Under the Scalpel 10.29.09: Chipmunk, Jet, Nickelback, Crooked I & Snoop
Posted by Mark Ingoldsby on 10.29.2009
Chipmunk laments getting burnt three times by the same chick, Crooked I and Snoop kiss and make up, Jet calls Sharona a genius, and Nickelback offers more maudlin regret, hokey promises, and insincere clichés. Plus, a first anniversary celebration for Under The Scalpel! Brought to you by the sometimes humorous, always heartless guitarist from the hard rock band A Simple Complex.
"Under the Scalpel: Dissecting Pop Culture One Song at a Time" is a weekly column written by Mark Ingoldsby, songwriter and guitarist for the hard rock band A Simple Complex. Follow the band on Twitter during our hibernation for new recordings and entertaining quotes from our many wild interviews.
Chipmunk Oopsy Daisy
Oops(y) I Did It Again
Did you ever date a girl who ripped your heart out with her bare hands, placed it in a doggie bag, and handed it back to you? Then when she begged you to take her back, she proceeded to puree it in a Cuisinart? Later, after pleading for a third chance, she promptly smashed it like a watermelon at a Gallagher show, Sledge-O-Matic style?
If so, the British rapper Chipmunk sympathizes with your sorry, thrice-burnt ass.
"Oopsy Daisy" is his tale of being repeatedly let down in love. It's an upbeat, yet sentimental, hip-pop number from the UK mainly comprised of a fun, electronic disco beat and catchy piano line that repeats itself throughout most of the song.
Heartache pours forth in Chip's entertaining metaphors that reference baseball ("three strikes you're out"), an old Commodores song ("I say three times you're crazy"), and a classic drum machine ("my heartbeat feels like a [sic] 808"). His delivery has a smooth flow that allows words to roll effortlessly off his tongue, and his Brit-meets-Ragga dialect is very charming.
However, it's Dayo Olatunji who really steals the show. She is a 17-year-old East Londoner who was originally recruited to provide demo vocals for this song. Her performance was so amazing that her voice was wisely selected for the final version as well. Olatunji does an incredible job belting out the song's addictive hook, "I'm a walking disaster. Don't want to hurt you, that's why you've got to go."
Unfortunately, "Daisy" has its share of flaws. As you've probably already deduced, the track is a flagrant rip-off of one of Britney Spears' signature songs. Chip's lyric "Oopsy Daisy I hurt you again. I crushed your heart in the palm of my hands" is way too close to Brit's "Oops, I did it again. I played with your heart, got lost in the game." Coincidence? I think not.
The phrase "Oopsy Daisy" doesn't even need to be in the song. It kills any serious mood the other lyrics might have established. It's awfully hard to feel the sincerity when someone is babbling on about, "Oh, did I just like totally gouge your eyes out with an oyster fork again? Oopsy daisies!" Other inane lines like, "I'm-a-find cupid and put him in a headlock," and "Why let the pretty bird shit on me?" also cheapen the emotional potential of the song.
Chip's charming little dialect paired with his monotone delivery makes some of his words difficult to interpret. He tends to mumble like Puff Daddy. It also doesn't help that the 18-year-old British rapper could easily pass for Tay Zonday's younger brother. While watching the song's video, I kept wanting him to say, "Chocolate Rain!"
"Daisy" has a strong pop song and club jam appeal that I deem comparable to Jay Sean's mega-hit "Down" and Pitbull's infectious "Calle Ocho." Despite its faults, I still find myself tempted to hear it on occasion.
The song shot to #1 on the UK singles chart earlier this month, but Billboard.com doesn't report it landing on any charts stateside. This leaves us to wonder Can "Daisy" make the jump across the pond? Will America embrace this British pop rapper?
If You Like: Black Eyed Peas, Drake, Jay Sean, N-Dubz, Pitbull, Tinchy Stryder
Rating: **** (4 out of 5)
Hat Trick: Three quickies for the man on the go!
Crooked I & Snoop Dogg Guess Who's Back
I discovered this song on Sirius/XM's Shade 45 channel. The chorus centers around 2 lines from Snoop's 1993 jam "Ain't No Fun." The Dogg himself appears on Crooked I's track to deliver his classic lines personally. Originally Snoop "hated on" Crooked, but later apologized. "I had envy in my heart," he confessed to worldstarhiphop.com, "I know I was wrong." Kissing and making up resulted in "Guess Who's Back," a song made to be pumped out of a drop top cruising the boulevard, driven by somebody with a hellafied gangsta lean. I don't usually bother with songs that mainly consist of a rapper bragging about himself the entire time, especially when it's loaded more profanity than a Richard Pryor album. But this song has an uber-coolness to it that's keeps me coming back. "Guess" has a phat groove, the kind you'd find on Dr Dre's The Chronic, mixed with an old school LL Cool J approach to the lyrics. Crooked's swagger is hot and Snoop's flow has the finesse one would expect from a living legend. Call it a guilty pleasure, but I dig this song.
