking “Well, that was silly…”

But, as a band, going for the big sound doesn’t always work. A song like “Just a Kiss”, about a couple that vows to be ok with “just a kiss goodnight” as opposed to pop music’s usual “I wanna go all the way”, seems like it’d work better kind of understated, not something as hamfisted as Lady Antebellum serves up here. The fact that these lyrics sound like something a 13 year old writes about their first relationship doesn’t help things; “I know it’s time to leave…because my mom’s waiting with the minivan…but you’ll be in my dreams tonight”. The syrupy production and Disney-anthem just add to the ridiculousness; this doesn’t seem like a mature song, this is something tweens put on the mental playlist while dreaming of their first kiss. The sentiment’s a little too heavy, but refreshing all the same, since, as we’ll soon see, it beats the complete opposite.

4. Chrstina Perri – Jar of Hearts

I don’t know what it was about the past year or so, but a lot of our hits have been about telling off your ex. “Fuck You!”, “Rolling in the Deep”, “Best Thing I Never Had”…and “Jar of Hearts”, debut single by singer Christina Perri. “Jar of Hearts” isn’t the worst debut single ever, I have no idea who’d take that title, but damn did it set me off Perri until “Arms” came around. “Jar of Hearts” has a threadbare arrangement, and no memorable melody to speak of. Between that and the barely-there tempo, I alwaysthini’mdfingew–Ah! Shit, almost fell asleep there. Listening to “Jar of Hearts” is like being stuck in a four-and-half-but-feels-like-forever sadness montage thatjustblendstog….aszzz…ugh, I’ve got to stop doing that. Not since Bon Iver, Bon Iver has something put me out this quickly. Although the song is responsible for this, which always puts a smile on my face:

*Yawn* I’m going to go grab an espresso, what’s next?

3. LMFAO – Sexy and I Know It

This song. Ok, when LMFAO came out with “Party Rock Anthem”, I think part of the reason it caught on was that we all knew this was going to be LMFAO’s one tolerable song. Past history suggested as much. And, with an enthusiasm only seen in puppies and small children, out came “Sexy and I Know It” to prove us all right. I ragged on D.Guetta earlier for “Where Them Girls At” being the same six seconds of music over and over, but “Sexy and I Know It” tops that by repeating the same two second riff for the entire song. Redfoo being sexy is clearly a joke, but the narcissism sure isn’t; the reasoning behind this spew being released as a single can only be described as the same that Ke$ha had for “Blah Blah Blah”: “Hey, you chumps ate up the good song, so you’ll probably lap this one up, too!”

In addition to being a hookless, tuneless jam by knuckleheads who can’t sing and can barely rap, “Sexy and I Know It” also spawned a horrifically disappointing video. LMFAO proved with “Party Rock Anthem” and, to a lesser extent “Champagne Showers” that, doltish musical abilities aside, they could at least turn a clever, funny video and some nice dance moves (“Showers” has a few around the 3:25 mark). “Sexy and I Know It” is like they saw the “Dick Slang” video and said, “Fuck it, let’s make a video around that”. Good lord, and we’re only on number 3?

2. New Boyz ft. The Cataracs & Dev – Backseat

Occupying the exact same spot as “Like a G6” from last year’s list is “Backseat”, rather fitting since “Backseat” is “Life a G6” with a different vehicle and moronic rap group. However, the hook, producers, and song are the exact same, so much to the point that I’m honestly wondering if this song just exists purely because The Cataracs and Dev wanted to see if we’d all fall for the same bullshit twice. Like Far East Movement, Newboyz front with entirely too much bravado for them to backup, and as a result, their verses are just laughable (as well as, you know, awful). “Met a couple girls in the Escalade” Aren’t you supposed to pick girls up in the club? Wait, the whole song’s about the back seat, and wordplay about cars…hell, these guys couldn’t even get in the club. And that’s about all I have to say about “Backseat”. Other songs on the list were aggressively loud, or failed to produce anything with substance, or inert, but “Backseat” is just uninterestingly awful on every level. And now, number one…

1. Enrique Iglesias ft. Ludacris – Tonight (I’m Fuckin’ You)

Fuck this guy. Every one of Enrique’s last couple hits have highlighted how much of a scumbag the guy is: “I Like It” was “Hey, you should cheat with me, because I’m awesome and you’re hot!”, “Dirty Dancer” was “There’s this chick that always puts out…I’m getting it in, and so  should you!”, and then we have “Tonight I’m fucking you”, which is “Hey, look that way while I slip this in your drink”.

