Tim: RuPaul, best known latterly for his show RuPaul’s Drag Race, but still with one hell of a recording career which I was previously unaware of, and I bring this to you with one question: how long before it gets annoying?
Tom: About two seconds, although admittedly that’s because you primed me with “how long”, so I immediately figured out just how often I’d be hearing that hook.
Tim: See, that’s what I thought I’d think, once I realised “ah, yes, this is going to be around a lot.”
Tom: Without that? I’d dislike it on the first verse, but wouldn’t find it annoying until the first chorus.
Tim: Hmm, roughly what I figured. But here’s the thing: I never actually got there. Despite being that one single hook, very short, and repeated many many times, I never found it annoying. Its a fairly short song admittedly, but the sheer number of times that’s repeated ought to be enough to put me off it almost immediately. And yet, somehow: it doesn’t.
Tom: Why on Earth not? It sounds like a parody song — someone trying to pull the stereotypical stadium-country “yeah! America!” into another genre.
Actually, that might be what’s going on here, in which case fair play but I still don’t like it.
Tim: My enjoyment might partly be because it reminds me a lot of this 2012 track, or at least the vocal style does, and I still love that; I think it’s also because it’s just a good hook, though, with a good track hanging off it.