Tag: Jason Derulo

Jason Derulo & David Guetta feat. Nicki Minaj & Willy William – Goodbye

“I genuinely want to punch you for sending me this, Tim.”

Tim: Reader: I’M SORRY. Tom: consider this revenge for that Ting Tings garbage last week.

Tom: I actually facepalmed when I saw the title of this.

Tom: That actually had promise, just a little bit of promise, right up until Derulo muttered his name to introduce the first verse.

Tim: Now, I’ve checked, and the original wasn’t written by Andrea, in any way, and so technically he can’t stop this. But surely – surely – there’s some sort of legal action that could have been brought against someone, by anybody, just to prevent this aural nightmare from ever seeing the light of day.

Tom: YOU STILL SENT IT TO ME, TIM. You could have stopped this, at least here.

Tim: Hmm, yeah, but then you might have heard it accidentally anyway and I wouldn’t have got to experience your reaction. Because, oh, jeez, what is going on. “One word in Espanõl and I come and you know.” “Girls in Spain do the mostest.” “Down for my fatty fatty.” “I pull up on him, let him put the pipe in.” “Then I’ve gotta dash like a hyphen.” That’s just the English – I’ve no idea what the Spanish/French lyrics are, and I have absolutely no intention of looking them up.

Tom: I just looked up the “culo” at the end, and it means “ass”. So, there’s that. Admittedly that’s not as bad as the middle eight. I genuinely want to punch you for sending me this, Tim.

Tim: TING. TINGS. This really is a disgrace, and everybody involved should (and I don’t think there’s any hyperbole here) be strung up and shot. Although, the worst thing about this – worse than all of those lyrics put together, even – is that actually, I quite like what they’ve done with the chorus. Heresy it may be, but there is room for a good reinterpretation of the song.

Tom: You’re not wrong; there’s possibilities in here, and it’s entirely possible to make a pop track out of something classical. It has been done, lots of times, and I’d want to see it if it happened.

Tim: This…this just really, really isn’t it.

Jason Derulo – The Other Side

“Sounds like an Eric Saade track.”

Tom: The video’s been out for ages, but the UK single launch isn’t until next week. And as ever, Tim, the question with a Jason Derulo track is: Will he say his own name at the start?

Tom: Ooh. You see, with that opening line, I was all ready to dismiss this as generic auto-tuned nonsense. And yes, it is generic auto-tuned nonsense, but it’s good generic auto-tuned nonsense.

Well, okay, fine, it’s good nonsense. The auto-tune’s still crap.

Tim: Obviously. But there’s something interesting here – not about this track in particular, but more about pop homogenisation. Right when it started, I thought, ‘Huh. Sounds like an Eric Saade track.’ And right throughout, it could easily have been lifted right from Saade vol. 2. Is that a shame? That who was once europop’s most promising young hopes is now indistinguishable from Jason Derulo?

Tom: But you’ve got to agree that the pre-chorus is beautiful, right? It’ll do nicely on the dancefloor this — particularly when those ‘whoa-oh-oh-oh-ohs’ come in just before the middle eight.

Tim: Yes, and actually I think it’s great. It’s good modern pop music, a decent example of the genre. I like it a lot, much as I’d like it if it came from a certain Swede.

Jason Derulo – Undefeated

Amazingly, he doesn’t sing his own name in this.

Tim: JASON, DERUU–

Tom: Amazingly, he doesn’t sing his own name in this.

Tim: Oh.

Tom: But don’t worry, he’s still up to his own tricks: there’s a metric arseload of autotune.

Tim: “O-oh oh o-oh”

Tom: I don’t know what’s more worrying: the fact that there’s an “official Coca-Cola song”, or that you remember it.

Tim: Are you kidding me? How do you not remember it? Aside from being a great track (which peaked in the UK at number 2, with two months in the top 20), it was pretty much everywhere during the World Cup – almost literally, making the top 10 in fifteen countries and charting in many many more. You really don’t remember it?

Tom: Yep. Missed it entirely. That might have been an accident – I’m not exactly the world’s biggest football fan – or it might have been me instinctively staying away from anything corporate-sponsored.

Anyway, back to Derulo: the phrase “poor man’s Usher” popped into my head while listening to this. Is that too harsh?

Tim: Erm, yes, actually – there’s more actual singing than Usher tends to provide, I think, so on that particular criticism I would have to disagree with you.

Tom: There’s nothing really wrong with the song, but equally there’s nothing particularly right either. It sounds like the generic bit of music that a low-budget TV producer would pull out of a stock music library, so they don’t have to pay royalties for whatever’s in the background during the scene set in a club. Okay, perhaps that is too harsh.

