Category: Featured
SONG OF THE DAY: Rivaz & Benny Benassi ft Heather Bright – “Tell Me Twice”
Sometimes a great song is just a matter of mixing the right ingredients together.? “Tell Me Twice” is the Ultra Music Festival Anthem which blends pretty rhythms with hard electro beats as the track behind a melodic pop vocal. Actually, you can basically break up the record pretty easily and figure out who did what.? Rivaz (aka Davide Riva) obviously did the the gorgeous and uplifting intro section, you can hear it as a continuation from the epic “Colors” record which buzzed around WMC.? His pop production skills also influenced the song structure (he is part of the production team that created the Whigfield phenomenon of the ’90s), yet the actual lyrics are clearly the work of Heather Bright (aka Bright Lights). If you crosspollinate her previous records “Never Say Goodbye,” “Language,” and “Ghosts,” you can already hear the DNA.? That leaves the aggressive electro beats which are clearly the contribution of Benny Benassi.? As a DJ, I am thankful that they left enough of a loop through all the drops so that dancers will have a beat to latch onto.? All of the remixes keep the tone of the original with slight mods for a different flavor – Adrian Lux (moodier progressive), Bottai (Zedd-esque electro), Simon de Jano (mellow electro house), and Bright Lights (indie electro). ??
Image Courtesy of Ultra.
SONG OF THE DAY: Lady Gaga – “Burqa”?
While singing about the full body covering of Muslim women might be construed as shock tactics, if you listen to the lyrics of Lady Gaga’s leaked single “Burqa” you will realize that it’s quite a personal analogy.? Starting with a surf/guitar rock intro leading into electro dance-pop, the song compares the traditional hiding of awrah (intimate parts of the body) under the burqa (full body covering) with the attempt of maintaining a personal life in the midst of global fame.? While the intermittent usage of the words dance, sex, art, and pop as a chant cheapens it a bit, they seem to be more like twitter hashtags or digital noise. To those who see this as another reductive impersonation of Madonna, they might say it’s just a mashup of “Justify My Love” and “Like a Prayer” sharpened with more lyrical pelvic thrusts.? As a leaked demo of what will no doubt be an album track from ‘ARTPOP,’ it shows the Gaga is going to further than she did with “Judas” and really cross cultural boundaries.? Let’s see if “Applause” will live up to expectations when it’s released later this month.