Jun Jin - I like the heavy bass driven parts, which is most of them. I don't like the Wowowowowow bit. Was going to say it felt a bit dry until the rapping finally kicked in, then it didn't anymore. I don't want to listen to this repeatedly, but it works pretty well as a single pulsey track.
Lady Gaga - So uh, super message song. The overall message is good and important and there is obviously a pretty strong argument for picking this for a writeup. I didn't really like it as a song to listen to, though. The video is incredibly uncomfortable, but it's meant to be, so that's fine in my book. But discounting that and just listening... it's still not very pleasant to the ears. The instrumentation and composition feel simple, and the vocals don't convey much tone to me other than vague negativity. But the lyrics are split half and half between condescension and positivity/trying to move on, and the whole package doesn't mesh very well to me.
It feels like it's too raw to be listenable for many abuse survivors, but also alienating towards people who haven't been in those situations, leaving me wondering where is the audience that would actually derive enjoyment from listening to this? Of course, Grefter is talking on IRC as I write this, and it turns out he loves it, so there is the answer. Anyway, as an intentionally uncomfortable message song it is pretty successful I think.
I keep going back and forth on whether to talk about my personal feelings on the message. It is very hard to separate the song from the politics here, which is a conundrum in itself. Personally I came away from it negatively and that is probably coloring the rest of my comments. Sexual assault is awful, and should be universally condemned, and people should be educated about it. "You don't understand until it happens to you" is... not a message that accomplishes much on that front to me. Some people think that this *is* an important message, that there is a large endemic problem with majority voices talking over and choking out voices of people who have personally experienced sexual assault (or trauma or racism or
just experiencing life in a different culture) and that discourse on subjects should be more exclusionary of "random majority people who don't understand" and privilege voices people closer to the topic in question. I've spent an hour revising what I'm saying about this one song though so I'll try and spare savage debatery time and just say that I don't agree that that's a very positive or productive way to take on issues, I'm disappointed when it's glorified as a viewpoint, and I wish this song was more focused on the core message of identifying, explaining and condemning sexual assault. The video is pretty good at doing that, but the lyrics without the video aren't very good at it, IMO. This is all just totally my personal thoughts and please shoot me if I should not ramble like that in Song Review Funhouse.
Duran Duran - Very trippy. I feel like I'm listening to a TV commercial several times on repeat. Seems a bit long for what it is, and not a lot of substance that hits my mind. Definitely feels like an anachronism, that's pretty neat.
Smooth McGroove - It's pretty hard to ever go wrong with the McGroove. He does exactly one thing and has honed that thing to perfection. Because of that, and because I listen to all his stuff, a track has to be kind of unusual somehow to get a reaction from me these days. Metal Man is not unusual, in fact it's very simple and feels like a relatively trivial production for him. Starting with an NES track does half the planning work for him, because the track is already written in individual lines for the soundchip, and there's no added SFX or camera work or unusual range or anything special going on. It is just SmoothBot, this guy could totally be a Vocaloid. That's pretty weird, that I'm essentially hating on a near perfect track just because I am familiar with the artist and expect *beyond* perfection from him now to be impressed. But so it goes.
Bob Tommy - Super saccharine romance cutepop. This is the American white male equivalent of japanese singing bikini robot girls.
Elle King - Country with an edge and a side dose of Greek wrestling, eh. This is very strange and feels subversive both on the musical and lyrical fronts. Ah, I see Grefter broke it down well. Good stuff. Still not much to my personal taste but it is intellectually interesting!
.... I have no ranking this week. Everything is pretty good. Rob Thomas and Duran Duran are probably the weakest two to me, but there's still a writeup case for DD. Elle King and Jun Jin are both nice strong pieces. Smooth is standard McGroove. And then the Gaga piece I have no idea whatsoever how to even begin fairly comparing it with anything else here. I guess if really pressed I would say JJ or Elle are the best tracks, but they also may have the least writeup fodder, and Gaga is a wildcard that could be executive decisioned into an auto pick or auto not-picking-this and I wouldn't blink either way.
