Tom: A name I haven’t seen before, but she’s got Nicki Minaj as a featured artist — and a decent songwriting career. Okay, I’m intrigued.
Tim: Ah, I see we’ve gone back to 2009.
Tom: Harsh, but not entirely unfair. That is an astonishingly good introduction, leading into an amazing hook. And note that they went straight into the hook — no first verse here. It’s a weird combination of upbeat lyrics and melody with downbeat tempo and percussion, and, for me at least, it really, really works.
Tim: Ehhhhh…I quite want to like this, because you’re right, that is a good hook. But the rest of it? It’s just terrible, mate. The verses are tedious, Nicki Minaj’s bit is, well, exactly what I expected, but most of all, that autotune – it sounds like something movie kidnappers use to disguise their voice, it’s been laid on so thick.
Tom: The verses: they’ll do well enough, and as for Nicki Minaj’s bit: well, that was never going to be a good match for either of our tastes, was it? But then we’re definitely not the target audience.
Tim: Understatement of the decade, there.
Tom: I can’t explain why I like this. It’s not even because of the near-nudity in the music video, I had it in a background tab. It’s just the hook: it’s that good.
Tim: As was yesterday’s chorus. But similarly, it’s nowhere near good enough to rescue the rest of it.