Hats Off

Pit Stop

Robyn, With a Dash of Salt N Pepa

They say opposites attract, and it's certainly been demonstrated that the convergence of two individually meritorious but outwardly disparate entities tends to result in something fantastic, like H.B. Reese getting some peanut butter on his chocolate, or Cate Blanchett playing Bob Dylan, or Catherine Zeta-Jones doing Sondheim.

Send in those clowns already!

Or, how about Robyn the killingest pop star on the planet, mixed with the groundbreaking girl rap pioneers Salt N Pepa? Swedish music blog Stockholm Beat Connection today posted this mashup of Robyn's recent single "Fembot" from her new album Body Talk, Pt. 1 (out June 15 - my birthday! - and I've heard it and it is killer) and the 1987 Salt N Pepa classic "Push It." New Directions, eat your heart out! Check out the mashup here or at the link below.

\"Fembot Push It\" (A Rokk Pie N Mash Up)

Wallflower

All Yellow

All That Glitters

Daisy Dukes, Bikinis on Top

On her Facebook page on Friday, pop-rock ingenue Katy Perry unveiled a new, ultra-timely track (and accompanying cover art) entitled "California Gurls," an upbeat celebration of West Coast femininity featuring a delightful rap from certified Los Angelino Snoop Dogg.

The song is a refreshing departure from the plethora of New York love-in seen in the music world (as in many other areas) since September 11 (while for a while it seemed natural to sing "New York State of Mind" and "New York New York" as tribute to the iconic city's fallen, but Madonna's "I Love New York" in 2005 and particularly the Jay-Z/Alicia Keys hit "Empire State of Mind" seemed to be pushing the term to some of us over here). What happened to the days of "California Dreamin'" when we wished they all could be California girls and the city of L.A. knew how to party? Time will tell if Perry (a Santa Barbara-born California girl) and Snoop (an outspoken fan of L.A. and a self-confessed former member of the Crips, a gang in South Los Angeles) are able to bring the wave of affection Westward, as it seems to be considered universally appropriate to praise New York whereas doing the same for California and L.A./Hollywood in general tends to evoke more negative reactions from outsiders (they're just jealous).

The track, musically at least, is perfectly engineered to be a summer smash, with many of the desirable traits for chart domination during the hottest months of the year: upbeat ("I Gotta Feeling" '09, "London Bridge" '06, "Crazy in Love" '03, "Hot in Herre" '02), catchy (most alums), summer- or party-themed ("I Gotta Feelin'," "Umbrella" '07, "Hot in Herre,"), sung by an established chart-topper ("Boom Boom Pow/I Gotta Feelin;" '09, "Umbrella," "We Belong Together" '05), for example. It also cleverly manages a sound with widespread appeal, not utilizing the deep beats or electro rhythms (or, thankfully, Auto-Tune!) on which much of 2010 pop has thus far relied while still managing to sound entirely current, which means it won't turn off the segment of audience currently undecided on the electro-pop bearings of current pop but neither will it offend those who fully support it, and even some of the alt-rock crowd should find it not sufficiently odious to their senses or philosophies.

If this is the case, Perry could be looking at her second summer smash in three years (the first, of course, being the sophomore single that launched her to fame, "I Kissed a Girl," which stood at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for seven weeks, between July 5 and August 22, 2008). Give it a listen and let me know what you think in the comments!

\"California Gurls\" Katy Perry ft. Snoop Dogg

Back To You

Someone's Been Doing Situps

"Cooler Than Me" Mike Posner ft. Big Sean

I was fortunate enough to have access to a car this past week that a friend let me use while she spent a week out of town, and as I flipped through the preset radio stations I realized that due to a combination of my own decision to rid my life and ears of any Clear Channel owned pop radio and the subsequent premature death of my own car, it had easily been nine or ten months at least since I last listened to Top 40 radio at all. Of course, I now follow the current pop music scene closely and regularly enough to have a general idea of what is currently running in the typically limited and repetitive repertory, and for the most part I found no surprises over the week in what was played.

There was, however, one notable exception. I first heard the track while driving with the significant other, whose musical sensitivities have gotten similarly alert as his input has proven increasingly useful to this blog, and for whatever reason both of us paid attention. I commented near the song's conclusion that I had no idea what song or artist it was and that I particularly enjoyed it, although I suspected I would have been even more won over were it to be a different singer performing, not initially much enthralled with the unique, raspy, racially ambiguous young male voice performing the lead vocal. Then today I heard the tune a second time, this time on the wonderful relatively new non-Clear Channel station, which is the first and only station to survive as long and solidly as it has despite being a direct competitor with the mighty Clear Channel flagship KIIS-FM (in the past, competition on the Los Angeles airwaves has been sporadic and reliably short-lived due to Clear Channel's "nip it in the bud" approach to potentially competitive new media), and I was fully sold on the mid-tempo mid-tempo lightly humorous ode to/denouncement of a narcissistic, insufferable but yet addictively appealing femme fatale.

 
Mike Posner (who I must admit not having heard of before this, but after a bit of research reveals that the 22 year old is just getting started) has put together a thoroughly enjoyable track with the equally skillful talents of rapper Big Sean (who proves that the art of the featured rap is not a dead one), and its apparent success at winning precious airtime on a major Top 40 station whose usual M.O. involves a greatly limited repertoire at any given time - maximizing airplay by minimizing variety is cheaper and more efficient in promoting favored artists - suggests to me that "Cooler Than Me" could be a the heir to Kevin Rudolph's unlikely success of the genre-spanning hit "Let It Rock" last year. The writing is clever enough to please the indie music songwriting snobs, too, meaning it could even get a little crossover attention.

Perhaps most importantly on the record's side is a pair of simple qualities "Cooler Than Me" has: first, it's catchy as heck, with lyrics and attitude interesting enough to capture a first-time listener's attention and a simple and clever chorus repeated just the right number of times to facilitate memorization without activating fatigue (yes, we get it Rihanna, you're "hard"...e.g.). And second, it's four minutes of plain old fun, neither too mean-spirited nor too stickily romantic, maintaining a tone and tempo with more universal appeal than most of what is currently in rotation on the radio. It's the kind of record that teems with so much personality that it makes my excitement about a split second of facial expression in Britney Spears' latest video seem exhausting.

And, thanks to some ingenious HTML jimmy-rigging with the technical assistance of Vertigo Shtick's chief graphic designer and designer of the Vertigo Shtick website that will be launching not long from now, I think I have come up with a serviceable alternative method of offering the music I discuss here free to readers, so you can click the "play" button below and enjoy one of the only new records that have really won me over so fully so quickly.

"Cooler Than Me"

Mike Posner featuring Big Sean

One Foot Out the Door

J Records, 2009

\"Cooler Than Me\" Mike Posner ft. Big Sean

(In case the controls don't seem to appear for you, simply click above the bottom row of text and the song should begin.