In order to capture the thrilling but insane energy of the song and the video, here’s the link below:

To hear a sample of Adam Lambert’s For Your Entertainment, see below:

And for comparison reasons, see Kris Allen’s Heartless

   If there was ever a soundtrack for 1998, Aerosmith’s Don’t Want to Miss a Thing would be the top track. This song instantly brings to mind Michael Bay’s Armageddon, my memories of the repeated viewings of Paris being incinerated, comets covientely blasting through notable skyscrapers, the melodrama of a group of oil drillers shipped to detonate a comet the size of Texas, the pool of tears leaked on the floor by my sisters and me watching Bruce Willis sacrifice his life for mankind, not to mention the movie clips tieing in with McDonalds commercials hawking a brand-new ice-cream treat, the McFlurry. Did I want the McFlurry.

  With 2012 poised to be the Armageddon of the decade, it only makes sense to have an equally epic pop-power ballad, an onslaught of synths, sounds, and bells designed to make us equally moved to pools of tears, sympathy for the unfortunate protagonists in the movie, hope for the future, a craving for 80s nostalgia, and willingness to hear it pimped out for the Chevy truck on tv that also happened to be blantantly advertised in the movie, sometimes all at once. American Idol Season 8 runner-up Adam Lambert is ready and willing to fill Aerosmith’s shoes with the 2012 theme Time for Miracles, an epic power-blaster designed to bring Don’t Want to Miss a Thing to utter shame.

    I’ll leave the video for the song here:

   Echoing the grandosity of the movie’s scope, the song pulls out all the stops. It assaults the ears, the brain, and the heart as Adam’s soothing falsetto assures us that no matter what, we will always have each other, we will pull through in the end, we will live to see the end of the world. No matter what your views on Adam Lambert or the song itself, your heart can’t help but give a little touching tweak. You might just shed a little tear and hide it just as guiltily as when you heard Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.  

   Yet, despite the song’s scope, despite Adam Lambert’s oddly beautiful kailedoscopic voice, despite that it has SUCCESS written on every corner, the song lacks something deep, something pure, something that truly touches the heart, where you tuck it away to keep until later.

   Part of the problem is the song’s generic sound. It has 80s power ballad slapped all over it. In fact, it could have been released over twenty years ago and no one would know the difference. But more importantly, 80s power ballads irrecovably ooze cheese, usually prefering to stick to generalizations and shallow feelings/meanings rather than going truly deep.  Even Foreigner’s I Want to Know what Love is, no matter how touching that song turned out to be, it didn’t completely escape the overpreening smaltz. Time for Miracles doesn’t even bother to avoid the 80s-style smaltz, instead, it happily bathes in it.

  Adding to the generics, this song is a near mirror-imaged twin of Don’t Want to Miss a Thing. And I’m not the only one who noticed. Check out these similiar lyrics, courtesy of EW!:

  Aerosmith: “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing”: I could stay awake just to hear you breathing/ Watch you smile while you are sleeping/ While you’re far away and dreaming.

  Adam Lambert: “Time for Miracles”: It’s late night at night and I can’t sleep/ Missing you just runs too deep/ Oh I can’t breathe thinking of your smile.”

  Coincidence? Laziness? Similarly inspired? You decide. My take: Aerosmith actually knows how to play the 80s-ballad game. They know what they’re doing. Lambert lacks the experience to pull off a grand smaltzer like this one.

  And a great problem impacting the song is Lambert himself, a problem that goes all the way back to when I first heard his version of Mad World. With Mad World, he sings it beautifully, but. . .he just sang it. That’s it. He didn’t feel the song, he didn’t get the meaning behind it. He didn’t probe the song’s tragic nuances. He didn’t dig deep to understand the complicated, conflicted emotions: the lonliness, the pain, the utter despair of a person trying to find a beautiful meaning to the world but only ending up helpless. He didn’t have his own take on the song, which is what happens with Miracles. Lambert is an entertainer, more Britney Spears than Mary J. Blige. He lacks the feeling of the song, and Time just ends up as another bubble-gummy feel-gooder, a light, sugary lollipop of a listen that doesn’t leave you quite filled. And that’s too bad, because the song has everything else going for it.

