5. Coldplay-Paradise (January 2012)
Professional bed-wetters Coldplay released Paradise back in January, and it was the first No.1 of 2012. Coincidentally, it has, probably, one of the best openings of any single of the past ten years. The way the strings lead into the hip-hop drumbeat, the badum-dum-dum glam rock bass picking and the otherworldly, transcendent synths is truly a work of beauty, and even hard bitten Coldplay critics such as myself would really just be lying if they said otherwise. But Christ alive, does it devolve into drivel quicker than shit through a goose. While musically this song is undeniably excellent (I would certainly recommend downloading an instrumental version), the lyrics to this song are so weak, so basic, so inescapably blasé that it turns what could have been the song that changed my entire perception of this band into just another godforsaken Coldplay song. With vague, half-assed allusions to a girl sleeping and going to well, a paradise, this song is utterly barren. Lyrics like 'it flew away from her reach/ And the bullets catch in her teeth' tell us absolutely NOTHING, in a song that could have been some seriously poetic U2esque number in proper power ballad territory, as it stands it is just a pretty and catchy but void pop song. Furthermore the ill-placed plinkity-plonk piano ultimately overstays its welcome and sounds weak and tinny when compared with the awesome sonic rumblings of the synths and drums.
I always thought Chris Martin had an awful voice. He sounds like he constantly has a cold, and is just sat at the piano playing by candlelight with a red nose and streaming eyes in a night gown singing about blackcurrant lemsips. And he is equally tuneless in this song, with his achingly nasal, insultingly flat vocals laying over everything like a big snotty hankie. Of course the bogus lyrics do not help this, but god alive, that guy needs to kick the flu. Start getting your greens man. It's been like what, 10 years now? It's usually like, a two week sort of deal. You might have some sort of disease.
Amazingly I made it this far without mentioning the cartoonish and incredibly daft chorus that literally everyone surely knows by now (To recap; 'Para-Para, Paradise, Para-Para, Paradise, Para Para, Paradise, Wo-Wo-Wo-Wooooo-Wo-Wo'). This is almost identical to the equally daft but endlessly more stylish 'Ella-Ella-Ella-Ehy' in Ri-Ri's Umbrella. The two could have just combined Paradise and Umbrella, thus elevating the world of at least one terrible hit single with a shitty chorus; they could have called it Parasol. Unbelievably, they actually DID this. It's called Princess Of China and it is a Top 10 hit. That song is literally just Chopsticks, put through a synth, because Coldplay are big fans of racial stereotypes. Oh and it totally blows to boot.
6. Rihanna- Where Have You Been (May 2012)
'Where Have You Been'? What? Rihanna has been in the charts for every week since like 2006. More like 'Why Won't You Fuck Off'. The bridge in this song of 'I've been everywhere man' rips off the country classic I've Been Everywhere, which Johnny Cash did a freaking amazing cover of on 1998's Unchained. This is a cardinal sin that would only be redeemed if Ri-Ri relcutantly agreed to sample the verses of that song as well (which in case you don't know, goes like this 'I've been to: Reno, Chicago, Fargo, Minnesota, Buffalo, Toronto, Winslow, Sarasota, Wichita, Tulsa, Ottawa, Oklahoma, Tampa, Panama, Mattawa, La Paloma, Bangor, Baltimore, Salvador, Amarillo, Tocapillo, Baranquilla, and Perdilla, I'm a killer.' Yeah try that one you Barbadian wench). It is fairly standard Rihanna stuff; it isn't very good, but it IS very, very successful. God alive. Personally it seems to me that, while Umbrella had real swagger, her stuff since has been cookie-cutter club-pop fluff and this song is not a radical change. A large portion of the song is devoted to dumb synth 'wub wub wubs', although, in a similar style to Bieber's Boyfriend some acoustic guitar is a welcome addition to the ensemble. But that is a fleeting touch of class in a tasteless, bland, repetitive exercise in radio-friendly mediocrity.
The music video is equally portentous and over-developed. It begins with Ri-Ri rising out of some jungle river like a particularly hip deleted scene from the movie Predator. Unfortunately there is no bellowing of 'GET TO ZE CHAPPAAAA' from our RnB superstar, which is a shame. Nor does the film end with an epic battle sequence between a muscled Austrian smeared in peat and an invisible Rastafarian from outer space. Rihanna looks lovely here, no doubt, but the video is just full of her rubbing her legs like she’s feeling for bristles.There is a lot of dancing, but Christ who cares? She wears a bunch of different outfits in quick succession like a six year old clomping about in her mum's stiletto heels and poorly applied No.7 lipstick. This is similar to Rudeboy, Te Amo, We Found Love; and it’s is similarly derivative and boring. There is also some weird Hindi arm flailing and some distinctly religious motifs, but far from being high-concept it just seems really dumb and off-centre. Rihanna often looks daft in her videos but no more than here; her hair is all curled and sticking up, looking like she stuck her finger in the light socket and frazzled herself to shit.
Lyrically this song is, well, what do you think?
Rihanna sure loves her repetition doesn't she, and while I have no problem with
repetition to get some rhythm going, she really goes wild over saying shit over
and over again (also see Umbrella, Rudeboy, SnM). The chorus contains
the diamond line, 'Where have you been/ Cos' I never see you out/ Are you
hiding from me yeah/ Somewhere in the crowd', though when she signs the
song it comes across more as 'Somewhere in the ground', and for some
time I believed that the subject of Rihanna's affections in this song was a vowl
or some similar subterranean creature (Ri-Ri loves her small woodland mammals,
yes she does). Squirrel or otherwise that line is creepy as hell; since its
basically an allusion to serious restraining-order territory. In
addition the line 'Where have you been, all my life' is repeated an
ungodly nine times before the song can end. A song that simultaneously
rips off country classics, alludes to vowl molestation and takes repetition to
dizzying new heights; this is plain awful. None of the rather psychotic fun of SnM
is here, nor any of the attitude of Umbrella. This is
dull,
mindless tedium with little or no redemption. I would advise you to not
listen to this song, but I know you will have heard it by now anyway so
too bad. God the radio sucks.
