“I don’t think there’s been a better story than Mike Posner.”
Tom: Over the years we’ve been writing this, Tim, I don’t think there’s been a better story than Mike Posner. When we first talked about him — on “Cooler Than Me” nearly nine years ago — I summed him up with three words: “what a dick“. In 2011, I called him “Chinstrap McPoser“.
Then he disappeared for a while, and came back with “I Took A Pill In Ibiza“, which we missed — but which certainly put him in a different light.
Tim: And we never did discover whether Avicii thought he was cool, did we?
Tom: And now: well.
Tim: Oh, wow.
Tom: The story’s as important as the music, there. Don’t get me wrong, the music’s also good: but the story’s better.
Tim: You’ll remember Mike Posner – he was the one who last summer took a pill in Ibiza, and before that thought that we thought we were cooler than him. You’ll also remember that last Friday it emerged that putting a tropical beat on a piano based track doesn’t always improve matters. On the other hand, since it’s Friday, let’s hear how it can.
Tom: That intro sounds ever so slightly like the Macarena.
Tim: The original, found here, is an actually pretty good track, and happily, almost all of the goodness – melody, vocals (front and back) – makes its way through to here.
Tom: It also loses the ridiculous “bum, bum, bum” introductions from the original, because, look, if you’re doing vocals like that, maybe use a syllable that isn’t “bum”? I realise it doesn’t have the same meaning in US English, but it’s the equivalent of having a choir sing “ass, ass, ass”.
But anyway, well, all the good stuff makes it through.
Tim: Not only that, but unlike yesterday the stuff that’s been added to the remix serves to make the song even better, as I see it anyway. A good beat for you to chomp on a pineapple to, some gentle marimba stylings and all in all, a nice mental image on lying on a beach, shaded by some gently wavering palm fronds, in the arms of the aforementioned stranger.
Tom: Last time, as you’ll recall, she produced the most irritating record since the Fast Food Rockers. This time, she…
Tom: …sounds a bit like M.I.A.?
Tim: Her hairstyle makes it look like she’s had a close encounter with a lightsaber.
Tom: I mean, I’m stunned. It sounds good. It’s not irritating. It’s like she’s grown up and produced a decent second album, all in the space of a couple of months.
Tim: It is strange, because you’re right, this is quite listenable. Still not great, and if she wants to sound like M.I.A. she does still need the requisite weird sound effects replacing random words.
Tom: Mike Posner, as ever, appears to be a smug dick – but at least his contribution is brief. Does he have a sweater tucked into his trousers? Is he, in fact, Gyles Brandreth in disguise?
Tim: I don’t know, but I’d quite like to see him in Dictionary Corner. Don’t know why, though – just a weird image in my mind, really.
Tom: So here’s my question: is this actually good, or was the bar set so low that anything even half-decent, or quarter-decent, would impress me?
Tim: Both, I reckon. Although the da-da-da-da-dum-dum thing is a really crap ending.
Tom: Last time we heard Mike Posner, we dismissed him with the simple phrase ‘what a dick’. Has he changed since?
Tom: Nope.
Tim: OH GOD THE AUTOTUNE IT’S HORRENDOUS.
Tom: This song’s been around for a while, but it’s now getting a proper UK single release. What an incredible video, by the way – the first time I’ve seen someone use video codec artifacts as a deliberate effect.
Tim: Perhaps an incredible video, but somehow that facial hair manages to appear actually offensive to me.
Tom: Musically, it’s really quite good, even if Chinstrap McPoser does seem to automatically generate a frisson of hatred somewhere deep in my soul. He’s probably quite a nice person, but the character he plays in these videos appears to be a spanner of enormous proportions.
It’s very listenable, although it does seem rather to have gone in one ear and out the other, leaving just a vague sense of ‘that was pleasant enough’ behind it.
Tim: Really, though? For me, the voice is really, really annoying. If I had my way, this song would be one of the type of songs that I normally hate – ones like Eminem & Rihanna or Diddy Dirty Money that have a fantastic chorus totally wasted on a largely crap song. The lengthy ‘go’ and ‘don’t’ at the beginning of the choruses indicate a lot of potential, but it’s just wasted.
Tim: This one’s been suggested by Vanessa, who writes:
“I like the bass line and the vocals, but after a few repetitions it becomes rather trite.”
Well, that basically sums up most of the things we review here, so let’s have a look.
Tom: I think I can sum the video up as ‘what a dick’.
Tim: Now now, don’t be nasty – just because he likes to wear a lot of glasses and write songs reassuring women that he is in fact cooler than them, he’s not… actually, no, you’re right. He is.
Tom: Vanessa’s right, though. The vocals are competent, with a slight breathy quality that seems to work despite the fact that half the time they don’t actually seem to be hitting any note. The bassline’s catchy, too – and the brief mid-song pause with ‘shh’ works really well.
Tim: It’s alright – for me it just seemed to go in one ear and out of the other. Nothing really wrong with it, but nothing to really make me want to hear it again.
Tom: It’s a pity that, as I mentioned, he appears to be a dick. On the plus side, the 3D bit of the video really is filmed in 3D – the concept’s excellent.