 Will my opinion matter at all? Nope. Lambert fans will eat it up. 2012 will becomes a massive smash. The downloads on this song will rocket skyhigh the week the movie opens if not earlier, it will become this decade’s Don’t Want to Miss a Thing, the song will carry his upcoming album to No. 1, and Lambert will finally be cemented into the musical iconsphere as the next “It”-man.

      Contrary to the watered-down post-millenial version of Russian Roulette, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z5-Mj0hoW4, the traditional Russian Roulette is a lethal game of chance where participants load a round into a revolver, spin the cylinder, and whoever it lands on is shot in the head. The game has been archetyped as a metaphor for playing with death, something Rihanna quietly alludes to in her song.

      Penned by Neyo, the collaboator behind the Rihanna hits Unfaithful, Hate that I Love You, and Take a Bow, Rihanna’s new sure-to-be monster smash is an atypical dark, spooky, haunting pop-cruncher that seeps into your bones like dark-crystalled frost, leaving a chill in the air like the rain from a midnight December thunderstorm.

      I advise to hear the song twice upon first listen. One, because fans of Rihanna, especially those expecting an uplifting, bellowing epic ala the likes of Umbrella will be disappointed at first blush. Two, at first the song is a bit underwhelming, but at second listen you can catch all the nuances threaded throughout the song, be swept away by the energy of the sparse guitar and piano acoustics, the sheer lyrical imagery, and then, you can allow yourself to be immersed in this song.

     The song opens, echoing the beginning rifts of Disturbia, Rihanna’s voice wrapping around us as laced as a scarf seeping with the eerieness of a ghost, the insideousness of smoke. “Take a breath, take it deep, calm yourself, he says to me, if you play, you play for keeps. . .” Rihanna croons in a breathy voice as soft and smooth as spider silk, seducing you into a shadowy underworld where a woman plays a game of life-and-death with her assailant. She wishes to leave before her turn comes, before he can get to her, but she “knows (she) must pass this test”, staying behind, unwilling to leave, bespelled by her assassilant’s pull, immersing herself in the thrill of the game, trapped like a moth inside a lamp, until her attacker finishes her off.

    It’s song of taking deadly chances, expecting a grand payoff but instead suffering from inalterable consequences. It’s about being trapped between a netherworld of bliss and agony, hypnotized by the assilant’s shadowy charm yet filled with dread with the trap he’s set in motion. It’s about playing with death in order to feel alive but realizing your life is slipping away from you. It’s about putting all your trust into a loved one, only for them to leave you betrayed and destroyed.

It’s about all those things. It’s about none of these things. The power behind the song is that it can be about anything and everything you think it is about. Many will listen to this song and assume she’s talking about Chris Brown. I prefer to think the song is open to interpretation.

 Neyo had this to say about the song: 

“I’m listening to the track, and all I can see is Rihanna and some random person sitting across from each other at the table with a gun sitting in the middle of the table and playing Russian roulette. And I just started thinking, ‘What would go through your mind if you was in that situation?’ It just all started coming together, and Rihanna has never been one to be afraid to take a chance, especially with me. She’s always game to do something a little different. I played it for her, and she loved it — went in and knocked it out. The rest is history.” -from MTVNews.com http://newsroom.mtv.com/2009/10/22/ne-yo-rihanna-russian-roulette/. However, people will think what they will.
I’ve always been impressed with Rihanna’s versitility, of being able to bend and merge genres and musical styles seemingly with ease. She is one of the few pop singers that affords herself to take risks, of refusing to stay pigeonholed into one style, as pop often does. In this gothically beautiful song, she has succeeded and then some.
It won’t be long until this song is played every hour on the hour on radio, YouTube, and everywhere, until ours and my ears bleed out the song, until my stomach is physically nauseated by the mention, by one chord of the song. Until then, take the time to actually listen to and enjoy this evocative, spellbinding single.