Tim: Yes, I think so. Although some library music’s alright, so it’s not necessarily a horrific insult, but it does come across that way.

Tom: I’m always a bit bothered when I’m being that harsh about some music, because Derulo can still sing better than I ever could, and his songwriter can still put together a better track than I ever could.

Tim: Ah, but that’s the joy of being a reviewer – you don’t have to have skill, you just have to recognise it in others. Or the lack of it, apparently.

Tom: It’s just… well, I listened to the whole thing and I can’t remember any of it.

Tim: I can remember that this official, professional video decided to stretch rather than crop a series of photos, making it look stupid. And I can remember that I’m thirsty, and I’d quite like a particular fizzy drink.

Jason Derulo – Don’t Wanna Go Home

This is so much less than the sum of its parts.

Tom: This is so much less than the sum of its parts.

Tim: Oh, God, I’ve heard this on the radio, and it’s awful – why are you trying to make me listen to this?

Tim: I hadn’t seen the video. It doesn’t really improve anything. The only good thing about it is Jason’s facial hair, which NEVER FAILS to impress me.

Tom: It’s a shame, really. Sampling ‘Day-O’ as your chorus – and then twisting it to be the opposite of the original – is actually a pretty good gimmick. And “Show Me Love” is a pretty good track – I can imagine any number of decent songs coming from reimaginings of that.

Tim: Yeah. And I can imagine any number of bad ones as well. This is somewhere near the top of that list.

Tom: In those first few seconds – the a cappella intro and the start of the backing – I thought “this is going to be brilliant”. And then he sang his own name, and it went so, so wrong.

Tim: As ever.

Tom: Here, have some Muppets to make you feel better.

Tim: Helps a bit. Cheers.

Europlop’s Sunday Mashups: Vol. 2

Thirty years of pop culture in three and a half minutes.

Tom: It’s been a few weeks, so let’s have some more mashups. First of all, here’s Miracles by Norwegian Recycling.

Tom: It’s one of those genius mashups that pulls in a dozen different sources to make a coherent whole. It doesn’t really seem to go anywhere, or do any building, but it’s just rather pleasant to listen to. It’s a run through thirty years of pop culture in three and a half minutes, and the video brings it all together nicely.

Tim: Ooh, I like that – I’ve always quite liked mashups that pile in a whole load of songs together just to see what happens, such as the United State of Pop ones, and Party Ben‘s Boulevard of Broken Songs, and this one pulls it off well.*

* There’s also Axis of Awesome’s Four Chord Song, which whilst not actually being a mashup is still fun to listen to.

Tom: There’s been some very clever autotuning on Cee-Lo Green, as well; while it still sounds like him, I’m fairly sure those aren’t exactly the notes he was originally singing…

Tim: Well, with so many songs you’re bound to need a little pitch correction on there just to keep them in the same key, surely.

Tom: No, it’s more than that: I think they’ve actually got him singing a different melody, not just a different key. I might be wrong, though.

Tim: The only thing I dislike about it is the Jason Derulo track – it’s one of his better ones, but it sounds like he forgot to write words to half the chorus, which gets me every time I hear it.

Tom: Second up, here’s a simple A+B mashup by Sam Flanagan. It’s called “Brimful of Bonkers”, and that tells you all you need to know really. Oh, but watch out for an unexpected cameo just after three minutes in.

Tom: It’s easy – there is, of course, not even any pitch correction to do – but it’s still a hell of a party tune. It could use being a bit shorter, but it’s good enough that I don’t really mind.

Tim: I thought that as well – it could easily lose the first verse/chorus, since it’s identical to the second. Anyway, you’re right, it is good, especially the cameo.

Tom: I know both the original songs off by heart, which normally would just make a mashup like this confusing – but this is just pulled together so nicely that it doesn’t matter.

Tim: Personally, I prefer it when I know the original songs – you get to think ‘Ooh, this is fun – never thought of these going together.’ And speaking of knowing the original songs, here’s a mixture of two Europlop favourites merged together by Benji of Sweden (apparently he’s the only one in the country) to form one big Bromance Killer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9scZ67EAGc

Tim: Aside from the Radio Sweden jingle (which is surprisingly nonintrusive anyway), I think it’s ruddy marvellous, with him still managing to keep the big Lovekiller climax and all the energy that was originally there. Well done Mr Sweden.

Tom: Wow, that’s a belter. Bromance itself is steadily picking up more and more airplay and traction in the UK – the vocal remix with Love U Seek gets released on 25th October, which means it might well be a Big Autumn Hit.