The best part comes near the end. “I told you I’d love you forever,” Michael Stipe reminds a special someone and when the chorus comes back, with a layer of windswept harmony, it soars as one of the band’s catchiest. Leaving New York is an ambiguous ballad, but it seems there are feelings of both affection and despondency in the air.
my rating : 4 of 5
2004
It’s not really about sex. It’s more about The Heat of the moment as two bodies dance on a hot August day. They’re sweating, but I don’t think the sun is up. The slinky beat has more of a late evening party vibe.
It’s a party for two and Braxton is nude as they skinny dip in a pool. Actually she’s having a daydream, which isn’t revealed until the end when she looks around and asks if “anybody” wants some ice cream.
my rating : 4 of 5
2000
This song is all chorus. Not really, but the chorus is virtually indistinguishable from the verses if you happen to be a casual listener, at least until Reese gets on and provides a slight but welcomed change of tone.
It’s about just what the title says; what they don’t like; which could be a creative concept if the two rappers were mindful enough to utilize it. Instead we get a lot of random “niggas” and “bitches”. I do like the beat though.
my rating : 3 of 5
2012
U-God sets the tone with a fitting flow. The other rappers should’ve mimicked it, but they do their own thing. Cappadonna’s “crazy” line is funny and Rza begins with a nice rhyme scheme, but they’re somewhat anticlimactic after U-God. The beat is on target when the guitar loop plays. The horns that replace it during the breaks are a miss. Perfect title though.
my rating : 4 of 5
2011
This would be the perfect lullaby to sing to your pet tiger as it drifts to sleep, but it’s probably meant for a kid. I imagine a father leaning over the crade of his newborn son.
The backdrop; “shadow” music covered by a blanket of warm serenity; is pleasantly gentle. It’s the singer’s clicky vocal articulation that would irk me right out of my dreams.
my rating : 4 of 5
2004
This isn’t about what you might think. Madonna has kids now. She’s not nearly as erotic as she used to be, at least not in public, but she can still shock. There’s a big one at the end of this pulsating hate song.
“Now if you’re gonna act like a bitch,” she says, holding a gun to her lover’s head, “you’re gonna die like a bitch.” With that, the title should be Bang Bang. It sounds like that’s what she’s saying on the refrain.
my rating : 3 of 5
2012
I’m surprised to hear a song like this from KRS-One. It’s a story about him having sex with a 13-year-old girl, which, as far as the law is concerned, makes him a rapist. That’s despite the fact that she didn’t bother to tell him her age until he asked. By then it was too late. They’d already fucked and she’d already fallen in love. “I want to be with you forever,” she tells him.
It’s a tricky predicament and a serious issue for men who go to parties looking for sex, but KRS-One handles it with misplaced satire by getting the girl’s Pops involved and ending the story with an outrageous twist. What her father does is possible but extremely unlikely under the circumstances. It’s a major turn-off on a song that was relatively believable until that point.
my rating : 3 of 5
1992
It isn’t scary, but neither is Thriller. It’s hard to make a song scary in a horror kind of way without a scary video to accommodate it. Michael Jackson has, however, managed to once again create a song that is truly spectacular. It’s actually a musical and conceptual recomposition of Ghosts, evident by the fact that their verses are quite similar and hinted at by the fact that they play-out one after the other on the Blood On The Dance Floor album. It’s an awesome set, but this song is better. There’s just no matching Michael Jackson on the chorus.
“Is it scary for you,” it goes; a question phrased in a way I can’t make grammatical sense of. A “too” before “scary” would fix it. A “to” instead of “for” would be even better. As is, it sounds like a lyrical mistake on what is otherwise a masterpiece. You could say the music, a rhapsody by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, is overproduced, but I think it’s a perfect fit to Michael Jackson’s epic vocal performance. He sings, screams, hoos and makes his signature hiccup noises, projecting his voice to the point of hoarseness, in an amazing showcase of musical magic.
He’s a pop legend with a world of spectators, many of whom view him as not much more than a freak. If he’s been holding his feelings in all these years, he’s finally letting them out. “I’m gonna be exactly what you wanna see,” he says before morphing into an uglier version of the Thriller monster, “And if you want to see eccentric oddities, I’ll be grosteque before your eyes.” If you want a freak show, in other words, you got one. It’s the coda, when a lonely piano plays a haunting melody over enchanting strings, that will put a chill up your spine.
my rating : 5 of 5
1997
![audio review : Blood On The Dance Floor [ History In The Mix ] ( album ) … Michael Jackson](https://marcellee.com/posts/7893.jpg "audio review : Blood On The Dance Floor [ History In The Mix ] ( album ) … Michael Jackson")
Neither rapper mentions putting their tongue in Justin Bieber’s ass; only their dicks; so this is only tongue-in-cheek in the literal sense. It’s a dedication to the pop star. It’s also a direct threat that goes from what they “want” to do to what they’re “going” to do to him, which includes not only rape but also murder.
With that, joke or not, the “white boy” might have a legal case if, with the ridiculous conceptualization of “hate” crimes, he decides to take the song seriously. He could say he fears for his life, and anus, but it’ll be a hard case to win given the history of King Gordy and especially Bizarre as shock value artists.
my rating : 3 of 5
2012
“Just enjoy the simple things, enjoy the day life brings,” Janet Jackson says, “Enjoy the gift of life.” That’s great advice, it seems, but she shouldn’t tell people to enjoy things because it’s not really up to them. It’s an automatic response. They either enjoy it or they don’t. Not that logical psychology matters here. This is a simple summer song with its head stuck in the clouds. That’s “simple” in concept. The music is actually fairly complex.
The drums and bass should be set more prominently in the mix; I’d probably add a rougher effect on the bass and pan the snares with a stereo delay; but listen for the little experimental loop that plays along with them. It sounds like a sample of some kind, but probably not. This is a Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis production, after all, accommodated by sweet lead vocals and a thick syrupy layer of backgrounds on the chorus. Enjoyable? Yes.
my rating : 4 of 5
2006
If you’re wondering what this has to do with starships; theoretical ships used to travel to and from stars; the answer is apparently nothing. An alien-looking girl sings about how they’re meant to “fly”, but that’s about it. This is actually a song for dance floors on planet Earth, as the flashy club music it plays upon; a mesh of European house and techno; seems to insist.
Nicki Minaj is sort of charming during the first eight bars of each verse, when it’s just her rapping, then rapping and singing, to a stripped-down version of the main melody. But the chorus sections sound like the template for a generic Lady Gaga anthem and the “higher” breaks, which distract from the flow of the song in the most annoying of ways, are a cosmic mess.
my rating : 3 of 5
2012
This is a journey into the mind of Eminem; not the person or the rapper in general but the dark side of his “forest”. There lives an alter ego of sorts; a deviant who enjoys raping, torturing and killing people; mostly young girls, it seems.
In a sense, he’s a real-life Freddy Krueger, but he raps a lot better. The rhyme schemes displayed here are staggering in their complexity. The music is dreamy and entrancing. It’s hard not to fall victim to the song’s seductive lure.
my review : 4 of 5
2009