Here is the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZwkXXFhxDI

    The current pop trend happens to be of the Lady Gaga/Katy Perry variety ie. singing increasingly large amounts of obvious sexual innuedo into a sugar-coated, cotton-candy dance-pop song. It is this trend that Miss Britney Spears ie. “Queen of Pop” happily skirts with her latest single, Three, a single that is currently sitting pretty at number one on Billboard and according to USA Today, 10/19, it is the most downloaded single online.

    This song wastes no pretense over its topic. I don’t have to explain what it’s about since the song cheerfully invites people to figure it out on their own: “One, two, three, baby, not just you and me. . .merrier the more, triple fun that way. . .twister on the floor. . .living in sin is the new thing. . .” Produced by Max Martin, the hitmaker behind Baby One More Time, Oops I did it again, and the recent If You Seek Amy, which this track serves as a more explicit sequel, the song is designed as a flirty, fizzy, club-jammer, that you can’t help but sing along, making you unable but to blush and giggle over the naughty entrendre you just said.

     Compared to this song’s carefree concern over its topic, If You Seek Amy was a subtle kindergarden chant by comparison. If You Seek Amy’s guilty pleasure was how carefully it wrapped its meaning around like a swiss chocolate, its unapologetic approach to teasing you to guessing its meaning and then hiding an embarrassed wink once you caught on. Because Three is serving as a more accessible, naughty sequel to Amy, Three loses the campy fun Amy invited us to revel in. Instead, it’s a coldly calculated single designed to wrest the tiara off Gaga and Perry.

       For the tiara Spears desperately craves to resnatch from her contemporaries, this song pulls off all the stops. The production is as slick and addicting as a Gaga-track and the lyrics are as coy and uncouth as Perry. And for good measure, it copies completely obscure, strange, and head-scratching pop culture hip-hopisms, reciting an oblique Peter, Paul, and Mary reference that is so left-field West, it would make Kanye West proud. But that unnecessary (and weird) reference serves as a reminder to how unnecessary the song is.

       Spears is not the first pop diva to chase the latest runway pop models, all of Mariah Carey’s recent albums share a similar conceit. Just like Carey, Spears doesn’t realize how far behind she is on the trends. She’s singing with the desperation of a sorority leader squaring off against her rivals. Spears missed out on five years during her musical hiatus while Gaga, Perry, the Pussycats, etc. have caught on to similar success and now she and her music production team are playing catch up, hoping to prove that the Queen of Pop is still now, she’s still with it, she’s still the hottest thing to graze the pop scene.

     Problem is, Spears, aside from If You Seek Amy, has never done a full-on risque double-entendre pop single. In the past, she preened, she courted, she teased, but she was always discreete. By being dolled up as a sex kitten, Spears’ awkwardness shows through. She doesn’t have the vocal or lyrical chops to strut and shock as Gaga and like Gaga, make it sound as ordinary as a simple conversation. But maybe that’s the intention behind the song, to let the obtuse shine through, to shock and awe.

    It won’t matter because the track’s current success proves Team Britney right on their fashion model. They’ve reentered the pop glam scene, the pop culture bash, as if Spears never left. It won’t be long until malls, shoe advertisements, and Gossip Girl picks this song up.

    To hear the song yourself, here’s the link below:

It grew even bigger with this:

http://www.hilarious.net/dear-sister-snl-digital-short/

And then, this finally happened:

From the OC to Saturday Night Live, to endless YouTube spoofs (I mean literally endless. There are way too many spoofs for me to even get started. Just look up Dear Sister and you’ll see what I mean), the Imogen Heap song has completely cemented itself in post-millenial pop culture with Jason Derulo’s Whatcha Say.

