September 22, 2009
Posted Fri 25 Sep 2009 3:39PM BST by Reviews Editor in Recommenders
Welcome to Yahoo! Music's whistle-stop guide to what's happening in music this week. Every seven days in Recommenders we check-out the latest tracks, downloads, leaks, links and video clips from the corners of every genre and let you know whether they're worth getting out of bed for. Today, JAIME GILL puts the microscope up to AMERIE, KID CUDI, LADY GAGA, BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB, THOM YORKE and SHAKIRA.Hey, "X-Factor" contestants, here's a Faustian pact for you. Would you release the best R&B song of the decade (2005's utterly inspired, rhythmically relentless "1 Thing") even if, like AMERIE (pictured), you could never match its breathless brilliance and were soon unfairly dismissed as an also-ran? Sorry, stupid question, you'd eat your own offspring to get to number 33 in Belgium. Still, you have to feel for Amerie herself, who is trying again with "WHY R U", an old school R&B belter with a sleek production, fierce vocal and more hooks than you'll find hanging from most British piers. It's very, very good, but it's not "1 Thing", and by those vertigo-inducing standards this is a disappointment.
KID CUDI also set a high standard with surprise hit, "Day'N'Nite", and he's recruited mentor Kanye West and label mate Common to help his second single measure up. In truth, "MAKE HER SAY" should be utterly repellent: not just for its opportunistic, novelty sample of Lady GaGa's "Pokerface", but for the way its three rappers try to outdo each other at leering, sneering and demeaning the opposite sex (Cudi wins narrowly). But the sample is so smartly chosen, the old school beats so winning and the low key video so unexpectedly stylish that you may like it far more than it deserves.
Talking of LADY GAGA, here's fourth single, "LOVEGAME". Allow us to repeat that: fourth single. It's hard to think of anyone who has had such a seismic impact on planet pop with their first four songs, each exploding with hooks that housewives are whistling right now from Sicily to Singapore. The Spice Girls, perhaps, we're talking that long ago. And while "Lovegame" is the least of her singles, it's still a monstrously catchy, radio-humping monster, propelled forward by a jagged RedOne synth riff and snappy-like-bubblegum Germanotti melody. All we hear is Radio GaGa, and will for some time yet.
BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB are also on their fourth single, and while they aren't quite such a household name as GaGa, "MAGNET" is still a pop thrill in its ramshackle, attention deficit disorder, lo-fi way. Secured by a freight train drumbeat and a squirming, screwdriver riff, the song drunkenly lurches from Strokes mumbling to Interpol swaggering to My Bloody Valentine swooning, barely catching a breath between. Not desperately original, but attacked with enough desperate energy to make you forget that.
The new THOM YORKE single, "PULLED APART BY HORSES", is actually an old song scooped from down the back of Radiohead's obviously roomy sofa and given a "radical" reworking, which means ice-echoed vocals, broken glass percussion, edgy bass shuffling and itchy, glitchy electronica. No actual melody or song, obviously. It's all doomily impressive and nerve-wrackingly distinctive, but didn't Radiohead retire from being mainstream rockers because they could do it in their sleep? Can't they now do this type of extended nervous tic in their sleep? Just asking.
Let's wrap up with a real song, and the glorious new assault on the English-speaking world that is SHAKIRA's "SHE WOLF". An instantly addictive fusion of throbbing disco, ‘80s glitz and the Colombian force of nature's very own eccentricity, "She Wolf" is the greatest song since A-ha's "Cry Wolf" to feature impossibly high vocals, absurd English-as-second-language lyrics and the singer actually howling like a wolf. Not to mention a tacky soft focus video, where our star writhes around in a cage naked, dislocating their joints disconcertingly. Or was that A-ha video a dream?
Cudi track's is 2d ok which is a bit catchy. Gaga's gone gaga again. It's a competition.