Nause has nothing to do with your parents’ “Hungry Hearts” and has nothing to do with favorite Cleveland kid Eric Carmen.
This Thursday’s treasure goes by the same name and reached number 1 in Sweden, but the similarities end there for this track from house band Nause.
Members Jacob Criborn and Leonard Scheja are already well known in their native Sweden after appearances on a reality TV show last year and four top 40 hits in the last two years. The US somehow managed to miss all four, but that may be changing very fast. The duo is now in the US for three tour dates: Miami on Saturday, LA in a week and Vegas on the 25th.
Can you say showcase?
And the Nause guys deserve a showcase. I debated whether I wanted to make this Thursday’s treasure “Hungry Hearts” or the just released “This is the Song”. Hearts won, but only by the tiniest margin. The song’s hilarious video (below) has nearly 2 million views on YouTube. They’re not all me so plenty are digging the track.
A slick dance pop track edited down to just under four minutes or in a full version at nearly 7 minutes, “Hungry Hearts” has enough lyrics for a David Guetta comparison with a decent vocal for clubs. I would love to hear their lyric with a stronger tenor voice, but there is no doubt that these kids with the hungry hearts will command attention no matter who sings because of their infectious beats.
You will be hearing more from Nause soon, and it won’t be on an import disc or Spotify stream.
It’s Valentine’s Day, but not everyone is feeling the love… How about a few “anti love songs”?
I had an interesting experience yesterday on Facebook. I shared a photo of Will Ferrell looking particularly loser-ish with a caption that read,
“If you’re sad about being alone on Valentine’s Day, just remember… Nobody loves you on the other days of the year, either.”
When I posted that meme, I was just trying to be funny. And indeed, several people indicated that they thought the photo was funny. I could even identify with the photo’s snarky comment, having endured 29 straight Valentine-less Valentine’s Days before I finally started dating my husband. I definitely know why Valentine’s Day can suck if you get too caught up in it.
Imagine my surprise when someone took me to task for being “mean”. This person felt that I was shaming all the dateless and loveless people of the world. After that exchange, I got to thinking. Everybody wants to talk about love on Valentine’s Day… hearts, flowers, candy, kisses and jewelry. But what about all the people out there who aren’t feeling the love on this Hallmark holiday? Shouldn’t we include them in the fun? So in the interest of recognizing those who are alone and bitter about it on Valentine’s Day, here are a few anti love songs.
Gloria Jones, Soft Cell, and Marilyn Manson “Tainted Love”
Gloria Jones recorded the original version of “Tainted Love” back in 1964. In 1981, Soft Cell covered “Tainted Love”, introducing a new generation to this searing song about a toxic partner. It’s also been covered by Marilyn Manson.
Gloria Gaynor “I Will Survive”
Here’s a good, hearty “f u” song for all the women who have been dumped by an insensitive ass on Valentine’s Day. Hey buddy, I will survive… so hit the road!
Ray Charles “Hit The Road, Jack”
Speaking of hitting the road, here’s a classic anti love song by Ray Charles.
The Police “So Lonely”
Sting, Andy Summers, and Stuart Copeland must have been feeling especially lonely when they penned this song about being all alone and hating it.
Erykah Badu “Tyrone”
The first time I heard this song, I was in at a karaoke bar in Richmond, Virginia. A young lady got up and sang this song with a lot of heart and soul… and I just had to go find it so I could hear the original. Erykah Badu is sick and tired of her man not pulling his weight. So she invites him to “call Tyrone”… Not safe for work.
Pat Benatar “Heartbreaker”
Pat Benatar comes on like a freight train with this rocking hit about a guy who’s a heartbreaker, dream maker, love taker… and just not a nice person.
Martin Briley “Salt In My Tears”
This is a pretty good break up song. It’s sung by a guy, but I know a lot of women who can relate to the very same sentiments in this caustic song about a person who is pretty much worthless. I mean, how much can the salt in one’s tears be worth, anyway? If you’re not worth that much, you’re not worth much!