I could complain about the piss-poor unimaginative club banger production. I could complain about the annoying AutoTune “Yoooouooouooouo”s. I could complain about how no matter how you slice it, this song has no positive qualities. But hell, it goes beyond that. This song pisses me off. Enrique’s excuse is that, “Oh, yeah, it’s just fun”, but that’s bullshit. “Tonight I’m fucking you” doesn’t really give the other party a say so (you know, consent), and Iglesiasshole doesn’t really seem to like this woman. She’s just there, and he wants her because fuck it, he’s a celebrity, and they’re supposed to get whatever they want whenever they want. Does, “It was fun” hold up in court after she presses charges?

For a less rage inducing, and more fun entry, check back tomorrow for part one of my picks for best hit of the year!

Posted in "Thoughts", Lists | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Top Ten Worst Hit Songs of 2011 (10-6)

Posted on December 17, 2011 by bgibs122

I know I’m a little behind, but here we are, ladies and gentlemen: the official start of Ranting About Music’s year end special! I thought today we’d start with the worst of the biggest songs of the year. To make it on this list, or its twin the top ten best hits of the year, the song had to be on Billboard’s year-end Hot 100, readable here. Ok, enough foreplay, let’s go!

10. Jennifer Lopez ft. Pitbull – On the Floor

Club pop dominated the sound of 2010, and of course bled into 2011. The exact timing of it varies for most, but by the time “On the Floor” came out, it seems like we were starting to feel burnt out on this stuff. I sure know I was, and J.Lo’s big return didn’t help matters. What really takes this song down is the completely toothless beat; “On the Floor” might be the first club pop song to need more bass to give it some oomph. On top of that, the song just feels bland and lazy, like J.Lo knew that with her American Idol resurgence, she could release damn near anything, and it’d sell. Producer RedOne doesn’t seem to be here for anything but a paycheck, and Pitbull just…“Back it up like a Tonka truck”, all you need to say. For a four and a half minute song, “On the Floor” offers about 30 seconds of substance.

9. David Guetta ft. Flo Rida and Nicki Minaj – Where Them Girls At

“So many girls in here, where do I begin?”

Where do I begin? David Guetta’s music is either nuanced and layered with subtle sounds and textures accompanying a main hook, or the exact same six seconds of synth hook meant to bludgeon you into submission with its own loudness. “Where Them Girls At” is nothing but the latter, and the blockbuster sequel to “Sexy Bitch”. “Sexy Bitch” was loud? “Girls” wants to be even louder. “Bitch” was dumb? “Girls” is dumber. Flo Rida’s verse by numbers only adds to the oppressiveness, and even a funny Nicki Minaj appearance can’t save this thing. If “On the Floor” pushed you back to the club, “Where Them Girls At” grabs you by the collar and screams “HAVE FUN” until you’re almost deaf.

8. Hot Chell Rae – Tonight Tonight

…can I go back to the club? I’d rather be there than listen to this smarmy jackass-tastic reject Disney Channel opening theme. “Tonight Tonight”, aside from soiling the name of a much, much better song, does basically all of the things that I can’t stand in modern pop. It’s covered in crummy, gloppy production, confuses a bland, monotonous hook for catchy, has no meaning whatsoever, and knows full well that it’s shit and doesn’t care. Hell, the song’s almost proud of how bad it is. The only lyric that stand out is the Zach Galifinutstospellingthisright reference, and even that feels shoed in and kind of whatever. All of the guitar-based songs released this year, and this one got big?

7. Dr. Dre ft. Eminem and Skylar Grey – I Need a Doctor

Remember when Eminem was funny? Remember when he tried to be funny? Where’d that guy go, because I’m tired of PissedOff Em. The beat’s serious, the hook’s serious, and Eminem gets furious on this track. But, if you listen to the lyrics, he’s basically rapping an angrier version of “And I Am Telling You, I’m Not Going”. Dr. Dre doesn’t do much that’s memorable aside from get jacked as shit in the video. The rad bromance of he song isn’t what strikes me as being funny (it’s rather touching to see Eminem actually care for  someone), but the fact that this song’s supposed to be Detox‘s first single as a call out to everyone who treated Dre as a joke for never finishing/releasing the album. It was listed for a February release.

We still don’t have it. Apparently the only thing worse than Valvetime is Dretime.

6. Waka Flocka Flame ft. Wale & Roscoe Dash – No Hands

If you took everything bad about radio rap and put it in one song, that song would be “No Hands”. We seem to be able to weed out bad singers, or at least the ones that can hide being bad, but we’re still clueless about how to do this with rappers. These guys have no flow, no clever lines, and no redemptive qualities to their game whatsoever. Waka et. all fill the song with crass ways to nail a chick drunk off Moscato (oh hi, product placement) while doing it with, wait for it, “No hands”.  This is backed by a thudding horns and snare beat that I swear I’ve heard in C-list rapper singles since 2007. “No Hands” makes me wish I had no ears.

