How to get your D'Angelo fix while D'Angelo himself continues to crumble under the pressure of following up that masterpiece he made 13 years ago.
Showing posts with label RnB. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RnB. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Sunday, February 10, 2013
My Top 5 Songs of 2013
This post, which runs down my five favorite songs of 2012, might come as an anticlimax, given that I've spent the past month and a half intermittently, painstakingly descending from #13 to #6. (I've been busy lately.) But today is February 10, the Grammys are about to begin, and it's time to move on.
So.
#5: Killer Mike, "Reagan"
Too often, it seems to me, the rage in hip-hop is directed at rival MCs rather than, say, the War on Drugs. Or mass incarceration. Or American imperialism. Or the legacy of Reaganomics.
There's plenty of important stuff to be angry about.
Thank goodness, then, for Killer Mike, whose bracing blend of straight talk, unhinged paranoia, social analysis, and righteous anger you will not be seeing on stage at the Staples Center tonight.
"They declared a war on drugs, like a war on terror, / But what it really did was let the police terrorize whoever."
#4: Chairlift, "I Belong in Your Arms"
Sweetness and sunlight, open hearts and banana splits. The aesthetic antithesis of Killer Mike's "Reagan." The aural equivalent of the film Amelie. Lyrics consisting of dadaist joy-bursts. Octave jumps! Synthesizers! The 80s! Just the slightest undercurrent of sadness!
All the girls wear polka-dot dresses, and all the boys are uninhibited by masculine norms!
I want to live in this song, even at the risk of turning into a twee lunatic.
"Because the world goes on without us, / Doesn't matter what we do-o-o. / All silhouettes with no regrets, / When I'm melting into you."
#3: Dum Dum Girls, "Lord Knows"
When music critics have no idea what's going on, they use the word "charisma." Why did the Beatles send young concert-goers into hysterics? They played with charisma. What made Michael Jackson different from every other pop star? He danced and sang more charismatically.
And why does "Lord Knows," essentially a pastiche of The Pretenders and "Crimson & Clover," seem unique? Why is it so moving? So much better than anything else by the otherwise unremarkable Dum Dum Girls?
There's something about the vocal. It's really, really....
(Charismatic.)
"I want to live a pure life, / I'd say that it's about time."
#2: Frank Ocean, "Thinkin Bout You"
Yeah, Mumford & Sons (ruthlessly inauthentic as they are) will likely win the Grammy for Best Album tonight. But Frank Ocean's channel ORANGE remains the best loved, or at least the most intensely loved, record of 2012, combining mass and critical appeal in a way that only Kanye West's finest albums have recently matched.
Lead single "Thinkin Bout You" highlights Ocean's most underrated strength: his facility with melody. Listen, for instance, to how he contrasts the circular, low-register verse with the vertical, falsetto chorus. The effect is one of a private, obsessive anxiety releasing into a straightforward ache.
And then you arrive at the bridge. 2:12. Whoa.
(The nonsensical music video I've embedded below features an alternate version of the song. It's the best I could find in the free, legal regions of the Internet.)
"We'll go down this road / Till it turns from color to black and white."
#1: Japandroids, "The House That Heaven Built"
Hey bro, you play air drums. I'll play air guitar. We'll have the BEST F#@$ING TIME EVER.
"And if they try to slow you down, / Tell 'em all to go to hell."
So.
#5: Killer Mike, "Reagan"
Too often, it seems to me, the rage in hip-hop is directed at rival MCs rather than, say, the War on Drugs. Or mass incarceration. Or American imperialism. Or the legacy of Reaganomics.
There's plenty of important stuff to be angry about.
Thank goodness, then, for Killer Mike, whose bracing blend of straight talk, unhinged paranoia, social analysis, and righteous anger you will not be seeing on stage at the Staples Center tonight.
"They declared a war on drugs, like a war on terror, / But what it really did was let the police terrorize whoever."
#4: Chairlift, "I Belong in Your Arms"
Sweetness and sunlight, open hearts and banana splits. The aesthetic antithesis of Killer Mike's "Reagan." The aural equivalent of the film Amelie. Lyrics consisting of dadaist joy-bursts. Octave jumps! Synthesizers! The 80s! Just the slightest undercurrent of sadness!