Intergrated over a sample of Imogen Heap’s Hide and Seek, the song shows a man pouring his heart over the loss of his girlfriend after he made a terrible mistake in judgment, begging her to come back, insisting he never meant to hurt her, for now on, he’ll make sure she knows she’s appreciated everyday.

How does Whatcha Say compare to the original? The original is a haunting, heartbreaking song where the lyrics incenuates a terrible loss of a loved one and the torment over the unknown person’s grief over his/her responsibility in the loss. Derulo’s song is straight r & b pop, this year’s Beautiful Girls, only with a less incessant, blantant ripoff of the classic. Points are shaved for Derulo cutting corners by using an already popular song’s beat to sell his song. He will far be the last to sample a popular song, hip-hop will continue to do so, and sampling has become so infused in hip-hop zeitgeist, it’s normal for hip-hoppers/r & b-pop singers to use a popular song to let people know they’re cool, they’re with it, they know what’s in, what’s popular. But at least try to come up with an increment of your own composition. Derulo is content just to ride on the coattails of a soap opera climax song.
That doesn’t mean the song isn’t catchy because it is and Derulo is smart enough to use that song to get listeners hooked in. The song is honestly fun and enjoyable and you can’t help but try to sing along. Whenever the Imogen Heap chorus pops us, I can’t help chiming in, “What did she say?” However, unlike the original, which has subtle, nuanced meaning, Derulo’s version as light and breezy as a sip of Coca-Cola. Delicious and you love how it fizzes on your mouth, but it has no residual value.
In the end, Derulo’s song will last long enough to climb the radio and download charts but I’m probably not going to remember it in ten years, except in corrlation with Imogen Heap. And that’s what honestly defeats the song from having an impact. Derulo is so intent on scoring a hit, he cheapens the song by burying it in the score of another. Whatever lyrical content is in his song is lost because it will be remembered as little else than that song that used that other song from the OC.
In case you missed it, here’s the full Imogen Heap original (and it is much better than how it is used in the OC.):

So croons Jay Sean, who sings his latest single Down, in collaboration with Lil Wayne, which as of this Sunday, is the Number One song in the country, beating Miley Cyrus’ Party in the USA and Jay-Z’s collaboration with Rihanna and Kanye West’s Run this Town.
This song, it should note, is my sister’s song of the moment. And if my sister has a song of the moment, that means that eventually, I’ll be hearing all over the place in so shape and form.
If I have to say so, even though the boy band craze has died off, Jay Sean’s gameplan M.O. is pretty similiar. Even though the song is coated with an R & B/hip-hop flavor, the song feels very much Backstreet, very much NSync, with Jay Sean lamenting over how he and his lover are going to be together through thick and thin, no matter what happens, not even if “the sky is falling down”. If pop-tinged hip-hop was popular seven years ago, I can easily see any of the boy bands singing this song. Heck, Justin Timberlake could have easily snagged this song. And if the Jonas Brothers happened to get pinched with some R & B soul and threw in a cameo by Lil Wayne, they could have done it.
I’m saying all this like this a bad thing. Trust me, it’s not. I still have an unnatural fondness for pop boy bands and I’m a sucker for a song with a good voice, good lyrics, and a catchy beat. This song qualifies most of the way for this. I will subtract points for the useless and earpicking repetition but all that does is serve as a brainitch switch, meant to get inside your head and stay there. And it works.
Spicing the song with some streetwise credibility is Lil Wayne, who I find has a talent for spicing up songs just by being there, by the use of his unique Robitussin cough-syrup, raspy autotune and his quirky, oftentimes obscure pop culture references that is custom in hip-hop by injects them with an urgency, a credibility, a relevancy that Kanye West wishes he could possess.
In the end, if you like slightly boy bandy R & B songs or Lil Wayne’s unique lyricisms, check out this song.
Here’s a link to the YouTube video below:

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m34xyw8E-Qs