Best and worst for week ending 11th April 2010
Best. Number 82. MARINA & THE DIAMONDS – "HOLLYWOOD"
I have been umm-ing and arr-ing over whether to label "Hollywood" as the best track of the week for a while, most because it has been slowly slipping out of the charts and I wasn’t certain of its relevance in such an up-to-date contemporary setting. But what the hell, it really is the best track in the hot 100 this week. With "Hollywood", Marina has pulled off her most catchy track yet, which has a true pop quality that some of her earlier offerings could have been considered to be lacking. It is perhaps a bit of an obvious topic, but Marina handles it in a fairly fresh and uncompromising manner, with lyrics that are clearly adorizing, yet honestly confronting that problem child America. Her truly fantastic vocal abilities shine through here, though she perhaps does not stretch them to their full extent as she does in some of her other tracks.
Worst. Number 40. TAIO CRUZ FT KE$HA – "DIRTY PICTURE"
"Dirty Picture" is yet another example of everything that is wrong with modern day R&B. This track is so fucking boring: it is dull, staid, formulaic and tiresome in the extreme. It is incredibly weak lyrically speaking, and reverts rather clumsily and sloppily to the ever so staid R&B topic of raunchy all talk and no action sex speak. Also, ironically, considering this track’s position within the R&B spectrum, it seems to have absolutely no soul whatsoever, and is simply a documentation of statements containing quasi-sexist connotations on female promiscuity. It also follows the rather confusing trend in US R&B currently of using bad 90s dance timbres to thicken up their track. When done well, the use of house timbres in R&B can sound fantastic, but a lot of tracks (this one inclued) sound weirdly demoded. Plus it has the truly awful, looks like she might be sticky Ke$ha. Surely that’s enough to put most sane people off?
