Word: pop
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...years younger Shakira appears on the cover of “¿Dónde Están los Ladrones?”—the Spanish-language album that fixed for a permanent star in the global pop stratosphere—in dark dreads and muddied hands. Her face is simply made-up and her gaze inquisitive and earnest. The album’s title appears to be handwritten...
This is a shame. Shakira has ever been the thinking man’s Britney (though not too deeply thinking), several steps above the impoverished dregs of robotized glamour-pop. What set her apart were her siren vocals, and the lyrics those vocals would belt out—lyrics crafted by a fledgling English speaker, peculiar and sometimes puzzling. She is still thankfully in ownership of these gifts, singing lines like “Why wait for later? / I’m not a waiter” and using words like “lycanthropy” (destined...
...most successful. It begins with a halting, funky bass line, builds with high-pitched tones like signals from a groovy erotic spaceship, and ends with strings, dramatic and glorious. All this as she sings, pants, and howls, making everyone happy. It attains something close to a pop symphony, and while the drop from “She Wolf” to the rest of the songs on the album is a perilously steep one, at least this peak grazes the very moon and comes dressed in a flesh-colored leotard. Watch the video; it will give...
...residue of a revolutionary and long-outmoded turning point in popular music: the Dead had the psychedelic era; the Lips had punk rock. Both bands derive their sound from a host of intersecting genres and traditions: the Dead had blues, country, and folk; the Lips have punk, pop, and space rock. But unlike the Dead, or any other group of comparable longevity, the Flaming Lips have fashioned a legacy through constant rejuvenation. Their greatest albums—1993’s “Transmissions from the Satellite Heart,” 1999?...
...Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”—will be able to point to the myriad recycle tropes that propped that record up. “Mystics” attempts to craft simpler, theoretically catchier—and typically somewhat monotonous—pop songs with the same sort of thematic import that made the elegant, orchestral, deeply emotive “Yoshimi” standout “Do You Realize??” such a runaway hit. Instead, it oversimplified the formula, leaving even the catchiest of those songs relatively limp...