All the girls wear polka-dot dresses, and all the boys are uninhibited by masculine norms!
I want to live in this song, even at the risk of turning into a twee lunatic.
"Because the world goes on without us, / Doesn't matter what we do-o-o. / All silhouettes with no regrets, / When I'm melting into you."
#3: Dum Dum Girls, "Lord Knows"
When music critics have no idea what's going on, they use the word "charisma." Why did the Beatles send young concert-goers into hysterics? They played with charisma. What made Michael Jackson different from every other pop star? He danced and sang more charismatically.
And why does "Lord Knows," essentially a pastiche of The Pretenders and "Crimson & Clover," seem unique? Why is it so moving? So much better than anything else by the otherwise unremarkable Dum Dum Girls?
There's something about the vocal. It's really, really....
(Charismatic.)
"I want to live a pure life, / I'd say that it's about time."
#2: Frank Ocean, "Thinkin Bout You"
Yeah, Mumford & Sons (ruthlessly inauthentic as they are) will likely win the Grammy for Best Album tonight. But Frank Ocean's channel ORANGE remains the best loved, or at least the most intensely loved, record of 2012, combining mass and critical appeal in a way that only Kanye West's finest albums have recently matched.
Lead single "Thinkin Bout You" highlights Ocean's most underrated strength: his facility with melody. Listen, for instance, to how he contrasts the circular, low-register verse with the vertical, falsetto chorus. The effect is one of a private, obsessive anxiety releasing into a straightforward ache.
And then you arrive at the bridge. 2:12. Whoa.
(The nonsensical music video I've embedded below features an alternate version of the song. It's the best I could find in the free, legal regions of the Internet.)
"We'll go down this road / Till it turns from color to black and white."
#1: Japandroids, "The House That Heaven Built"
Hey bro, you play air drums. I'll play air guitar. We'll have the BEST F#@$ING TIME EVER.
"And if they try to slow you down, / Tell 'em all to go to hell."
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Top 13 Songs of 2012: #9 (Solange, "Losing You")
A few years back, Solange Knowles, kid sister of Beyoncé, recorded one of the most underrated songs of the young millennium. Co-authored by soul specialist Cee-Lo Green, "Sandcastle Disco" coasts on a shuffling beat and a relaxed vocal, then punches the accelerator into an ecstatic, girl-group chorus: "Bay-b-b-b-bay-bay, don't blow me away!" It's pure Motown, a 21st-century answer to "You Can't Hurry Love."
With this year's "Losing You," Solange goes both more current and more mainstream, exploring the downtempo aesthetic preferred by many of today's R&B artists. The ambivalent lyric, alternating between entreaties ("Just treat me good baby and I'll give you the rest of me") and threats ("I'm not the one you should be making your enemy"), wouldn't seem out of place on a Drake track. And yet something of Solange's predilection for vintage party music remains in the song's jubilant, Family Stone-like beat.
Despair and self-assurance, brooding and boogying: it's this emotional and textural complexity that, in a year full of remarkable R&B singles (see: Usher's "Climax," Miguel's "Adorn," and my soon-to-be-revealed #2 song of 2012), sets "Losing You" apart.
"I don't know why I fight it, clearly we are through. / Tell me the truth boy, am I losing you for-eh-eh-ver?"
With this year's "Losing You," Solange goes both more current and more mainstream, exploring the downtempo aesthetic preferred by many of today's R&B artists. The ambivalent lyric, alternating between entreaties ("Just treat me good baby and I'll give you the rest of me") and threats ("I'm not the one you should be making your enemy"), wouldn't seem out of place on a Drake track. And yet something of Solange's predilection for vintage party music remains in the song's jubilant, Family Stone-like beat.
Despair and self-assurance, brooding and boogying: it's this emotional and textural complexity that, in a year full of remarkable R&B singles (see: Usher's "Climax," Miguel's "Adorn," and my soon-to-be-revealed #2 song of 2012), sets "Losing You" apart.
"I don't know why I fight it, clearly we are through. / Tell me the truth boy, am I losing you for-eh-eh-ver?"
Friday, November 30, 2012
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