Alanis Morisette “You Oughta Know”
No anti love song list would be complete without this new classic song by Alanis Morisette. Was it really written about Dave Coulier of Full House fame? I don’t know, but she sure seems good and pissed.
Wham! “Everything She Wants”
“Everything She Wants” was a big hit for Wham! back in 1985, but it’s also kind of an anti love song about a greedy woman who takes advantage of her significant other, driving him to the brink of exhaustion with her constant demands for more and more… and she’s pregnant, too?
Harry Nilsson “You’re Breaking My Heart”
Harry Nilsson sings this profane song to the heartbreaker in his life. Believe it or not, the first time I ever heard this song was on the soundtrack from the 1983 teen sex flick Private School. Though the title seems innocuous, this song is loaded with f-bombs. Listen with care.
Francine Queen of Obscene “He’s An A******”
Here’s a song I found on Red Peters’ Song Snatch podcast. It’s definitely not safe for work or if your kids are around, but I have a feeling that a lot of women can relate to this profane number about a woman who has just had an unfortunate run in with an oversexed, unfaithful jerk.
Ladies aren’t the only ones who have run-ins with inconsiderate lovers. Ken Turetzky reminds everyone what it’s like to be dumped by a narcissistic woman who thinks her shit doesn’t stink.
The Bloodhound Gang “No Hard Feelings”
With a chilling line that goes “I’m missing you like a hijacked flight on September 11th”, this song definitely qualifies as an anti love song. I can think of a few people I could dedicate this song to… Definitely not safe for work.
Red Peters “The Spelling Song”
And finally, here’s a song that if you can’t spell and don’t listen too carefully to the words, might actually seem kind of pleasant. But it’s definitely a kiss off song from both affected parties.
In all seriousness, I hope everyone has a happy Valentine’s Day. And if your Valentine’s Day hasn’t been fun because you’re sad, bitter, and lonely, I hope a few of these songs at least help you feel a little less alone.
Mr. Michael Render does not believe the term “rap” *is* an acronym for “Rebellious African Peoples”: he believes it should be. R.A.P. Music, produced by robot-apocalypse meister Jaime “El-P” Meline, does its best to sound like rebellion in progress. Beats range from firm to concussive; synth melodies burble and warble like distant alarms, or buzz and gurgle like hungry monster wasps, or drift like machines humming to themselves while they recharge for their next burst of menace. There’s guest singers sometimes, with pretty melodies, but that just shows there’s a base of popular support out there, while Killer Mike‘s voice has the depth and forceful character of Public Enemy’s Chuck D, more speed, and the precise articulation of a man who knows how to wield the King’s English in the cause of regicide. At least when he so chooses; it’s not often that he sustains a verse without the word “shit”. But he’s impressive when he does.
A digression that maybe isn’t one. I feel like the only way to write this review honestly is to admit an unlikeable personal flaw: I’m kind of a prude. No, not about sex! I’m enthusiastically pro-sexual pleasure: mine, hopefully yours, anyone’s who doesn’t get theirs by treating people badly. Sexism, though, raises my hackles at once; so do violence and cruelty, all of which I think I’m right about. I’m also immediately bothered, to a muted extent, by things I know are absolutely none of my business, things that some of my favorite people enjoy: drunkenness, recreational drug use, boasting (unless it’s a fun burst of surprised enthusiasm), and large-scale swearing (unless it’s creative). These are, collectively, a large obstacle to hip-hop fandom — although as the two higher-ranking hip-hop albums remaining in the countdown will show, not a total one.
Those of you who are non-prudes probably mis-understand the phenomenon. Prudes are usually shown in the media as people who are lying about what they enjoy or think is funny; people who are refusing on purpose to have fun. My experience says otherwise; I was 5 years old and usually thought Garfield comics were the funniest thing in the world, but already that cat’s treatment of Nermal and Odie just made me sad. This is who I am. *I don’t have a choice* about wincing when R.A.P. Music‘s eloquent devotional to the power of music settles on, as its highest praise, “the opposite of bullshit”. I don’t have a choice about my disappointment when Untitled‘s awkward but affecting salutes to motherhood, and the mysteries of human potential, turns into a tribute to marijuana, then a boast that he’ll kill anyone coming to take him down. I can’t help disliking a chorus like Southern Fried‘s “Ain’t I one-hundred player for sure? Ain’t I slick ’bout my pimp game and just might mack on your ho?”, even as I admire the long-held organ chords and seductive almost-melodic dual vocals that deliver them.
I do have the choice — the easy and obvious choice — of ignoring entire giant swaths of American culture so as not to rouse my own disapproval. But that doesn’t sit right with me either. R.A.P. Music exemplifies the things hip-hop does better than any other genre. Autobiography, for one; love of family, for two; awareness of community and of unacceptable poverty, for three and four. Willie Burke Sherwood, for example,covers all four: it’s Killer Mike‘s plainly-titled tribute to the grandfather who raised him, to the books that influenced him even as he got mocked for reading books, and to childhood friends who were shot. A chorus like “This is for all the dads and the granddads/ and the little homies that ain’t never had dads… For every man that’s ever had to man up/ if that’s you, let me see you put your hand up” would sound totally out-of-place in indie-pop or progressive rock or shoegazer, but fits normally on a rap album, a song or three away from cheap ghetto pick-up lines.
Awareness of roots, for five. The title track is a lengthy boast about his and El-P’s skills, but it’s in the form of felt obligation — “What I say might save a life, what I speak might save the street” — and it’s also a lengthy namecheck of his musical loves, the “Closest I’ve ever come to seeing or feeling God”. When he says “This is sanctified sex, this is player pentecostal/ This is church: front, pew, amen, pulpit”, he’s talking about his own music (and a player lifestyle I wouldn’t endorse without knowing the women’s sides of the stories), but also the music others gave to him. Storytelling ambivalence, for six. Ghetto Gospel‘s narrator, accounting his drug-trade career, is viciously blunt with lines like “My mamma took me to the root lady to read my palm/ She puts beads on my neck saying they protecting me from harm/ But fuck this old witch, I went and got a gun”. But the narrator loves his mamma, and the proto-gospel tinges on the chorus “Oh Lord, Jesus, glory” don’t feel like cheap irony. Jo-Jo’s Chillin’ is a neutral tale of pure evil — a babydaddy fleeing his family and the law across state lines, bribing a guard, viciously abusing two women, and getting away with it — and I don’t doubt that it will be taken by listeners as glorification: I wish it wasn’t on the disc, despite its pleasant, stylishly listenable flow. But I’m not certain it’s supposed to be approving; it’s possible Killer Mike considers it as obvious a bleak character study as Jim Thompson’s “the Killer Inside Me”. Which, if it weren’t for all the rest of hip-hop, it might work as.
It leads, after all, into Reagan, a bleak soundscape of drones and oscillations, a song opposed to ruthless brutality. As Tris McCall noted, it’s smart enough to explain the role of privately-owned prisons and the drug war in replacing the free labor lost to slavery, and dumb enough to call Reagan “an actor, not at all a factor, just an employee of the country’s real masters”, and also imply that he’s the antiChrist, as if the two were compatible. Hip-hop’s seventh special strength as a genre, that I’m thinking of today, is that it’s incendiary. This isn’t necessarily a plus. “Fuck the police” (a literal quote from Don’t Die), interspersed with threats to spree-kill said cops, is a pretty stupid response to the real problems of racial profiling, abusive illegal searches, and prison labor. Butane‘s call for revolution so that all you listeners can be as absurdly rich and royal and preternaturally cool as Michael Render is, um, not a realistic revolutionary goal. I get that.
But it’s something. No one this side of Fox News expects even as powerful a rap voice as Killer Mike‘s to translate directly into action: he’s starting a conversation, making nifty sounds in the process. Bart Simpson once tried to start a collective action with [paraphrased from memory] “I don’t promise success. I don’t promise victory”. As his collaborators started to wander away, he yelled “Okay! I promise success! I promise victory!”. It seems to work better.
