Oh shit, this video is absolutely great. Nailing it on 90s nostalgia. If I had seen this at thirteen years old, I would suddenly know what I wanted to do with my life.
Also, I think I would have a threeway with this band. THERE I SAID IT.
So, uh, this happened! I don’t honestly know what to think of it — I don’t think I actually needed to have Jake rap an entire song — but the simple fact of its existence (and the fact that it portends a 2012 Scissor Sisters album) is enough to get me excited. Also, I am really jealous of the dance moves of the kid at the end of the video.
Bonnie Tyler never did anything by half-measures, did she? This song sounds like they piled a studio’s worth of musical instruments, drove it on a train - with Bonnie belting from the smokestack - off a cliff, and recorded the resulting explosion. And then they played the soundtrack back at twice the speed. You don’t enjoy this song. You yield to it, and submit to its rapid-fire heroics.
Hold on, there’s a music video for this that isn’t just Tandi Iman Dupree? Like, they didn’t take this video out of print after that happened?
Any time I hear a modern pop-radio Eurodance production like “Till The World Ends,” I get some 90s club song or another on the tip of my brain. I finally heard this on a radio this morning and had a EUREKA moment.
Did anyone actually think the 90s revival would get around to this kind of thing? Kind of a pleasant surprise, right? We were all thinking Pavement, and yet here come the Sonique clones.
Despite the presence of distressed denim, stuttery GIF images, automobile misadventures, and hands placed on mouths to denote surprise, this is not a worthy counterpoint to the “Telephone” video. Still worth a watch, though.
My roommate Andrew and I, at our most… err… let’s say “intoxicated”… occasionally discuss the fact that we should open an A&R operation called Prison For Bitches. We would represent only female pop stars*, preferably of the type who have made a lot of bad career decisions, but who are also so obviously talented that it really shouldn’t be hard to turn their careers right back around with just a bit of smart editing. Our prime candidate is Janet Jackson. Our pet project — the one we would never actually expect to make it big but who we would pour all our time and energy into anyway — is Ciara.
Nobody really understands why I love her, but I do. Maybe I don’t even understand it. Maybe it’s just because of “Promise.” Maybe it’s because, as seen above (and in “Promise”), she is the A-plus undisputed no-contest best dancer in all of pop. (It’s kind of embarrassing for everyone else.) It’s hard to say, really. But if I could fanfic a popstar’s career, she’d be my first choice.
And then they could turn me loose on Madonna.
In any event, watch this video. She dances like a monster. She wears a fannypack that spells the word “FLY.” She has Converse platform high-heels. The video mix is a thousand times better than the album version. It’s a thing.
*We would make an exception for Adam Lambert. He really needs our help. (For the record, the first thing I would do is make him record a cover of Weezer’s “Trainwrecks.”)
Holy crap, I like a Jamie Foxx song. Well, who are we kidding, it is a Drake song through and through, and I like Drake songs — especially Drake songs that are totally just the sad-boy breakup version of “Un-thinkable (I’m Ready),” a song I am totally obsessed with at the moment.
It’s weird how thoroughly this is a Drake song, written by Drake and sung by Jamie Foxx, who might as well not even be there. There’s something interesting going on when a 43-year-old turns to a 24-year-old to write his album’s “this sounds like grown-ups made it” song about Serious Relationship Issues. And there really is something ingenious in the way Drake keeps hiding his prettiest, most sharply-written songs about Real Feelings, by giving them to other singers and leaving himself to stay in the hip-hop / pop world unaffected. Smoothly done, sir.
(The other common ingredient in all these Drake songs I’m loving: Noah Shebib, the producer who works on all of his twinkly minimal-techno bedroom tracks.)
In any event: more stuff that slots right in on a mix after Sade, please.
It recently came to my attention that not everyone in the world has heard this, “this” being the single most audacious thing currently happening on the pop chart. It is the new Enrique Iglesias single (and I’ll bet that sometime in 2006 you stopped thinking you’d ever see those words strung together again, but the world has proven you very wrong), the actual title of which is “Tonight (I’m Fuckin’ You),” possibly the greatest use of the parenthetical that we’re likely to see in 2011. It actually makes for an interesting entry point into my general experience with popular song this year. And that is:
Reader, I liked it. Yes, I enjoy this song. Listening to it leaves me slack-jawed EVERY TIME at its shameless lizard-brain stupidity, but in that sense it is perfect, an expertly calibrated cocktail of the attitude and sound that is currently dominating American pop: unapologetic club beats (sickening thought, everyone — U2 were right about this in 1997, they just got there too early and got there waaaaaay too self-importantly) and an even more unapologetic pursuit of drinks and fucking. Many have railed against the dominance of this sound. But my experience with pop in 2010 was the opposite: I taught myself to listen to whatever was happening, regardless of whether or not that thing was something I ever saw as being a part of my personal identity or worldview, and to find value in it. If the world is wearing sweater capes, I decided, I will learn to see the value in sweater capes. If only because eventually someone is going to ask me why I’m not wearing one. Or someone is going to compliment me on mine.