7. Maroon 5-Payphone
Praise the lord, I actually like this song. I have been a big Maroon 5 fan since well before Hands All Over (although that remains their best record to date), and was pleased to see them back so soon with 2012's Overexposed. Regardless of what you think of Moves Like Jagger (though I thought it was pretty cool) this is a solid track. As per usual its about love and feelings and all that stuff that guys hate but it deals with the subject matter in a pretty fresh and interesting way; Levine and co write the song from the perspective of a guy trying to actually restart a relationship after it’s failed. The song is well written, as ever, and the chorus is the catchiest thing this side of polio ('I'm at a payphone/ Trying to call home/ All of my change/ I spent on you'). Sadly absent from the track is James Valentine's intricate guitar hooks, which made up so much of the appeal of Moves Like Jagger, or the funky bass lines that peppered Hands All Over (see the nigh-on indecently raunchy Give A Little More). Still this is one of the best pop tunes of the year, and it’s good to see the lads at No.1.
The version with Wiz Khalifa (You are reading this right; probably the first rapper ever to decide his rapper first name ought to be a colloquialism for passing urine. That's pretty gangsta. See also GrandMaster Slash, Pissee Rascal, No.2-pac. Okay that's enough.) is the inferior of the two versions, with the caustic, rather ugly rap segment stuck in there, at odds with the sweet and sappy main chorus. Best to get the version without our chum Wiz. While on the subject of vocals, front man Adam Levine pushes to the limits of his range here, with, mixed results. For some I am sure it will sound fresh and heartfelt, but at times Levine's vocals sound rather like an amorous mosquito buzz. Still, Levine is still one of the most unique vocalists around, and many will find his performance on the song gratifying. The music video is like a mini Steven Segal movie; and not in a good way. It has virtuually no bearing on the song itself; if the video had been of Levine peeling mangetout and flicking the seperate peas off the outer shell of an armadillo it would be more thematically linked to the song than the actual video. Nonetheless, a welcome return to one of alt-pop's most inspired troupes.
8. Florence & The Machine- Spectrum (Say My Name) (Calvin Harris Remix)
Oh, here we go. Flo and Co. topped the charts with this single the other week, though originally it failed to even chart in the Top 100. That's what happens when you enlist jock ballbag Calvin Harris to remix one of your songs. I know you arty types think Florence Welch is some sort of indie deity but for the love of god she is just awful. And I hate this song, the feeling I get when listening to this is a sort of enraged nausea. Note I never said I hated Rihanna's song, nor Coldplay's; this song is particularly odious for me. Everything about this song and its accompanying video is so overwrought and pretentious, so bland and caustic it just makes me wish I could jam a chapatti pan down Florence's gapping pie hole and just stop her freaking wailing like that. Go get a Kate Bush single and lower the R.P.M enough and this is exactly what you would get. Flo thinks if she sticks in some synths and bloody harp plucking (I think I'm going to have an emotional breakdown if I here another sodding harp string being plucked), and hey presto, it's avant-garde pop music. No. Wrong. You can imagine just how much you have to over use a bloody harp before it sounds cliché. But she managed it.
The video for this song is annoying as hell. You know what you are in for when the opening sequence comprises Florence sat on a stool with a 40 watt light bulb in her snatch. The rest is standard Flo and The Mo; she wears a lot of stupid clothes, has her hair all done up to resemble some freaky venetian blinds and waves her hands about like she has violent tourettes ticks. There is this ballet theme she has going on, and you can't seem to go a single second in this video without having a mid-distance shot of Florence spazzing about with some weird ballerina bitch plié-ing and pirouetting across screen like a wayward beyblade choreographed to the music of Baryshnikov. It is this sort of weirdness that Kate Bush fashioned into genuine art in the fantastic video for Running Up That Hill, but here it just comes off as sort of a bad joke; Florence Welch looks like a cart horse who pinched one of its rider’s powder wigs, and tried to imitate the lady of the manor. Flo looks like she should be working in a coal mine in 1930s Beverley. And that huge flapping gob of hers, Christ, it looks like a clown fish at feeding time.
This video could be for any of Welch's singles; they all follow the same format. As in other songs Welch gets picked up a lot; it's sort of creepy, like she can't go a video without being hoisted into the air by oily men in = tights (although note it takes like six blokes to lift her, poor thing), and she is always looking slightly upwards past camera; what the hell is on the studio ceiling? It's probably a mirror, or a picture of Richard Nixon in a shitty red wig, they are pretty much the same thing here after all. She waves her hands about, knocks her head back about seventeen thousand times (Director David Lachappele should enjoy a pretty hefty personal injury case for whiplash when all the fun is over), but it is so, so overdone. Please for the love of god make some music that sounds even slightly different from everything on your first album. I liked Drumming Song because it was fresh it was well produced and most importantly it had no pissing harps to note. But that was a long time ago. Flo better poop out something a bit different sometime soon or else perhaps even her devoted fans will realise she is releasing the same stuff over and over. Though I've met a few. And that isn't looking likely.
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