Rating: **** (4 out of 5)
If You Like: Dr Dre, Tech Nine
Jet She's A Genius
From the boys who brought you "Are You Gonna Be My Girl," a song whose intro is easily confused with Phil Collins' uber-wussy remake of "You Can't Hurry Love," comes another track easily confused with old music. The song is titled "She's A Genius" and that genius' name must be Sharona because the main riff in the verses is a blatant knock-off of The Knack's biggest hit. And its chorus? I guess they DO "write 'em like that anymore," because it sounds a lot like Greg Kihn's 1981 hit "The Breakup Song (They Don't Write 'Em)." The lyrics of "Genius" are retarded. With only ten lines of absolute crap, the song begs for a rewrite. Here's a taste:
"She know's so many pretty boys and they are all the same,
They said, 'Oh, hey there girl. Tell me what do you do?'
She said, 'Um, nothing. But I'm damn sure it's more than you,'
That girl's a genius, whoa oh oh oh oh oh oh,
I think she's serious, whoa oh oh oh oh oh oh."
I had hoped "Genius" would be a fun, raucous song loaded with witty sarcasm and clever jabs. Instead I was treated to a total waste of time. Jet's drummer, Chris Cester, told Billboard magazine that "Genius" is "about a girl who does things that just take it to the next level in your mind," proving once again that drummers should not be allowed to do interviews. Baleeted!
Rating: * (1 out of 5)
If You Like: AC/DC, Greg Kihn, The Knack
Nickelback Never Gonna Be Alone
Nickelback is that sleazy ex-boyfriend who, after causing you years of grief and heartache, uses every hackneyed pick-up line in the book to sweet-talk his way back into your pants. "Never Gonna Be Alone" is yet another "I shouldn't have spent the last three years boinking the babysitter and joking with friends about your IBS because I now realize you are my soulmate" power ballad loaded with maudlin regret, hokey promises, and insincere clichés.
"I'm wondering why I've kept this bottled inside,
So I'm starting to regret not telling all of this to you,
So if I haven't yet, I've gotta let you know,
Never gonna be alone,
From this moment on, if you ever feel like letting go,
I won't let you fall,
Never gonna be alone,
I'll hold you 'til the hurt is gone."
Lead vocalist Chad Kroeger wails with such a feigned anguish, Jimmy Swaggart would be envious. Mutt Lange, the man who helped rockers like Def Leppard and Foreigner make the jump from headbangers to masters of the prom theme song, co-wrote and produced "Alone." His influence really shines through in this hundredth photocopy of Def Lep's "Love Bites." Each measure is filled with one blaring major chord and the verses consist of dull acoustic strumming over an unadventurous beat any 12-year-old drummer could play with his eyes shut. "Alone" embodies everything I hate about new millennium power ballads. With more sap than a forest of pine trees, it's just one more fan-stroking sham of a love song that has nothing genuine to say, and no new way to say it.
Rating: * (1 out of 5)
If You Like: Bon Jovi (power ballads), Bryan Adams (power ballads), Creed (power ballads), Def Leppard (power ballads), Foreigner (power ballads), Heart (power ballads)
First Anniversary
This week marks the first anniversary of Under The Scalpel. Hard to believe I've been doing this for a year! For fun, let's go back and revisit a few of my favorite Trevor er, music review memories:
R&B singer Bobby Valentino joins [Lil] Wayne on this track and delivers a combination of Motown and 2 Live Crew. To understand this odd mix, try to envision the Isley Brothers crooning "Do me in the back of the car. Put me in handcuffs. Start ripping my pants off." This old heart of mine didn't see that one coming!
MTV's "Hottest MC In The Game" [Kanye West] then asks, "How it feel to wake up and be the shit and the urine?" Hopefully this is a rhetorical question.
Unsurprisingly, Chad [Kroegar] chose not to include any useful information in this song, like how to effectively pass the time while waiting for that special someone to magically appear. He did however let Playboy Magazine in on his secret earlier this year. "I put my own dick in my mouth," Chad explained, "It was soft and required a lot of pulling." Now that's the most rock and roll thing to roll off of this guy's tongue yet!
Additional attempts to come up with ingenious rhymes for radio-friendly innuendo come off as just plain stupid, as evidenced in the lyric, "I'm just stunnin' with my love-glue-gunnin'." Martha Stewart had no comment.
In a constant string of contradictions, [Katie White] first declares, "Shut up and let me go," and then follows it with, "It's you that ought to be holding me." Then she announces, "This hurts, I tell you so," followed by, "This hurts, but I can't show." I can't stress enough the importance of proofreading. I will be suggesting to your guidance counselor that you take a leave of absence from the cheerleading team until your lyrics show improvement.
By the time I was halfway through the song, I felt like I was being waterboarded. Had the military at the Guantanemo Bay Naval Base put aside the Pantera, Queen and Eminem and instead chosen this song for the detainees, confessions could have been collected as easily as winning lottery tickets.
Any time I start to hear "That's Not My Name," I pray for an ex-girlfriend to find me and begin to explain loudly, in the most colorful terms known to man, how much of a prick I am, simply in an effort to drown out [Kaite] White's voice.
Back in the day, if two envelope-white, hyperactive dweebs recorded themselves rapping corny jokes, with a flow comparable to Murray Head's "One Night in Bangkok," over cheesy electronic beats, they'd get their asses kicked like a soccer ball with the school principal's picture drawn on it. And if a video of them dancing around to that song in floral underwear surfaced, the ass-kicking would reach biblical proportions.