Now here is the big question about looking at pop music, or really any creative product, in that way: Is that attitude something to be proud of, or something to be disturbed by? Am I really opening myself to new and enjoyable experiences that my ego would previously have never let me consider? Or am I just so broken-down and lacking in self-confidence that I will take anything that’s given to me with a smile on my face? I am leaning towards the former, but it’s impossible to honestly say that the latter didn’t play some kind of role. There was a time when it was very, very important for me and my sense of self to disdain things like Ke$ha or this song. Now I’m starting to feel like I can’t be bothered, and I’d rather just enjoy whatever’s going on instead. (Don’t get me wrong: Ke$ha has made some really, really wretched songs, but I’m starting to take the view that that’s due to deficiencies in the specifics of the performance and songwriting, not the overall approach.)
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This song was written by Lauren Christy, of the hitmaking group The Matrix, and produced by DJ Frank E, who is responsible for part of the backing track of the BoB / Hayley Williams mega-hit “Airplanes.” This brings me to the other organizing metaphor I used for my experience with pop music this year: when asked, I now say that I follow pop the way most Americans follow sports. I have favorite teams, but I keep up-to-date with what every team is up to, what their records and stats are, and who the most valuable players are, both on the field and in the coaching staffs. I’ve spent endless hours this year browsing the Wikipedia pages of bit players like DJ Frank E and tracing the little spiderweb lines that connect each product of the modern pop industry to each other. (I have thought about adding this information to the ID3 tags of every song in iTunes, but that’s a whole other side of my personality.) I’ve also learned to enjoy “sports” that I used to give only a passing glance; just last night, one of my gay friends was going through my iPod and said “Wow, you really got into rap this year, huh?” (News flash: There aren’t a lot of gay white rap fans in my social universe.) And by rap terms, I totally didn’t; there are only a few things I really enjoyed, I’m still a total diletante. But I know the rules now, and I’m happy to sit down and watch a game if something good is on.
So. “Tonight (I’m Fuckin’ You).” It seems like a towering inferno of brainlessness, but somebody very good at their job really thought this through. It’s every bit as ridiculous and extreme as you want it to be, and in that, it does not bore me. That seems to be all I’m asking of almost any music at this moment: one way or another, through revulsion or satisfaction, do not bore me. Give me a game to watch. Pass the Doritos and beer.
Two things I cannot help but point out: (1) The vampires ate Bieber. (2) Kanye et al. are clearly the Manson family that bought the mansion from “Paparazzi” after Gaga moved out. (In the same way that the house from David Fincher’s “Freedom 90” video and the house from David Fincher’s Fight Club are in fact the same house.)
I am watching this now and like all Robyn performances it is great but I don’t UNDERSTAND it. I don’t have any context for what the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony is like, but I did NOT expect it to be the kind of event that would feature corny Anne Hathway teleprompter hosting, or Robyn doing big disco house numbers. I was not expecting the Golden Globes? I always assumed it was a bit… less camp, I guess? Or a higher level of camp. You know what I mean. Very Serious Business. After all, it’s not like this crowd is going to go nuts and leap to their feet and get sweaty to “Dancing On My Own,” so what’s the point?
That said, I do think all political events like the Peace Prize should have awesome disco sections in them. Really stick it to those corrupt regimes, you know? “Come to the decadent West! You can have dance parties with Robyn! You don’t have anybody half this cool!”
UPDATE: I didn’t even notice until the back half of “Indestructible” that she had an ORCHESTRA available in-house to back her — girl, what is your PROBLEM?!? This should have been some indulgently re-arranged, orchestra-soaked Metallica-style artistic overreach from the GET. This is the NOBEL PRIZE, girl. Grab the brass ring.
The video for the Scissor Sisters’ “Invisible Light” is not the video I would have made for it; there’s a late 60s/early 70s British art film vibe to it (The Shining, The Wicker Man) that seems slightly disassociated from the song itself. But then I realized that they’ve made an original version of the kind of cut-up footage that would be projected onto the wall at your more fun clubs, and I understood. It’s not supposed to go with the song, it’s supposed to enhance the feeling of being in a debauched gay club, which is ultimately what “Invisible Light” is about.
Holy shit, it’s the first great Scissor Sisters video in… I don’t even know how long. Since the original version of “Laura”? Am I forgetting something? Anyway, Mike is on-point as usual, this is like everything they’ve ever projected before a show at Irving Plaza, but so much better.
Also be advised if you’re watching it at work, there are boobies in it.