Tune in for part 2!

Posted in "Thoughts", Lists | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Radio Rant: will.i.am feat. Jennifer Lopez and Mick Jagger – T.H.E. (The Hardest Ever)

Posted on December 16, 2011 by bgibs122

Hey all. So, it’s been pretty quiet here at the Ranting About Music office this week because I’ve had final exams, but those are over and done with, and before I got to the big year-end lists, I thought I’d come back for one of the worst songs of the year. Seriously, I mean that. I found this song while looking up songs for the year-end top ten, and even though it isn’t in the top 20 or on the year-end chart, it’s so bad that I just couldn’t pass it up.

I thought we were done with will.i.am. The Black Eyed Peas announced their hiatus earlier this year, and I happily went back to ignoring them other than the rare occasions that I heard their surprisingly good single “Just Can’t Get Enough”. By the end (or The Beginning, depending on how you want to look at it), the Black Eyed Peas had written themselves into utter predictability, even for a group as redundant as they were. The song starts with an overly long intro, the sampled and/or Fergified chorus kicks in, will.i.am makes his case for the most subpar famous rapper of the past five years, chorus again, another verse, chorus, bridge, then one of the non-will or non-Fergie dudes mumbles a verse, and we’re done. Sometimes it worked, but most times it didn’t.

With all of that in mind, “T.H.E.” might be will.i.am’s worst song ever. His opening lyric? “Oh my goodness, this beat is so hard!” He then follows it up with an 808s-Kanye style AutoTune wail over a beat that is definitely not hard. Of the song’s many problems, will.i.am himself stands at the front; his lines on “T.H.E.” (goddamn, there are a lot of periods in this entry) set a new record for personal worst. These lyrics push past lazy, and get so bad that I wouldn’t be surprised if will.i.am announced that he’s just trolling us with this shit. Just narrowing a list down to the five worst was harder than it needed to be.

Honorable mention: “I get stacks of cash, you get cashews/I go hard, statues” I’ve written hashtag rap jokes better than this.

5: “Hard like motherfucking liquid swords” …what?

4: “Imma go hard like a motherfucking boner” So I’m guessing Will has 12 year old boys ghost-writing for him now that the Black Eyed Peas left him.

3: “I woke up in the morning, hard like morning wood in the morning” Rules of dick jokes in pop music, 1: Be clever, 2: Limit one per godawful single. You’ve broken both rules.

2: “You can go hard or you can go home” Imagine this line repeated 8 times. No, you didn’t just walk into a Nike store, and yes, that is the song’s chorus. So, next time you’re in a gym and you see someone with a ratty shirt saying “Too legit to quit” in faded white lettering, start writing.

1: “This beat is the shit, feces” …the fuck am I supposed to say to this? It’s not funny or  smart; it’s just crass, lazy, and dumb.  Will.i.am, turn in your mic, you talentless hack.

Lyrically, “T.H.E.” is bad enough to make “My Humps” look like a Dylan tune, because fuck me, at least “My Humps” was about more than some creatively dead schmuck comparing himself to a penis and calling his own music excrement.

Then again, calling this music shit isn’t too far from the truth. It comes across as the in-bred cousin of famous badly produced hits “Like a G6” for J.Lo’s chorus and the general beat, and the Peas’ own “The Time (Dirty Bit)” for part of the verses with droning synth. It’s kind of danceable when the percussion really kicks in, but other than that, it’s mostly cold and unimaginative, like a bad cyberpunk villain’s entrance music.

Also, let’s call “T.H.E.” what it is: a bad Black Eyed Peas outtake. It’s not hard to imagine the demo for this sitting in the studio, and with the band broken up, why not hire a couple of popular names to replace the other Peas? Think about it: will.i.am shows up in all the spots that he did for the BEP’s later output, and that tuneless, monotonous hook Jennifer Lopez got stuck with sounds built for the frequently misused Fergie. So what dope did they get to stand in for Taboo or Apl D App to jabber over the end of this over-long techno monstrosity?

Mick Jagger?!

What the hell is he doing on this piece of junk? Between this and that universally disliked SuperHeavy project, is he in a pissing contest with Steven Tyler to see who can abuse their Lifetime Credit Pass harder? Ok, to be fair, Jagger’s last-minute is entertaining just for how surreal it is: 68-year-old rock pioneer Mick Jagger is more or less rapping about going hard over an electro-pop beat, including the line: “Watch out, I’m going in!”

