Sunday, January 3, 2010

Alzheimer's Soundtrack: Beautiful Girls

If you are old as dirt and haven't listened to pop music since the advent of hip-hop because you can't figure out the lyrics you need to give Sean Kingston's "Beautiful Girls" a spin. The Jamaican Kingston piles a thick layer of ghetto nuance over a harmony that would feel at home on an AM pop station in 1964. In fact much of it is ripped off from Ben E. King's "Stand By Me" but it's not a sampled ripoff, it's a really cool tribute to a genre. He wears an intentially infantile voice like a falsetto to great effect. I actually like the kids radio version that substitutes "... in denial" for "... suicidal" but this is a pop radio gem. This is weird stuff that you won't be able to scrub out of your ears for days.

No comments: