"...it’s hard to find a flaw in 'Get Lucky'."
Allow me:
👎 No beginning—There's no intro, no drum fill, no memorable opening line. Just a kick drum and a weak-ass cymbal right into the main riff. Unacceptable for a floor-filler, which is why wedding DJs almost always cross-fade into it instead of leading with it.
👎 Pharrell's vocals—Pharrell knows how to record/produce his own voice to make it sound passable, but Daft Punk do not, and it really shows. They double-track him for almost the entire song except the first and second verses, which makes it even more obvious when he's off key ("so let's raise the bar," "'til the sun," "to get some," "for good fun").
👎 The chorus melody—We just gonna ignore the first three lines before the "I'm/we're up all night to get lucky" part...? Did they even try? Also, the meter is off ("to get some," "for good fun") and, as Owen Pallett has pointed out, this is most likely due to Daft Punk being French and speaking English as a second language. It happens in other Daft Punk songs with no problem ("I wish this dream comes true" from "Digital Love"), but it's a problem here because it's being sung by an American. You can't tell me someone with Pharrell's ear didn't notice that shit.
👎 No music video—From the people who brought you the iconic visuals of "Da Funk" and "Around the World" comes...a shot of the band playing in front of a tropical sunset that they forgot to go back and turn into a real video. They remembered to turn it overpriced t-shirts, though!
👎 The bridge—Who thought shoehorning a weaker version of the breakdown from "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" with what sounds like the exact same vocoder into "Get Lucky" was a good idea?
👎 The fade-out—Shout outs 2 my dude rj
I'll stop there.
The fan reaction to TLJ was embarrassing. I agree it's a great film overall with a pointless subplot and a few cringey parts here and there.
If you wanna see top-notch film criticism by an Internet nerd and still haven't seen those hour-long Red Letter Media reviews of the Star Wars prequels, go watch them ASAP. They're the funniest things I've seen on YouTube by a mile and so insightful they permanently changed the way I watch movies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI
One time a friend on Facebook said Rogue One is the best Star Wars movie, so I asked him to name one new character without looking it up.
I got unfriended real fast.
Gotta love that editor's note: "A previous version of this report included information about the meaning of 'American Idiot' that was attributed to a Clickhole.com article. Clickhole.com is a satire site. The information has been removed from the story."
Translation: "A previous version of this report contained a damning indictment of our near-complete lack of editorial standards and frothing hatred of Donald Trump. We have removed it from the story and will decline to comment on the ways in which our continued failure to maintain any semblance of journalistic rigor during his presidency lends credence to his usually baseless accusations of fake news and increases the likelihood of his re-election in 2020."
Jack White is in the same category as Jonny Greenwood, Josh Homme, and a few others. If you try to sound like them just by using the same pedals as they do, you're gonna have a bad time.
My comment wasn't clear, but that's what I meant: My take on the hardware store was wrong for all the reasons you just gave.
What I meant is I stand by my take on the pedal: I'd rather the bands who are offended by it speak out about it and then take their business elsewhere without petitioning TC to change it. They would get the chance to broadcast why they think it's offensive, their fans would get the message and boycott TC, the people who like the pedal as is could buy it as is, and we could all move on with our day.
I feel the same way about this as I did about that hardware store in Tennessee with the "No Gays Allowed" sign in the window:
Let them do it. I'd rather know which companies endorse things I think are gross or insulting so I can choose not to support them.
Speaking of Francis Starlite being an imitator (and I agree):
Chris, please write a thinkpiece on "Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap and how influential it was in popularizing vocoder/Auto-Tune harmonies to express vulnerability and inner turmoil and how everybody forgot because of Dear Sister/Jasoooooon Deruuuuuulllooo and because Speak for Yourself didn't make any AOTD lists so much that 10 years later nobody realized "715 Creeks" or however you write it by Bonny Bear was a rewrite an absolutely gorgeous rewrite but still a rewrite of "Hide and Seek" and how important it is in the overall vocoder/Auto-Tune-as-art timeline:
"Around the World" → "Believe"/"Blue (Da Ba Dee)" → "One More Time" → "Hide and Seek" → Rapper Ternt Sanga → 808s & Heartbreak → Blood Bank EP → MBDTF → "Beth/Rest"/good kid, m.A.A.d city/22, A Million/Francis Whoever the Fuck
I need to make an Azealia stan infograph already:
1. Choose your euphemism!
"Sure, she may..."
a) ...be controversial
b) ...be outspoken
c) ...be a troll
d) ...have a big mouth
2. Choose your cop-out!
"But..."
a) ...she's just telling it like it is!
b) ...at what point do we gonna forgive her and move on?
c) ...she deals with much worse every day as a woman in the industry!
d) ...people just feel threatened by there being more than one popular female rapper at a time!
3. Choose your distraction!
"And besides..."
a) ...have you heard "Anna Wintour"?
b) ...Broke with Expensive Taste is criminally underrated.
c) ...she's more talented than 99% of the artists Stereogum covers.
d) ...have you heard "Anna Wintour"?!?!?! 🔥🔥🔥
Thanks and right back at ya, rj. You made this commentariat what it is.
I knew we were meant to be when you posted yr half-decade AOTD list way back when and had Kaputt, Kill for Love, and The Seer on it.
And it's all love energy. I'm about love now, bro.
Damn, didn't realize Gravatar was giving everybody such a hard time.
I use Chrome and am not tech-savvy at all, so the only possible solutions I can think of are that you need to go through your profile to get to gravatar.com to make sure it recognizes your 'Gum profile, or that you need to clear your cache because some browsers make you do that before your avatars start showing up.
Wish I could help more. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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