“T.H.E.” is horrible, but at the same time, it’s so consistently horrible and Jagger’s appearance is so absurd that the whole trainwreck comes off as kind of fascinating despite being borderline unlistenable. Interesting doesn’t mean good, or quality, but the song’s probably worth hearing once, just because of how nuts it actually is.

Posted in Radio Rants | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Album Review: Adele – 21

Posted on December 8, 2011 by bgibs122

Yes, I know I’m late to the party.

It’s weird to sit here and write this review knowing full well that it seems like the entire world loves this album. It was a week ago exactly that I read this year’s Grammy nominations, and had to type “Adele” more times in one night than I might have ever before. But I’m not just reviewing 21 in light of its (predictable) Grammy storm, I’ve wanted to review this album for a month or so now. It’s undoubtedly this year’s biggest album commercially (with a strong critical pull to boot), so let’s get to it: What made 21 take over?

When I did my half-year wrap up in July, I said that Adele’s success has been a massive surprise. And, while I don’t deny that, I do believe that 21 was written with success in mind. The album’s rap sheet reveal cowriting credits from British mega-producer Paul Epworth, OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder, Dan Wilson (of Semisonic), Fraser T. Smith, and Francis White, with Epworth producing, as well as Tedder and veteran Rick Rubin. While the heart and soul of 21 rest with Adele herself, she also employed a high-cost/high-reward production team. Not a bad thing by any stretch, but it shows why 21 sticks how it does.

Another key element in 21‘s across-the-spectrum appeal is that it’s a very traditionalist record. Recorded with an in-studio band, the album relies mostly on drums, bass, piano, and guitar lines for instrumentation, and is a breath of fresh air for pop fans tired of synth-loaded club bangers and indie kids exhausted by an endless stream of albums with reverb heavy production. By contrast, the production on 21 is pristine; everything sounds completely organic, but not under-produced, either. The drums punch, the bass pulls, and Adele flourishes.

And damn does she do it. Adele’s powerhouse voice is hands down her strongest asset, and she uses it to her advantage all over this album. She gets pissed on “Rolling in the Deep”, but manages to wail on “Take It All”, and gives a nuanced, heartbreaking performance with closer “Someone Like You”. Not only that, but she does all of this without any real obvious effort, and her performances all over 21 are incredibly likeable.

Anyone who’s ever been broken up with can relate to 21. Lyrically, Adele doesn’t keep herself to one aspect of the break-up; she’s telling off lying friends on “Rumour Has It”, frustrated in “Turning Tables”, and reflective on “I’ll Be Waiting” and “Don’t You Remember”. It’s the same sort of diary-esque lyrics that made Taylor Swift a hit, but more  mature than most of the latter’s material to date, and as a result, covers a much broader spectrum.

And, of course, 21 is a big album because it has great songs. The one-two opening combo of “Rolling in the Deep” and “Rumour Has It” is a solid, if false, lead; the two breathe a blues/soul/R&B fire that’s never quite seen again in the next 40 minutes. And, of course, “Someone Like You” is one of the saddest, most touching mainstream songs in memory. “One and Only” goes from uppity-gospel to solemn hymn, and the transition works. Elsewhere, Adele’s soul-pop voice and good arrangements hold the quality to a decent good.

So if critics love it, the thing sells circle around Lady Gaga and Lil Wayne, and it’s appearing in year-end lists already, why isn’t that a nice 5/5 sitting at the bottom of the page? 21‘s problem is that despite Adele’s great performances, good lyrics, and great voice, it isn’t an extraordinary record. It rarely surprises you, and even when it does, the surprise isn’t always good. For example, “Set Fire to the Rain” (…?) is too-upbeat for its own good, and the inclusion of a song written as a wedding present (a cover of the Cure’s “Lovesong”) is baffling on an album that might as well be subtitled Screw My Ex, let alone right before “Someone Like You”.

Sequencing is what also hurts 21: book-ended by two great songs one way and a lone showstopper the other, the other 8 tunes mostly stick to mid-tempo balladry, and makes for a tolerable if not as compelling listen as “Rolling” or “Someone Like You”. Half a minute of “I’ll Be Waiting” blinks by just as much as 4 full ones, and after proving he can write more than knockoffs of “Apologize” with “Rumour Has It”, Ryan Tedder drops in for “Apologize” knockoff “Turning Tables”.

All of this adds up to an album that’s thrilling, and then not, but never deviates. On one hand, the quality never dips especially low, but on the other, it’s easy to zone out once you hit “Take It All”, or even “Don’t You Remember”. Regardless, 21 is a monster of a release, and is good enough for all of us to be ok with that, three and a half stars out of five.

tl;dr: Adele proves that you can please everyone and still come out relatively unscathed. 3/5/5

Posted in Album Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment